A few days later the NY Times ran a story about a local community of mine. Moorseville, NC is a town located to the north of Charlotte. Its on the perimeter of the Charlotte metro area near Lake Norman. They’ve seen some success with using Apple devices as learning instruments. Now, of course there isn’t anything new about that.

What is new, is the way they’re being used. The students are not dependent on teacher prescribed lesson plans. The lessons are part of the computers and the kids are encouraged to problem solve individually, with teams, or by working with a teacher. The students are trusted to drive the learning.

Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the host made a valid point – teaching is an art, not a science. And like any other form of art, the artist must be allowed to create. The instructor can’t control, only guide. Here’s a blurb from the article:

“You have to trust kids more than you’ve ever trusted them,” he said. “Your teachers have to be willing to give up control.”

That was the primary concern that the 60 visitors expressed during their daylong sojourn to Mooresville in November. “I’m not sure our kids can be trusted the way these are,” one teacher from the Midwest said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid trouble back home.

Thomas Bertrand, superintendent of schools in Rochester, Ill., said he was struck by the “culture of collaboration among staff and kids” in Mooresville and would emphasize that as his district considered its own conversion.

“There’s a tendency in teaching to try to control things, like a parent,” said Scott Allen, a high school chemistry teacher in South Granville, N.C. “But I learn best at my own pace, and you have to realize that students learn best at their own pace, too.”

Programs like this are exciting to me. They show an open mind and a realization that the world has changed. Below are the videos of Arne Duncan with Jon Stewart.

Having computer skills enables upward mobility.

Another endeavor is launching at the end of the month (Feb 2012) called Raspberry Pi. This group is releasing two very low cost computers at price points of $25 and $35.  They don’t come with a keyboard or a monitor and they are a bare bones assembly. They are aimed at hobbyists and educational use.

I really like how they’ve fashioned the device – it has one USB port so you need to use a USB hub to add components, it runs on Linux, and it uses SD cards as a substitute for a hard drive and it boots from it. It can play Hi-Def video via HDMI and is said to be as good as the first X-Box.

The cost is so low that they can be used for many different purposes. Projects in schools or at start ups can certainly use a hardware solution like this to creatively experiment to achieve different learning goals.

Here are some pics of the different computers:

The Raspberry Pi doesn’t come with a case. It has different connections available and is cheap enough to mess with.

Here is the layout of the different components.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) original laptop. It uses 5 watts of power and has a hand crank to add power. The latest version is using only 2 watts of power and will work well with solar energy sources.

The latest OLPC is a tablet.

Net gain of 200,000 jobs in the month

*

- Manufacturing gained 23,000 jobs
- Construction gained 17,000 jobs
- Retailers gained 27,900 jobs
- Leisure and Hospitality Services gained 21,000 jobs
- Government sector lost 12,000: 14,000 loss in local government
- Education and Health Services gained 28,700
- Health Care and Social Assistance grew by 27,000
- Professional and Business Services grew by 12,000
- Temporary help lost 7,500

*

Wage (can be revised):

- The average weekly paycheck (seasonally adjusted) is $658.50
- The average hourly earning (seasonally adjusted) is $19.54, unchanged
- Average weekly hours and overtime of production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector, seasonally adjusted is 34.4

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Net gain of 120,000 jobs in the month

*

- Manufacturing gained 2,000 jobs
- Construction lost 12,000 jobs
- Retailers gained 49,800 jobs
- Leisure and Hospitality Services gained 22,000 jobs
- Government sector lost 20,000: 11,000 loss in local government
- Education and Health Services gained 45,000
- Health Care and Social Assistance grew by 27,000
- Professional and Business Services grew by 33,000
- Temporary help gained 22,300

*

Wage (can be revised):

- The average weekly paycheck (seasonally adjusted) is $656.54
- The average hourly earning (seasonally adjusted) is $19.54
- Average weekly hours and overtime of production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector, seasonally adjusted is 33.6

Bureau of Labor Statistics

To help with the second item, I supplied a couple of links below. One is to donorschoose.org and the other is to a NY Times article recapping several great causes. What I like about them is their connection to the beneficiary. Immediate positive feedback tends to reinforce behavior and if the behavior is donating to a charity, well then all the better. Also, at the very bottom is a story of Donors Choose told by Charles Best, the founder. Its a 3 minutes well spent.

Thank You

Donorchoose.org

 Giving Where It Counts

Net gain of 80,000 jobs in the month (revised to a gain of 100,000)

- Manufacturing gained 5,000 jobs
- Construction lost 20,000 jobs
- Retailers gained 17,800 jobs
- Leisure and Hospitality Services gained 22,000 jobs
- Government sector lost 24,000: 20,000 loss in state government
- Education and Health Services gained 28,000
- Health Care and Social Assistance grew by 16,300
- Professional and Business Services grew by 32,000
- Temporary help gained 15,000

Wage (can be revised):

- The average weekly paycheck (seasonally adjusted) is $658.16
- The average hourly earning (seasonally adjusted) is $19.53
- Average weekly hours and overtime of production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector, seasonally adjusted is 33.7

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Here are some charts and graphs to try to better understand it (numbers are as of September 2011):

Chart 1: Percentage of Non-Farm Employment.

Government comprises just under 17% of the total, with only 2.138% being Federal employment. And that includes the Post Office. This is about a 5:1 ratio of Private Employment to Government Employment.

The Federal Government employs about the same number of people as the Food and Beverage Stores Industry (your local grocery and liquor store).

Chart 2: Distribution of Government jobs between Local, State, and Federal levels.

In terms of hiring, total government has lost 116,000 jobs since January 2007 (Local has lost 202,000, State has lost 5,000 and Federal has gained 91,000 jobs). In terms of distribution, the Local level has lost about 0.5% and the Federal level has gained about 0.5%. The major uptick in the spring of 2010 at the Federal level was due to the once a decade census, which employs temporary workers to collect population data.

 Chart 3: Since the summer of 2007, the Government has increased employment to a 2% gain over January 2007 levels, with a spike to 4% for the census. However, as the private sector has started to hire in the spring of 2010, the Government has lost the 4% gain it had accumulated, tempering the potential economic lift of a larger employment base.

Also, note, these charts do not control for population growth. The numbers are worse when that is factored in (between 100,000 and 150,000 people added to the public a month)

So back to the statement: “We need to reduce the size of government.” Its really about reducing the influence of government. The size of it, excluding the military, is actually relatively small. From a business standpoint, time is money. And often dealing with government agencies can take time. Is some of it bureaucracy? Absolutely. And much of it is from a failure to anticipate. This creates a reactionary problem solving paradigm that most often is meant to protect the interests of the community, but usually results in an approval after a long delay.

Doing away with the agency isn’t the solution. The solution is to get them to find patterns which quick reviews can be judged against and with a means to handle exceptions. Somewhat like “If these 5 predetermined criteria are satisfied, then you’re all set.” The old 80/20 split.

I say this for a figurative reason and an illustrative one.

Figuratively, that is what this economy feels like. Month after month its a new hall that looks like the month before. Its a puzzle we are stuck in trying to find our way out.

But to find our way out we need new approaches. This economic situation is now structural in nature. That means it requires new skills and new dominions. During this transitional phase a lot of people will continue to lose jobs or be unable to find them.

What we need more of are people like Zi Ye and Jesse Burstyn of Toasty Games who developed a fantastical game called Parallax.

I’m amazed by it on several levels. The first is the aesthetics. They are eye popping. The second is in the blending of space and dimension (I like Paper Mario and Flatland as well). And the third is the drive to create a game to be both challenging and fun. All three of these are characteristics of what the next economy is going to need: Beautiful Design, Uniqueness, Perseverance, and User Engagement.

I recently had lunch with a friend, a friend who seems to imagine a different world. He started to riff:

“My ideas play and fight all night – drives me crazy.  I wake up and they sleep all day. Time goes by and I get new ones. But sometimes I wonder what the old ideas think of the new ones?”

Who doesn’t love a story about inspiration and the the “Aha moment” that accompanies it? It captivates the audience. What isn’t as exciting is the follow through that brought the idea to fruition. I know I’m not alone in toiling with all the things I want to do as I shut down for the night. These dreams need an awakening.