May 15, 2008

Manipal University has implemented a campus wide WiFi Mesh Network to enable students access fast and convenient wireless Internet and also access the University’s local area network (LAN) anywhere in the campus while on the move.

The university had tied up with D-VoiS Broadband for the implementation of the WiFi network, capable of supporting high speed Internet and other broadband applications.

This self-sealing, self-adjusting network enables students to access Internet, intranet and other value added applications anytime, anywhere within the campus.

“With the WiFi Mesh network, the university students will have the advantage of accessing high speed Internet anywhere on the campus thus facilitating learning and ensuring academic excellence,” the Manipal Education and Medical Group CEO Ranjan Pai said.

The network is spread across 5 sq km and is capable of supporting more than 15,000 subscribers, the university said.

Moreover, Manipal University in association with D-VoiS would also implement other value added applications such as streaming video, e-library and video on demand in a phased manner.

e-Education to help Greece bridge digital divide

Policy Matters

digitalLEARNING Network

May 15, 2008

In an effort to enhance digital literacy, the Hellenic Republic (Greece) has decided to strengthen ICT infrastructure and support development of digital content and educational software in the country.

According to reports, the country's Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs has chalked out a plan to support and install network and computational equipment, besides developing software and digital content for educational institutes.

Under the initiative, the Ministry would modernise the administration set up, and incorporate ICT in the teaching process as well, reports ePractice.

It is also looking at introducing informatics as a subject in schools

Schools try to close an achievement gap with single-sex classes

K-12

digitalLEARNING Network

May 15, 2008

The teacher, a burly presence in the front of the room, calls his young charges “gentlemen,” even if they're really boys. He uses his steely gaze as a teaching tool, glaring at a distracted student who had just made a paper airplane. Still, he knows not to admonish the restless students for their sometimes adolescent ways – tapping their pencils and tipping their chairs back at precarious angles.

Enter the flirt-free zone at the Mario Umana Middle School Academy in East Boston, one of the few public schools in the state experimenting with single-sex classes as a way to tame raging hormones, refocus students on their studies, and begin addressing a worsening achievement gap between boys and girls.

Boys still will be boys – and launch their paper planes – but their antics have toned down, teachers said. Girls have stopped preening in class. And both groups appear to be more confident asking and answering questions.

Superintendent Carol Johnson, who took over the Boston Public Schools last August, said gender-specific programs, including single-sex classes, will be one strategy to address the achievement gap, which was highlighted in a study recently released by the Boston School Committee.

According to the study's findings, which mirror a national trend, female students in the city consistently outpace their male classmates on test scores, graduation rates, and attendance. Boys, especially black and Latino students, are more likely to get suspended, be held back a grade, and drop out.

“As we look at our data, we absolutely have to look at new ways to ensure the academic success of our young people,” Johnson said.

But as more school districts around the country look at single-gender classes as a way to improve boys' achievement, a national debate has erupted over the effectiveness of single-sex education and whether the programs erode gains for girls made under a 1972 federal law barring gender discrimination in education.

“This is a world in which we need to learn to work together, so reinforcing gender stereotypes isn't the way we ought to be going, especially when there's no evidence to say it's actually effec tive,” said Sarah Wunsch, attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

While the ramifications of Boston's fledging effort remain to be seen, Paul Reville, Governor Deval Patrick's newly appointed education secretary, said he supports the idea. The Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy in Cambridge, which Reville leads, has issued a policy brief about boys across the state lagging behind and recommended that public schools be allowed to pilot single-sex classes.

“It strikes me as something that would be a worthwhile experiment for us to consider,” Reville said. “Massachusetts ought to take a close look at it because we have some significant challenges.”

Smith Leadership Academy, a charter school in Dorchester, has split boys and girls in science and math classes for five years. Two Haverhill middle schools are interested and hope to explore offering gender-segregated math classes in another year, said its new superintendent.

The state education department allows schools to create single-gender programs as long as they offer equal opportunities for boys and girls, and do not bar boys from enrolling in a girls' class, or vice versa.

US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings broadened federal regulations two years ago to give schools more flexibility to start same-sex programs. The guidelines dictated that enrollment be voluntary and a substantially equal coeducational class be provided. The number of single-sex programs in public schools nationwide has jumped from three in 1995 to more than 366 today, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education.

“There shouldn't be any impediments against single-sex education,” Spellings said during a visit to Boston this week. “I'm all about things that get results.”

Last year, teachers at Umana began separating a hand-picked group of boys and girls in afternoon math and English classes as part of a new extended day that provides time for a second dose of MCAS subjects.

Marco Flores, an eighth-grader, decided to transfer from a coed class after sitting in on an all-boys math class one day. He said he liked the way the teacher explained the math problems with drawings and did not care that there would be no girls. “I don't really flirt with them anyway,” he said. “I just want to get my stuff done and learn this.”

In a girls' math class on another floor of the expansive brick building, 14-year-old Emily Padilla said she concentrates better without boys around.

“If boys were here, they'd be picking on you, flirt around with you, and then you get distracted and you can't do work,” Padilla said as she waved her French-manicured fingers about.

“Not that we don't like boys,” interjected classmate Christina Soto, also 14.

Teachers at the Umana school have mixed opinions about the experiment.

English teacher Virginia Fosnock said boys usually get the most attention in coed classes because they're noisier. But in single-sex classes, “all the girls can shine,” she said.

However, some fear that an all-boys classroom, if not properly controlled, could take on the atmosphere of a fraternity house. Joseph DeCelles, another English teacher who has all boys, said he misses the dynamics of a coed classroom. Girls are more mature in middle school, he said, and are usually better students who can be used as role models in the classroom.

“If I had my druthers, I would not have an all-boys class at this age,” he said. “Girls are young women at this age and the boys are babies who still believe in bathroom jokes.”

Teachers at the Nathan Hale Elementary School in Roxbury, which experimented with single-gender classes in its fifth grade for two years, said they had to adapt their teaching styles to each gender. Sabrina Gray allowed her male students to stand up in class while reading and gave them more breaks. She asked them to repeat her instructions back to make sure they understood. And she issued one direction at a time so the boys would not tune her out. To maintain order in the classroom, she appointed students to a jury that penalized disruptive peers.

Tykwan Boswell, 13, said he liked his all-boys class last year because they felt at ease broaching uncomfortable topics such as puberty – “stuff that girls would be immature about.”

But Allister Williams, also 13, found the gender segregation to be difficult when recess squabbles would spill over into class time. “We had a little bit of conflicts in the classroom and we challenged each other in every subject,” he said.

Parents initially balked at the single-gender concept, afraid it would infringe upon their children's identities and impede their social skills, said principal Sandra Mitchell-Woods, who spent a year meeting with them before piloting the fifth grade program in the fall of 2005.

But parents eventually came around, and now say they miss the single-gender classes. The school had to discontinue the experiment this year because of an enrollment dip that cut the fifth-grade class in half.

“I saw a difference in how they carried themselves,” said Felicia Gay, whose eldest son was in the first single-gender class. “Now, the girls doll themselves up, put on their lip gloss, and bloom for the boys.”

Are gifted students getting left out?

K-12

digitalLEARNING Network

May 15, 2008

If you reviewed Dalton Sargent's report cards, you'd know only half his story. The 15-year-old Altadena junior has lousy grades in many subjects. He has blown off assignments and been dissatisfied with many of his teachers. It would be accurate to call him a problematic student. But he is also gifted.

Dalton is among the sizable number of highly intelligent or talented children in the nation's classrooms who find little in the standard curriculum to rouse their interest and who often fall by the wayside.

With schools under intense pressure from state and federal mandates such as No Child Left Behind to raise test scores of low-achieving pupils, the educational needs of gifted students — who usually perform well on standardized tests — too often are ignored, advocates say.

Nationally, about 3 million kindergarten through 12th-grade students are identified as gifted, but 80% of them do not receive specialized instruction, experts say. Studies have found that 5% to 20% of students who drop out are gifted.

There is no federal law mandating special programs for gifted children, though many educators argue that these students — whose curiosity and creativity often coexist with emotional and social problems — deserve the same status as those with special needs. Services for gifted students vary from state to state. In California, about 512,000 students are enrolled in the Gifted and Talented Education program, which aims to provide specialized and accelerated instruction.

But many gifted students who might benefit from the program are never identified, particularly those in economically disadvantaged communities, advocates say. Legislation sponsored by state Sen. Louis Correa (D-Santa Ana) aimed at training teachers to identify gifted students from low-income, minority and non-English speaking families stalled last year after estimates found that it could cost up to $1.1 million.

John C. Scribner, who is Correa's legislation director and also a member of the Sacramento County Board of Education, noted that opposition to gifted programs often comes from those who think other low-income students will be shortchanged. But low-income gifted students are doubly deprived, he says.

“There are students, usually from upper-income homes — who will always have advocates,” Scribner said. “We want to give that same opportunity to kids whose parents maybe are working two jobs, who aren't engaged with the system but with survival and other challenges and whose children end up without advocates.”

Statewide, Latinos, who make up 48% of total student enrollment, represent just 28% of students enrolled in gifted programs. African Americans represent 7.6% of students and 4% of students enrolled in gifted programs. On the other hand, Asians make up 8% of total student enrollment and 17% of gifted enrollment; whites make up 29% of total enrollment and 43% of gifted enrollment.

The reasons for the imbalance are varied. Schools attended by lower income and minority students tend to have fewer gifted programs and less qualified teachers. In addition, better educated and more affluent parents are more likely to demand an advanced curriculum or hire outside psychologists to test their children.

Some administrators and teachers have other reasons not to identify students as gifted: They philosophically don't believe that students should be classified that way or they don't want the responsibility of providing special services for them.

California is asking districts to develop strategies to address the under-represented student populations, such as making greater use of group-administered tests that measure abstract thinking and reasoning ability in the second and third grades, said state Department of Education gifted program consultant Sandra Frank.

But even in districts with GATE programs, funding is usually insufficient to cover a full range of services for all the students who need them, advocates say. Currently, only 800 of the state's 1,353 school districts apply for GATE funding.

Broader public support for enhanced services is hindered by the perception that smart kids don't need help, said Elizabeth Jones Stork, president of the Institute for Educational Advancement, a South Pasadena nonprofit that supports gifted programs.

Pipeline To Success, a program founded by Stork's group in 1999, is seeking to change that perception. Working with the Pasadena Unified School District, the program provides gifted students such as Dalton with after-school activities, college tours and referrals for financial aid. More than 200 students have graduated from the program, with 94% of them going to four-year colleges.

In most respects, Dalton is a typical teenager. A student at Blair International Baccalaureate School, he lives in Altadena with his grandmother and likes science fiction, sports, hiking and his computer. Through the Pipeline program, Dalton has gone on college tours, attended leadership camps and taken a journalism course.

But at 15, he wonders where he will be five or 10 years from now. He worries about the world's problems and says he wants to do something significant with his life or at least make people happy. Staying motivated, though, is a constant struggle: “It's a problem I still have if I don't see the usefulness of something,” he said.

Dalton's strong sense of justice and idealism are common hallmarks of gifted children, said California Assn. for the Gifted President Marilyn Lane. Many can have sharp mood swings. Some have dyslexia, attention deficit disorder or other disabilities.

They are also apt to push the limits at home and at school, challenging parents and teachers and generally opposing structure and authority.

Raising a gifted child can be a chore, said Karen Bagnard, Dalton's grandmother and legal guardian since he was 5. A psychological evaluation early on pegged Dalton as exceptionally bright, she said. In elementary school he was moved ahead a year. But Bagnar

Stanford students try writing a graphic novel

Higher Education

digitalLEARNING Network

May 15, 2008

Tom Kealey has taught a lot of writing classes at Stanford University, but never one that asked students to consider the dramatic pause provided by the “page flip.” Or how wide to draw “the gutter.”

Kealey and co-instructor Adam Johnson taught a winter course titled The Graphic Novel, and assigned their students to write, edit and illustrate a collaborative final project. The result is a 224-page graphic novel titled “Shake Girl,” based on the true story of a Cambodian karaoke performer named Tat Marina who was the target of an “acid attack” after she had an affair with a married man.

“In a normal writing class, you'd write a poem or finish a chapter and you'd own it,” Kealey said. “In this class, we had to collaborate every step of the way, every idea, and make compromises. It was the most difficult and rewarding class I ever taught.”

While the study of comics and graphic novels has steadily become an acceptable part of college curricula – “Maus” creator Art Spiegelman taught a course at Columbia University last year – the project-based graphic novel class offered at Stanford appears to be the first of its kind.

Karen Green, a librarian at Columbia who has been acquiring graphic novels for three years, said Yale and Cornell have growing graphic novel collections, and Michigan State, Ohio State and Duke all have archived comic strips and books that span decades.

Yet for the graphic novel, the leap from archived material to in-class study and production at a major university marks an upgrade in status.

“It's a different way to tell a story that has specific rules,” Green said. “And to have somebody teaching those rules, that's impressive.”

Kealey and Johnson accepted 40 applications from undergrads and graduates in the English and art departments, and accepted 14.

Kealey said most of the students were already familiar with the works of Spiegelman and Marjane Satrapi's “Persepolis,” set in post-revolution Iran, and were aiming to tell a complex, serious narrative.

Eric Pape, a journalist studying at Stanford on a Knight Fellowship, offered the class his nonfiction piece published in 2006 by Open City magazine about the phenomenon of acid attacks against women in Cambodia.

“It was clear from the outset while we were discussing ideas that the class wanted to do some sort of good with this project,” Pape said, “not make it just a vanity project.”

Pape said even though the basis of “Shake Girl” is rooted in actual events, the graphic novel genre gave the story more dramatic energy, while maintaining the theme of love gone horribly wrong. He said he wanted to see out the adaptation in part to attract readers who prefer visual to text-only stories.

“Young people read graphic novels,” Pape said. “The newspaper industry is struggling, and it's looking for new models to tell stories. Journalistically speaking, this is a domain worth exploring.”

One reason graphic novels are being read in university classrooms is that the term sounds more academic than comic books, said Ivan Brunetti, a lecturer at Columbia College in Chicago and the University of Chicago, who has taught the course Writing the Graphic Novel on both campuses for the past three years.

Brunetti says the phrase “comic book” still rings childish to administrators; “graphic novel” is more acceptable when pitching a class.

“Graphic novels are really comic books wrapped in book covers with spines,” Brunetti said. “But for some reason, 'graphic novel' sounds more lofty and people have bought into it. The term has helped to create a distinction in people's minds that there's an important art movement occurring that is more concerned about long and serious work; and that's partially true.”

The US retail market for graphic novels has grown precipitously over the past decade, reaching $375 million in 2007, up 12 percent from 2006, according to a report last month from ICv2, a trade company that tracks pop culture industry trends. Much of the growth is due to the mainstreaming of the genre by specialty publishing houses, such as Drawn and Quarterly in Montreal and Fantagraphics Books in Seattle, and more recently to traditional houses like Pantheon, which has a graphic novel imprint that publishes Spiegelman, Satrapi and Daniel Clowes, among others.

Thomas LeBien, publisher of Hill and Wang, an imprint of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, who oversees the company's 2-year-old graphic novels division, attributes rising sales to the medium's growing storytelling capabilities. He refers to Hill and Wang's “The 9/11 Report: a Graphic Adaptation” by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon, a controversial work he said forced mainstream book reviewers to ditch the “graphic novel” term for “graphic nonfiction” and “sequential art narration.”

“There's an audience out there that doesn't view this as 'comic books,' but as sophisticated storytelling,” said LeBien. “The reason professors and universities are so interested in teaching it is the form is so versatile. It does very particular things just like movies do, and just like books of prose do.”

At Stanford, Kealey and Johnson knew asking 14 students to collaborate to produce one book was an ambitious task. And their class had six weeks to do it.

“Co-writing with one person is difficult,” student Pape said. “Co-writing with 14 was extremely difficult.”

After the writing, students cut the story into five acts, and the art students created storyboards from a rough draft. The illustrators mulled over the “page flips” – the kapow-y action sequences often found on the right-hand panels. When the flips are done to maximum effect, the time it takes the reader to turn the page can serve as a dramatic pause.

Government moves apex court against anti-quota order

Policy Matters

digitalLEARNING Network

May 15, 2008

The government on Thursday moved the Supreme Court against a Calcutta High Court order that suspended the quota for other backward classes (OBC) students at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIM-C).

Appearing for the government, Solicitor General G E Vahanvati apprised the bench of Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan of the situation following the Calcutta High Court stay on Wednesday on the OBC quota, and pleaded for an early hearing of the government's petition against it.

The bench, which also included Justice R V Raveendran and Justice M K Sharma, allowed the law officer's plea and said it would hear the matter on Friday.

On a petition by a general category IIM-C aspirant, Sayan Guha, Justice Maharaj Sinha of the Calcutta High Court on Wednesday suspended the admission and interview schedule for the institute, slated for Friday.

Guha in his petition contended that the proposed admission of backward category students in IIM-C without weeding out the 'creamy layer' or the elite among them was in violation of the apex court's April 10 ruling. The apex court had allowed reservations in admissions only for non-elite sections of the OBC students.

On this plea, the high court suspended till June 9 the official order of the human resource development ministry that gave a go-ahead to all centrally funded institutes of higher education, including the Indian Institute of Managements (IIMs) and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), for reserving 27 percent seats for OBC candidates.

India: Madurai University plans to digitise library

News

digitalLEARNING Network

May 15, 2008

Soon Madurai Kamaraj University library will digitise its library. Vice-chancellor of the university, R Karpaga Kumaravel has taken several initiatives as part of implementing e-Governance and e-Content in administration and academic affairs at the university and make the institution an international centre of learning.

One of the initiative is to digitise library books, so that students can refer books through Internet anytime anywhere simultaneously. The digitalisation of the library would be done through the Consortium of Educational Communication(CEC), an inter-university centre of UGC on electronic media. The project which is unique in the country as no other Indian university has yet thought of it, will be implemented in phases.

Gauhati University VC resigns over government apathy

News

digitalLEARNING Network

May 15, 2008

Gauhati University Vice Chancellor Amarjyoti Choudhury has resigned alleging indifference on the part of the Assam government in running the premier institution – a move that has shocked intellectuals and students here.

“The government's attitude towards the functioning of the university forced Professor Choudhury to relinquish office. We are deeply hurt although we are with him as he did not succumb to the government's nasty politics,” said N R Das, president of the Gauhati Unviersity Teachers' Association.

Choudhury tendered his resignation on Saturday saying the government paid no heed to various demands for the smooth functioning of the university.

“There are several burning issues, including early release of 10 percent arrear dues to teachers and employees, enhancement of retirement age of teachers and creation of a corpus for pensioners, which need to be addressed immediately.

“But the government has paid no heed to solve these issues forcing teachers to take the path of agitation,” Choudhury said in a statement citing reasons for his resignation.

He said the government's decision to raise the tuition fees of students to run the university was not acceptable to him.

“A large number of students are from lower middle class families and the decision by the government asking the university to raise the tuition fees to meet the salaries of the employees was not acceptable. I don't want the university to suffer for me,” Choudhury said.

Students and intellectuals have lashed out at Assam Education Minister Ripun Bora for forcing Choudhury to resign.

“On various platforms the education minister criticised the vice chancellor although Prof Choudhury virtually revived the university from ruins when he took over in 2006,” said D. Nath, a leader of the All Assam Students' Union (AASU).

“Such issues if not resolved would vitiate the academic environment. It is unfortunate the government paid no heed to the VC's suggestions,” said D. Dutta, a retired college teacher.

Choudhury said he would prefer to remain a teacher and would like to continue his role as a faculty member in the Tezpur University in northern Assam.

There has been no immediate reaction from the Assam government so far.

75 million children out of school, according to new UNESCO data

K-12

digitalLEARNING Network

May 15, 2008

The number of primary-school-age children not in school fell by 2 million worldwide between 2005 and 2006, according to new estimates published by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).

The latest education statistics show that 75 million children were out of school in 2006, down from 103 million in 1999. Girls account for more than one half of the out-of-school population.

The 72 million figure reported for 2005 and published in the EFA Global Monitoring Report has been revised upwards to 77 million, based on new population estimates released by the United Nations Population Division (UNPD) in 2007. Both sets of figures confirm a 25% decrease since 1999 in the number of out-of-school children.

State funding helps fuel preschool boom in US

News

digitalLEARNING Network

May 15, 2008

Lisa Downs Henry's father and stepmother opened Downs Preschool in 1984 as a private day care center in Watkinsville, Ga. Business was good, but it really took off in 1995 after the state approved state lottery receipts to pay for pre-kindergarten classes.

The family converted the day care center into a preschool, which has since become a kind of institution in Oconee County, an hour's drive east of Atlanta. Of 12 preschool classes countywide, Downs boasts seven.

Each fall, Henry, the school's director, welcomes a new class of 140 children, all 4-year-olds, all attending tuition-free.

“Since it's state-funded, you just don't have to hound parents about money,” she says.

If you're a 4-year-old in America, it's a safe bet you're in school. The past 20 years have seen a quiet but steady rise in the number of children in preschool. The most recent federal statistics show that more than 1 million children were enrolled in public programs in 2005, up 63% from 1995. The rise far outpaces that of public school enrollment, up 10%.

“It's what we do with children now,” says Joan Lord of the Southern Regional Education Board.

What's behind the increase? A bigger share of working mothers and a shift in thinking: States increasingly finance preschool programs, citing research that says kids are ready for school at an earlier age.

Proponents of publicly financed pre-K say the push will pay off in better achievement, higher graduation rates and lower chances that a child will need expensive special-ed services. But they also say the quality of programs is uneven.

Research suggests a lot of private programs are “pretty mediocre,” says Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. The institute says 75% of 4-year-olds now attend some sort of preschool.

A study released today by the RAND Corp. finds a growing body of research that shows funding pre-K pays off in the long run, saving money by reducing social services later in life and by increasing tax revenue from higher earnings when students grow up.

“There's growing evidence that supports the idea that prevention has an advantage over treatment,” says Rebecca Kilburn, a RAND economist who led the research team.

But the RAND report also notes that not all pre-K programs produce long-term benefits big enough to offset their costs to states, which the Rutgers institute puts at more than $3.7 billion, or $3,642 per child.

It's still an open question whether the pre-K return will ultimately be worth the investment, she says. “The research we're doing says we're making a difference in the shorter term, and yet we need to know whether those results are going to hold.”

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