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ISTE Entry 2: The Oyster Project

This is the second blog entry from ISTE, about a poster project to study the water conditions in the Arthur Kill in New Jersey. Theproject is being conducted by the John E. Dwyer Technology Academy of Elizabeth, NJ. I talked with Javier Valencia and Jeff Roszkowski who are directing the program. It's a great story, but with one nagging detail, something that actually makes my blood curdle. Let's get that out of the way first.

The reason this is called the Oyster project is that the school's intention is to place Oysters in the estuary, just off Staten Island, to see how they cleaned up the water supply. But, the oyster industry objected, afraid that the high school might sell the oysters and compete with them. They lobbied the state government. We can all predict the result: the high school was prohibited from using planting the oysters. The good news, even about this, is that the school is working on setting up partnerships with schools in Maryland along the Chesapeak bay, where they can follow through on this part of the project.

 In this project, students from teams of 7 students measure 8 different characteristics of the water in three different locations over time. Students needed to understand the significance of oxygen and nitrogen levels, temperature, and turbidity, know why they were being measured and how, and be aware of the environmental implications of variations in the different characteristics. The groups had to learn team dynamics, like how to delegate, how to communicate, how to make decisions, how to follow up, and how to work out disagreements.

This was a joint project of the math, science, and English classes. Students learned the math to analyze the variations over time, and learned how to write up reports and make presentation of their findings. The English teacher commented that the students are writing much better, because they are now writing because they want to, about a topic that they are excited about.

Students uploaded their data to Future City, so that classrooms all over the world can analyze the data, and compare it their own water quality measurements.

In one example, students noticed the turbidity was greater in certain areas than others. They learned to posit theories about why, which factors influenced the turbidity (boating, runoff, rivers). They found a correlation between proximity to drainage pipes and proximity to industrial shipping to turbidity. The interesting factor is that the Arthur Kill Baykeeper had no data, and the information that has been and continues to be gathered by the high schoolers is helping them formulate action plans to clean up the estuary.

This project was partially funded through a grant from Hewlett Packard, which has been showing an enlightened approach to helping education.

Let's hope that this model for integrating 21^st century skills with math, science, and English Language Arts becomes the norm for schools.

First ISTE Posting: 10 Motivational Strategies for Building Collegial Learning Communities

What is your school/organization missing?

I am here at ISTE in Denver and attended a pre-conference session, focusing on building teams. If you want to establish a highly functioning collegial organization, you need to implement 10 tactics, according to Rosie and Robert Vojte, authors of Motivate! Inspire! Lead! from Corwin press.

Are you missing quality of life? If you are not providing the necessities for people to be able to live (salary, benefits, etc.) your organization will have low morale.

Are you missing a mission? If you do not have a compelling sense of purpose, your organization will be marked by indifference.

Are you missing adequate communications? If you to not share common vocabulary, build rapport, and exchange meaning, you will foster distrust.

Are you missing accountability? If people do not feel ownership for their results and achieving their goals, you'll be hearing a lot of blame.

Are you missing empowerment? If people do not have the responsibility and authority to hit their goals, they will be constrained.

Are you missing autonomy? If people don't have freedom within will defined boundaries, you will either have dependence or chaos.

Are you missing competencies or capacity? If people don't have the skills to do what they need to, and the group doesn't have the collective skills, you will feel that the individuals and/or organization is inept.

Are you missing relationships? If there aren't connections between people, individuals will feel isolate, lonely, and disconnected.

Are you missing interdependence? If everyone's results and work aren't mutually to each other's, then you will not get cooperation and mutual support.

Are you missing results? If you haven't defined success and aren't measuring progress, you will find ambivalence and conflicting methodologies.

The Higher Education Market

I gave a talk on the Higher Education market at the SIIA Ed Tech Business Forum in San Francisco a few weeks ago. Here is a summary of the talk.

College Enrollment Trend

As you can see, enrollments are expected to be flat for the next eight years.

While you could say that this does not bode well for anyone looking to sell into higher education, that's actually far from the truth. Below, we'll go through some of the market niches that are, in fact, growing.

Growth in Online Courses

Over 4.6 million students were taking at least one online course during the Fall 2008 term. This is a 17 percent increase over the number reported from the previous year, and far exceeds the 1.2 percent growth of the overall higher education student population.

More than one in four higher education students now take at least one course online.

Growth in For-Profit Enrollments

The for-profit market is growing at 12.5% a year. Currently, they are under a 10% market share, but they were under a 3% market share at the beginning of the millennium.

The for-profits have capitalized on three trends: the ability to provide federally backed student loans, their ability to adapt to job-related education, and the adoption of online courses.

Growth in Minorities

While there has been an increase in White students, there have been huge increases in minority students. The compound annual enrollment growth rates of different races are shown below:

White	0.7%
Black	4.7%
Hispanic	9.1%
Asian	8.8%

The increasing numbers of minority students provides opportunities to target services specifically for their needs. Below shows the total enrollments for the different groups.

 

Technology budgets

While many think in terms of publishing content for students (which, in higher education, the students are the ones who actually purchase), there are opportunities selling directly to schools, both in academic and administrative products and services. Below is the breakdown of academic spending in 2009.

Changes in the way content is sold

Historically, textbooks have been sold to students through the campus bookstore, on recommendations or requirements of the professor. the student would purchase the book from the book store, or perhaps buy a used book, as below.

With this increasing use of the Internet, online materials, new devices, and e-books, the distribution channels have become more confused:

Education publishers still go to professors, but they can select from an ever-increasing universe of free materials, and students can choose from a plethora of sources. Look for continued channel confusion, disaggregation, and disintermediation until the channel finally gets sorted out, sometime in the next ten years.

Textbook market concentration

Of a total market of about $4 billion, the top three education publishers, Pearson, Cengage, and McGraw-Hill, control about 75% of the market.

Their national sales forces give them the ability to reach US college or university faculty in any state and of any size institution. On the other hand, the additional pressure of institutions to reduce the costs of textbooks, the availability of free materials, and the flexibility of smaller competitors to create targeted content, does not guarantee that this situation will continue indefinitely.

Where are the opportunities

Following, from our vantage point, is a summary of five big opportunities:

1. Remediation: over 85% of community college students cannot do college level math, and over half cannot do college level reading and writing. In total, over half of all entering higher education students need remediation.
2. Dropout prevention: since the 1950's, about half of all college entrants do not graduate; this is a prime goal of the Obama administration.
3. Online: the use of online courses and online materials are far outstripping the growth in enrollments
4. For-profits: the for-profit institutions have been able to move quickly to meet market needs, and with cutbacks in state funding, their growth may continue.
5. Community Colleges: this is the cheapest way to get a degree and to spend the first two years of college. With a dismal job market, they are more in demand than ever. But, with state spending cuts, they are in distress. They have a huge need to meet the demands of more students at a lower cost.

A lot of this material came from the 140+ page report we wrote for the SIIA on the Postsecondary marketplace, available here: http://www.siia.net/estore/10Expand.asp?ProductCode=EPMR-09