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I’m generally against testing as a means of tracking progress. This is because they fundamentally represent what school is today. Tests have reshaped formal education into an industrial-like institution and created competition like never before (Wow, it’s like mini America for children!).

First of all, if tests are an effective way of tracking progress, I would ask then why they aren’t used in early learning; throughout the primary grades?

Next. Yes, tests are an effective way of tracking data. Unfortunately, very little data in school is designed to be tested. Math is one of the few subjects that fit the test model well. However, even in that case, it truly depends on the way the tests were created.

Tests cannot be shaped around cramming and memory leaking. This alone completely explains why tests should not be used. They track the wrong data. Tests are evaluating your memory skills more often than not. And while we’d like to think that everybody can remember everything they’ve ever been told, we know that that is not the case. People remember what is important to them; things they usually repeat day after day. Like, driving a car. If you stop driving a car for 10 years, it will surely be hard to hop in the seat and just go.

That leads to a larger issue of what exactly is being taught in schools, which obviously affect what is put into the tests. There needs to be far more emphasis on skills development rather than just mindless knowledge. I’m not saying some history should not be taught. I am saying however that there is limited time to people’s lives and not everyone is designed to be a human Wikipedia. That’s what Wikipedia and Google are for; to learn something when don’t know about, when such a time arises.

But I digress. To give an example of where a test is effective: IQ tests. Theses are real brain busters, designed to engage visual observation, detection of patterns, and problem solving. This is not testing memory or knowledge; it is testing a skill.

Politicians like to claim it is essential to employ standardized testing to ensure an effective means of tracking progress is in place. Beyond what I’ve just debunked about the nature of the data they are testing, there is another fundamental problem with their argument. Simply, they are claiming that by judging which students and which schools are getting the worse marks, they can decide where more funding should be allocated. The conflict here though, and it may be different depending on where you are from, is this rationalization of testing for funding allocation does not work if the system has true student equity. By that I mean that every student is given a certain piece of the funding pie each year. I suppose it may change depending on grade or disabilities, etc., but it should be relatively the same for all. A system such as this does not allow for extra handouts to one school versus another. And generally, if a student is disabled, the school and teachers know about it, and it isn’t really an issue.

So, truly, how does testing, and standardized testing, help out your average kid in school. The truth is that it doesn’t.

When administration sees low marks in specific areas, they demand that the teacher’s spend more time to hammer a subject in to students. On a rare occasion, something like a “writing initiative” may be launched, which, again, never helps out the average student. So, the excuse that more funding goes to worse school does not hold up, and in fact, many would argue, becomes a detriment to the health of the school’s ecosystem.

Alright. So, let’s propose an elmination of tests. Let’s say every student gets equitable funding every year. How does one effectively measure and track student’s progress?

While this would require a good teacher to student ratio, nothing higher thatn 25:1, project-based learning is the way to go. It’s a useful means of developing well rounded skills about all kinds of subjects. There, along with well defined criteria and flexible curriculum, the teacher, peers, and the world aid in evaluating a student’s work. Imagine a three pronged system, where the teacher’s influence is only one among many, and the project is designed for the audience of the internet. The wisdom of crowds is employed here and would surely provide a more equal evaluation for all students.

Education is a long term commitment and policies, unlike true initiatives, take a while to see real benefits. Many times, it takes almost a generation to see are real societal change come about through schools. So, how do politicians track their progress with schools?  Easy. With important, easily trackable data, like the images below that show the statistics on the highest level of education of students each year.  Or, there could be graphs based on the number of apprenticeships, or the student to teacher ratio. This is real, profound information politicians could work off of. Showing that their education policies are making real change to their communities and developping a better world.

[via Nine Shift]

A day after a historical interview with both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, seemingly two peas in an iPod, a new USA/Russia arms race begins. Why does Condi feel the need to provoke Putin? Why can’t we just have world peace for once?! Steve and Bill can learn to move forward into the future, side-by-side, yet still in competition; why can’t others?

I attended an SFU City Lecture last night by Gordon Price. He talked about some of the history of Downtown Vancouver’s development, and how that might apply to the development of the “second great city” - Surrey. It was a small, but important crowd at the lecture, including some vocal city staff, and a few students/citizens. What seemed to echo throughout the discussions after the lecture was a sense of disconnect and lack of organization. Surrey itself, as represented through the staff last night and it’s short history, is very confused about it’s identity. It’s going through adolescence right now and needs to find itself.

It really got me thinking, what is Surrey all about? It’s an odd question to ask oneself. I mean, Vancouver barely pulls off it’s own identity. New York, San Francisco, Paris, Hong Kong, etc. They all have distinctions that set them apart. So, how Canadian of us, to question our differentiation and our place in the world. Once Surrey figures out what it is and what it wants to be, people will have a plan to rally under.

I suppose one reason this has yet to happen is because Surrey is a relatively young city and has yet to reach it’s boundaries (land wise). Current NCPs (neighbourhood concept plans) are filling up the remaining land right now, with the target date being just past 2010 when expansion and development will hit the wall of the ALR. Then, and this is the critical moment, very important decisions will have to be made about the redevelopment of the town centres and older areas of the city, otherwise the ALR will be chipped away at (which nobody wants). If there is not a plan in place, Surrey will continue to run around accepting any and all development, and continue to foster a disaparte and identity-less city.

The other issue concerning this is transportation. As Price pointed out last night, Vancouver has a grid system of roads. Every single roadway goes up, down and across that city. This allows for easy diversion of traffic to other arterials and for transit to run up and down nearly any road. In Surrey however, something different has happened, and this is why people call the city poorly transit planned. While there is something of a grid, it’s squares/rectangles are far more spaced out. The problem is that inside these polygons, the roads are curved and lack unison. There’s tons of cul-de-sacs in Surrey.

This is an issue, because, as is pointed out below from Calgary’s Transit Friendly Design Guide, this causes people to have longer trips to reach something; in other words, there’s no shortcuts. While there are a lot of catwalks around Surrey, those aren’t very safe at night, although they do rectify the poor initial planning somewhat.

This poorly planned development has left Surrey with a large problem. While we may have nearly as many people as Vancouver, and better density than Coquitlam, we are still left with absolutely terrible transit service. People generally use the excuse that Surrey deserves bad transit because of it’s planning decisions. However, something needs to be fixed here. It’s not up to council to halt projects and design around transit that isn’t there, and it’s not up to Translink to demand higher density before transit can be affordable. There needs to be a compromise and balancing act of getting them both done at the same time; something similar to the transit-oriented development planned for the dead Evergreen Line, a transit system designed to shape growth, rather than the SkyTrain’s mission, which was to build around under-utilized old rail land to avoid NIMBYs and simply feed all the buses to it.

There’s a lot that needs to happen in the next five years in Surrey, and the mayor needs to show leadeship to bring the issues to the forefront of all citizens. We need to determine what identity Surrey should have in 25 years; and this doesn’t mean some airy fairy, pie-in-the-sky plan. It means definitions and goals and targets and ways of tracking progress.  As soon as that is accomplished, we need Surrey citizens to band together and demand real transit south of the Fraser, just as the people of the Tri-Cities have all been working extremely hard to finally get a rapid transit system in their neck of the woods. With some real transit in place, and I’m talking light rail here, council needs to make real agreements with Translink and follow the 25 year vision of the City to shape growth and create some nice communities and transit oriented nodes.

That is the way forward. The question is, who is going to step up to the plate to lead us there?

They are actually pretty witty. Makes me want to join the Young Liberals of Canada.

So, PlayTable… err, Smart, is now official. Go check out the deets at Gizmodo. It seems like many corporations have been developing this “multi-touch” technology for some time now, and it’s a good thing Apple previewed their iPhone in January, otherwise Microsoft would’ve stolen their thunder. However, it’s almost six months since that announcement, and multi-touch doesn’t seem nearly as revolutionary as it used to. Especially when any truly innovative softwate has yet to be thought of - I mean, Paint, Maps, and an iPhoto ripoff?

What I am most intrigued about Smart is the rear-projection and sensors behind this version of multi-touch. It seems like a pretty complicated setup that wouldn’t work very well at home, or even in corporate applications.

As for Microsoft’s current partners with the 10,000$ PlayTable… I could see it being used a lot in casinos if proper apps were developped. Surface might also provide hotels or tourist centres with an enhanced version of those “local guide kiosks” they have setup nowadays, similar to the touch screen ticket booths at movie theatres. But, I just can’t see people sitting down in a hotel foyer, putting their drinks on a rear-projection screen, and fiddiling with simulated droplets of wine.

I don’t get why Microsoft’s is making such a big deal out of wireless transmissions or the ability to recognize an object when it is placed on the table. So far, Wireless USB and RFID adoption has been quite slow, not to mention Wi-Fi in hardward smaller than a laptop, and those are key to having any of thoes types of interactions.

It seems to me, with this whole new multi-touch computing race, that Apple has the right approach. Hey, at least they are putting into consumer’s hands this year, rather than Microsoft’s estimated date of 3-5 years! I think it’s smart of Apple to put the technology into a small application, like the iPhone, and begin to scale up to larger size screens as the economies of scale apply. Surely, having it in a phone, likely to sell millions, will make it much cheaper, much quicker, to put into things like laptops or desktops or even wallpaper sized screens. Microsoft’s approach of starting off large seems almost counter intuitive towards the economies of scale. I really think Apple is the winner with this announcement.

The Canadian journalist Linda McQuaig approaches this matter in a fresh way in her new book Holding the Bully’s Coat: Canada and the U.S. Empire, casting new light as she always does. She writes, “I am not anti-American. I like many aspects of American culture; I admire many of its political traditions, its literature, its energy and its creativity. But I am opposed — fiercely opposed, in fact — to American exceptionalism.”

She is referring to the increasingly shameless U.S. tendency to believe it is above the rule of law, that it is exempted from the rules other nations are expected to obey. It hasn’t ratified Kyoto, or the Convention on Discrimination Against Women or even the Convention on the Rights of the Child. John Bolton (remember that screaming mustachioed U.S. ambassador to the UN?) even claimed that the ultimate purpose of international law was to constrict the United States.

[via the CBC]

[via Treehugger]

I especially enjoyed his ending remark that you cannot force ideals or ways of life on others . A true libertarian Ron Paul is. I was disgusted at the look of the reporter when Ron Paul told him he was non-interventionist. Why do Americans think they have a duty to police the world?

[via While the Earth Burns]