The ideas themselves showcased the huge range of possibilities for what techies call “disruptive” innovations in education. Taking top honors just earlier this evening from among about eight teams was a product called CourseCheck. It’s a system that moves information and assignments from college syllabi into online calendars, helping students stay on top of their work.

GrowingAssessment, a project I tagged along with for a few hours on Saturday, was focused more on the needs of under-performing schools. The prototype is an open-source assessment bank for teachers, with items written by teachers, aimed at reducing the pain and redundancy of researching and writing rigorous assessment questions.

Another project, CodeNow, is a platform for helping underserved students learn “foundational skills in computer science and programming to narrow the digital divide.” Browse and Learn is a prototype browser plugin that helps you learn another language as you read the Internet by substituting key vocabulary words with their foreign language equivalents, allowing you to see them in context.

The event is a harbinger of the kind of collaboration between educators, businesspeople, developers, and investors that is absolutely critical to closing the achievement gap. There is a significant lack of innovation in public education, and CMs must take their teaching knowledge and leverage it to build the tools and companies we need.

While I did not join a team at the event, I made several excellent connections and new friends. I explained Exit Tickets to an executive from Wireless Generation, a leader in the new school of education software companies. I met TFA alums running their own education consulting groups, who connected me in turn to TFA alums running their own education technology groups. I swapped classroom disaster stories with former Baltimore Public Schools teachers and drank coffee with Harvard Business School grads.

Five current DC Region CMs or recent alums followed the startup beacon to Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. Three of those alums devoted the whole weekend to projects ranging from a tool that re-imagined globes for learning about world cultures to clean, accessible visualizations of student data for parents.

I didn’t join a team on account of planning and grading to handle this weekend, so I’d best head to bed to preserve what little of that reserve energy remains. But let this serve as background for future arguments on why this event represents the dangers of an unchecked digital divide, and why we need more TFA folks working on startups during the week, rather than just the occasional weekend.

Research indicates that, at every age level, people take their writing more seriously when it will be evaluated by peers than when it is to be judged by teachers. Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom assignments by the same writers. Longitudinal studies of student writers conducted by Stanford University’s Andrea Lunsford, a professor of English, assessed student writing at Stanford year after year. Lunsford surprised everyone with her findings that students were becoming more literate, rhetorically dexterous, and fluent—not less, as many feared. The Internet, she discovered, had allowed them to develop their writing.

—”Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age“

This makes so much sense, it kind of makes my brain ache. It’s why I think some of the best writing on the Internet is on The Awl (hipsters trying to make hipsters laugh), and why some of my favorite personal compositions are actually emails sent to friends. So how can I use this fact to help 7th graders edit one another’s work and write to persuade each other?

This video is a very smart exchange on the shape of federal education policy surrounding reauthorization (or the lack there of) for No Child Left Behind. Makes it seem like this is something that could get very heated in the upcoming presidential.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Also, Dana Goldstein (the journalist and former CAPer Klein interviews here) is right up there with Paul Tough in terms of must-read education reporters. In a recent Slate article, she explains the right-wing shift in education policy that Michele Bachmann has been campaigning on since the beginning of her political career. As in, those in Bachmann’s camp push things like no sex-ed, doing away with standards, and teaching that slavery wasn’t that bad. Who’s excited for 2012?

So one of the pieces of TFA pre-school work that I find really exciting is the “vision” we’re expected to lay out for the year. This is your classroom manifesto, your big call-to-arms for what you want your students to achieve, accomplish, think, or feel about learning. This is your inaugural address, except the only people who will likely ever see it are you and your Manager of Teacher Leadership Development. I am probably a little behind in that I’m only just creating this now, but I’m off to a training tomorrow and wanted to be able to share this with folks, so here’s my first draft. Over the top, starry-eyed, and wordy, but that’s par for the course:

We will understand language as a toolkit that provides pathways to freedom and power. “Those who have the command of language have more might than those with the command of armies,” writes Ernest Morrell, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. We will also understand that being a powerful communicator means never being satisfied with your current skills. It means always pushing forward.

We will examine literacy as freedom and as power. Throughout history, the easiest way to physically or psychologically enslave groups of people against their will has been to prevent them from becoming literate. We are going to become great readers to ensure that we always control our own destiny and have the right to work hard and become powerful people in our society.

We will understand that growing as communicators will help us become better versions of ourselves and allow us to shape a better version of the world around us. Strong communication skills are fundamental to success in business, law, science, engineering, health care, policy, or myriad other disciplines where our ideas matter.

We will accept that language is complex, slippery, and at times difficult, and that being an effective communicator requires taking risks, asking questions, and thinking critically. It also requires commitment and determination.

By working hard, we will build our communications kit with the tools to persuade others, the tools to express ourselves, and the tools educate ourselves throughout life.

To do this, we will read widely in a variety of genres. We will practice writing and editing in a variety of genres. We will study ideas in a variety of media and create media that expresses our ideas. We will investigate literacy within the context of the Internet and new media, and we will practice using our tools in digital contexts. Through these channels, we will project our command of language and ensure that we always have the right tools for the job.

Image: flickr.com/jrhode

I met with my principals today and got spectacular news. They’re going to let me use some of the Gholson cache of iPads for implementing the Read Write Rock project for daily instruction. I owe a lot of folks thanks for their confidence and encouragement, which kept me asking after the resources.

But the excitement doesn’t stop there. If the project succeeds, I’ll be expected to share the methods with other teachers across subjects so we can grow the idea. Does it get any better?

Now, back to customizing the Drupal install that will underlie the whole notion…

Image: flickr.com/cayoup | Cross-posted @ ReadWriteRock.org

But according to one study, when it comes to Donors, they Choose middle school less often. As in, more than one third less often than high school. According to Tiffany Bergin, who tied for top honors in the “Data Analysis” category,

Projects for students in Grades 6-8 were 36 percent less likely to receive full funding than those for students in Grades 9-12 (Data -> Knowledge -> Insight)

Projects for grades 3-5 were 32% less likely to see full funding compared to 9-12; pre-k through 2 were 27% less likely. These are not insignificant gaps, and what surprised me the most is that for the grades where catching up is most critical—middle school—the additional dollars for additional resources just weren’t what the donors community supported.

Now there could be any number of reasons for this—fewer projects, projects of differing quality, more urban high school teachers asking for money, etc., etc. This doesn’t tell us anything about causes. But in terms of need for resources to make up lost ground and accelerate students on to high school and beyond, I want to figure out how to get more great middle school projects funded.

(More background on the Hacking Education data crunching competition, which gave analysis and hackers access to 10 years of DonorsChoose.org project funding data, is available here. )

Kids at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2009 LBL Daughters & Sons to Work Day (flickr/berkeleylab)

Perhaps I’ll follow through in the future on collaborating with some science educators to design a hybrid course on the history of science for middle or high schoolers. But that’s a post for another time.

This creative project might seem a little self-serving, but it allows me to revisit some work that I’m proud of, and which made me a better writer and editor, which in turn made me a better and more committed English teacher. Moreover, it allows me to explore and reinforce connections between what I used to spend my time on, what I’ve been reading, and what I do now. And in the recent words of Steven Johnson, speaking about where good ideas come from, “Chance favors the connected mind” (emphasis added).

Without further ado, then, here’s a list of some Science Progress Greatest Hits authored, in whole, or in part, by your humble editor, arranged in chronological order (cross-posted under Portfolio):

04-15-10 | The Weathermen Know Which Way the Wind Blows
A recent survey demonstrates that many forecasters embrace their role as informal science educators. Ed Maibach says it’s an opportunity to boost public understanding of global warming.

03-30-10 | Court Rules that DNA Is Information, Not Intellectual Property
A lawsuit argued that patents owned by Myriad Genetics on two genes connected to breast and ovarian cancer stunt genetic research and limit access to health care for women. The ruling said that genes can’t be patented.

03-23-10 | Energy for Regional Innovation
We can ensure that scientists, engineers, and taxpayers alike get the most out of federal support for basic research and development by taking what researchers know about moving ideas from the lab to the market and linking universities, business, and the government in an effort to grow regional economies.

03-05-10 | How Science Sparked Democracy
There are intimate connections between the scientific advances that expanded the frontiers of human knowledge and the democratic experiments that expanded the frontiers of human liberty.

02-02-10 | A First-Place Budget for Science
The budget request for fiscal year 2011 that the Obama administration released on Monday includes foundational investments that will help the United States remain the leader among innovative nations.

12-04-09 | Reason is a Casualty in the Ongoing War on Climate Science
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal editorial section, Daniel Henninger took exaggeration of the scandal over emails stolen from scientists at the University of East Anglia to new heights, arguing that the incident undermines the entire centuries-old scientific enterprise. But the column ignores both the current observable impact of climate change and scientific history, and is merely the latest volley in the ongoing conservative war on science.

11-10-09 | Time for Family, Time for Science
A significant proportion of American women leave scientific careers between earning their Ph.D. and winning tenure-track positions. Many of these “leaks” in the pipeline are the result of decisions to start families. Changes to federal and university policy can stem the losses, say the authors of a new report.

10-21-09 | Tools for Truth Telling
Given the Obama administration’s positive approach to science and to human rights, a new CAP report argues that now is the time to craft policies that support collaborations between researchers and advocates that stop atrocities.

09-24-09 | The Coolest Platform Raises the Hardest Questions
So who is speaking here, an ethicist, a scientist, or a policymaker? Real talk on the ethics of synthetic biology.

06-23-09 | NIH Funding is Good for Your Health, and It’s Good for the Economy
Federal funding for biomedical research saves lives. Not only that, but investment in research through the National Institutes of Health stimulates the economy by helping people stay healthy and productive. So says a new report published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (open access).

06-23-09 | Personal Profiling
Will access to our own genetic information make us healthier? That’s the idea, but there’s a lot to learn as we share and interpret it. Meanwhile, questions remain about proper oversight of an industry that blurs the line between consumer and research participant.

06-16-09 | The Worn Grooves of Disciplinary Research
Is pathbreaking science the product of interdisciplinary groups or the interdisciplinary thinking of foresighted individuals? In a commentary in PLoS Computational Biology, Sean Eddy, a Howard Hughes investigator, argues that “roadmap” thinking from the National Institutes of Health for building teams of specialists to tackle complex problems in modern research is flawed, because it encourages work in the worn grooves of existing, and perhaps outmoded, disciplines.

03-27-09 | Bush’s Council on Bioethics Makes Toothless Attack on New Stem Cell Policy<
Yesterday, the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute, released a statement authored by members of the President’s Council on Bioethics critiquing the Obama administration’s stem cell policy. What the authors failed to explain in either the statement or the accompanying press release is that the current members of the President’s Council on Bioethics were appointed by George W. Bush, and will serve until the charter for the council expires in September. The critique, in effect, is an echo from the past.

Coda

The eponymous title of this post is drawn from the title of one of my favorite SP articles (“The Areas of Our Expertise”)—favorite because it’s a great bioethics/policy/history of science think-piece, and because I took a speech written for a talk at the Library of Alexandria and edited it into a real article. The author, Eric Meslin, is also a great guy (and incidentally the former Executive Director of President Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Council). Plus how often do you get to write about ideas with names like “Non-Overlapping Magisteria”?

Essentially, ShowMe records screencasts of you drawing on an iPad whiteboard–along with your synchronized narrative. You write or draw and you talk, and it records. Then it allows you to upload the screencasts to a social networking platform. Sort of a YouTube for mini smartboard lessons.

Here’s one I put together on “text features”–titles, headings, images, etc.–that help you understand what you’re reading. This also gets at an element of teaching this standard that I think is really important: text features don’t just help you understand what you’re reading–they’re an entry point to understanding the power of abstracting information (direct link):

Click here if the embed isn’t working: http://www.showmeapp.com/sh/?i=1986

A social studies teacher taught me that one.

(Obviously copyright infringement…leave a comment record company, if you’d like a take down…)