Former US Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor realizes the effect digital learning has on today’s student. Coming from one of the most stodgy, stubborn vestiges, Justice O’Connor has assisted in the development of a educational video game that teaches the inner workings of the US Supreme Court.

The Our Courts project will have two parts, O’Connor said. The first is on online interactive civics program designed to be used by children from 7th to 9th grades either to supplement existing courses or as a distinct unit in the curriculum.

The program, developed with Georgetown University law school and Arizona State University, will be distributed free online.

Most Americans can’t name a justice, let alone all 9. A program like this would do a lot of good for all Americans as well as grade school children.

O’Connor said she had seen from her own grandchildren that technology was the best way to inspire children to learn and it was vital to speak to them in their own language.

It would seem obvious that the largest recipients of H-1B, or highly skilled technical visa holders, would be our nation’s technology companies. Microsoft’s Bill Gates has argued for years that were America to raise the visa cap (stubbornly stuck at 65,000 a year which is exhausted within hours), many of our workforce and global competition issues would be largely ameliorated.

Very true, however, it is surprising to read this from the American Spectator which documents the highest rate of H-1B imports is not our nation’s leading companies but the public schools.

This includes some of the nation’s biggest school districts, including Baltimore’s — the 38th largest user of the program, with 196 visas issued to teachers in that same period — and the New York City Department of Education, with 171 visas issued to its foreign-born teachers.

The reason, according to this article, is that many of our nation’s mathematics and science teachers are not proficient enough in each discipline to teach their classes. As such, these schools are importing teachers with proficiency.

And it doesn’t appear this problem is going to end soon.

BUT SCHOOL DISTRICTS can’t count on help from the nation’s schools of education. Just 13 percent of 77 education schools surveyed by the National Council on Teacher Quality had high quality math instruction programs.

Arthur Levine, the former president of Columbia University’s Teachers College, concluded in a 2006 study that 54 percent of the nation’s teachers are taught at colleges with low admission requirements.

Joseph Schumpeter was widely credited with developing the economic theory of “creative destruction” In this interesting piece, authors of “Disrupting Class” put forth the theory that while technology and computers in the classroom is a good thing and increasing rapidly, they alone are not a panacea.

Elements of all these play a part, but the underlying problem is deeper. It comes down to the fact that schools aren’t motivating the children, and they are unmotivating because they are far too monolithic and standardized. The system doesn’t account for the fact that every student learns in a different way.

In many ways, the opinion article asserts, we are using technology with the thought that computers will solve our problems which might actually confuse the real problem which is a disruptive approach that takes the positive elements of the current education landscape and taking a radical approach that improves education. The solution isn’t just computers per se but rather an approach that takes a disruptive and ultimately positive approach toward changing education.

Does texting actually improve English proficiency? Many are citing “textese,” the ultra-abbreviated, concise use of the English language by people who communicate through text messages.

The most hotly contested controversy sparked by the text-messaging phenomenon of the past eight years is over truant letters. “Textese,” a nascent dialect of English that subverts letters and numbers to produce ultra-concise words and sentiments, is horrifying language loyalists and pedagogues. And their fears are stoked by some staggering numbers: this year the world is on track to produce 2.3 trillion messages—a nearly 20 percent increase from 2007 and almost 150 percent from 2000. The accompanying revenue for telephone companies is growing nearly as fast—to an estimated $60 billion this year.

But what effect is this having on the English language? Are we diverging so sharply from accepted uses of the language that we no longer have a baring?

David Crystal’s “Txtng: the Gr8 Db8″ (Oxford) makes two general points: that the language of texting is hardly as deviant as people think, and that texting actually makes young people better communicators, not worse. Crystal spells out the first point by marshaling real linguistic evidence. He breaks down the distinctive elements of texting language—pictograms; initialisms, or acronyms; contractions, and others—and points out similar examples in linguistic practice from the ancient Egyptians to 20th-century broadcasting. Shakespeare freely used elisions, novel syntax and several thousand made-up words (his own name was signed in six different ways). Even some common conventions are relatively newfangled: rules for using the oft-abused apostrophe were set only in the middle of the 19th century. The point is that tailored text predates the text message, so we might as well accept that ours is a language of vandals. Who even knows what p.m. stands for? (”Post meridiem,” Latin for “after midday,” first recorded by a lazy delinquent in 1666.)

For those that have seen the movie, The Matrix, it is tantalizing to think of a learning environment where knowledge is downloaded within minutes. From Kung Fu to speaking Spanish, picking up information within minutes is a dream. Not anymore for folks at Brainware Safari.

BrainWare Safari is a digital extension of individual mental exercises that have traditionally been offered one-on-one in the classroom or from personal tutors and therapists. The program is designed to strengthen 41 different cognitive skills including memory, visual/audio processing and attention in a playful way. After the young players choose a character with names like Jackie Jaguar or Moby Monkey, they proceed through a series of jungle-themed mental exercises. The characters gradually mature as each of the 168 levels are mastered.

Certain cognitive functions are never fully developed for students that may never fully complete homework assignments or feel too shy to raise questions regarding a learning disability they might have. Software such as this allows educators to pinpoint gaps in a student’s ability to learn, retool their approach and adequately reach that child.

The Wall Street Journal has this story depicting new tactics to get young boys to read. For many adolescent males, the article notes, stories which focus on romanticism or more mundane story lines are not reaching many young boys and, as a result, they are turning off to reading altogether.

For some publishers and teachers, the solution might be Crime and Punishment rather than Romeo and Juliet.

Publishers are hawking more gory and gross books to appeal to an elusive market: boys — many of whom would rather go to the dentist than crack open “Little House on the Prairie.” Booksellers are also catering to teachers and parents desperate to make young males more literate.

The question for many is: does this perpetuate a violent disposition for young men? For others, that question is moot as they feel that the classics (Dostoevsky, Allan Poe, and others) are worth reading and, if they can get a young kid hooked on reading, what is there to lose? Interesting debate.

Scales Technology Academy, in Tempe, Arizona, has purchased enough laptops for the entire 600 student population creating the first (that can be determined from the statistics) one-to-one computing rtio for elementary students in Arizona. Students and parents had overwhelmed school officials with requests for greater technology-based learning in their curriculum, and the school delivered.

The academy is part of a growing trend within state districts to incorporate technology into classrooms. Almost every school district has some ban on tech toys that many say interfere with classroom discipline, such as cell phone and iPods. Recently many of these districts are using some of the banned technology as a way to educate students in the classroom.

Many felt the curriculum needed to be made more engaging and accessible for students so they could take learning into their own hands and study on a schedule that worked best for them. But not all parents are buying into the theory:

“It’s made things way too easy for assignments. It’s too cosmetic and too easy,” said Chandler resident David Harbster, a parent of two grown children. “To me the computer is just a very big fancy filing cabinet. I think we need to slow this baby down. It’s a two dimensional space on a computer but we live in a three dimensional world.”

Time will tell if these tensions, experienced throughout the nation at all grade levels, will eventually tamp down.

With many students entering into college majors and careers with little to no understanding of resulting incomes, marketplace realities and sustainable career growth projections, programmers at Skills for Living have created an online course that allows students to simulate grades, part-time jobs, college choices, majors, careers and life through retirement. The intention is to focus students on real life consequences of choices and how they should prepare for life.

The classes teach the basics of money and saving, then progress through setting goals, living within means, and planning for the future. In other words, students learn to build their own road out of poverty.

What many students have learned is that certain careers and the income received are not enough to cover living expenses and, as a result they need to either trim back spending or choose different careers.

Students begin the program by writing an essay detailing what they think their life will be like in their mid-20s. Then they research the cost of that lifestyle. If they envision a large home, they look up the prices using tax records, calculate mortgage and insurance payments, and determine the maximum amount they can spend each month for housing. They use the government’s average salary data to see if their chosen career will cover their expenses. If not, they have to pare back their lifestyle or choose a different line of work.

When simulated, making that sort of change is a bit easier.

The London Times has this insightful piece from a mother who discovers her sons learning habits. Placed in front of him, directly before a large test are his iPod, laptop computer, cell phone and far away, his textbooks.

How, I wanted to know, as I scooped up the laptop and announced that I was confiscating it until further notice, could he be absorbing the finer points of photosynthesis and his French vocab if he treated his mind like a pogo stick?

Parents throughout the world are experiencing similar scenes as they are questioning their kids ability to learn, sufficiently, with what appears a short attention span to any one topic.

The tension in this battle is the parents who are learning technology and grew up in an environment that did not include the many mediums that are available today and the student who has only known the tech-era and embraces technology for entertainment and learning. Is it possible for the two to coexist? The author is unsure:

I’ve resisted on the basis that it would be as embarrassing to my children as it would be if I hung out with them dressed in a miniskirt. But, having spoken to various experts, I realise I have been misguided in allowing him to think of all internet innovations as his domain. It’s worth remembering, after all, that it was the creative, ground-breaking minds of digital immigrants that invented the internet.

The story also provides a interesting take on the dispositions of the so-called immigrants and natives:

NATIVES v IMMIGRANTS

Digital natives
Like receiving information quickly from multiple media sources.
Like parallel processing and multi-tasking.
Like processing pictures, sounds and video before text.
Like random access to hyperlinked multimedia information.
Like to network with others.
Like to learn “just in time”.

Digital immigrants
Like slow and controlled release of information from limited sources.
Like singular processing and single or limited tasking.
Like processing text before pictures, sounds and video.
Like to receive information linearly, logically and sequentially.
Like to work independently.
Like to learn “just in case”.

Although a broader dialogue on the current state on education, rather than this blog’s typical discussion on e-learning, Newsweek has this powerful piece on the current state of education in our country. Teach for America, a non-profit teaching organization that aims to eliminate education inequity throughout the country, is (despite the slumping economy) pulling in large donations to continue its mission.

For many, as technology improves, the debate will continue whether the computer is bound to replace teachers. As Teach for America and similar organizations have proven, that link is irreplaceable. The article goes on:

It’s the teachers, stupid! The single most important factor in student achievement is the quality of the teacher. And yet, we have no effective system to attract, train, retain and promote high-caliber candidates for our schools. Today’s teachers score in the lowest quartile of college grads and too many of the schools that train them are diploma mills. By making its program highly selective and attaching status to the job, Teach For America has proved that it is possible to get the best and the brightest into our classrooms.

Students from the nations most prestigious colleges graduate to enter Teach for America only to find themselves in some of the hardest and toughest school environments are nation has to offer. They don’t do it for the money or the glamour.