Online learning can't replace the classroom experience, but it could replace the burden of student debt.

Some universities, like Stanford and MIT, are showing that there might be another option out there—thanks to the Internet. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently announced the spring 2012 pilot of an online learning initiative called MITx, which will offer the online teaching of MIT courses free of charge to anyone who wants to take them. Those who are able to exhibit a mastery of the subjects taught on the platform will receive an official certificate of completion, bearing, rather than MIT’s coveted credential, the MITx name (there will be a small charge in exchange for a certificate acknowledging completion of a course). #

For about ten years, MIT has been providing thousands of free online courses to over 100 million students through a free, open-source online platform called OpenCourseWare, and their new courses will build on this platform. Now, they are enhancing their offerings by making them more interactive: student-to-student discussions will facilitate learning and collaboration amongst peers—an important aspect of education—and students will have access to online laboratories and self-assessments so they can track their progress as they work at their own pace. (MIT’s on-campus students are also expected to benefit from MITx courses, which they can use to enhance their in-class learning.) #

Stanford, like MIT, has been trying to provide access via the Internet to its world-class educational offerings. Last fall, a free online course on Artificial Intelligence attracted 58,000 participants. If they completed the course, they received a ranking in comparison to enrolled Stanford students, as well as a certificate. #

Another option is the website Academic Earth, which brings together free online courses from various top universities like Yale and Stanford, with video instruction (but no coursework or interaction, unlike MITx will), in one place. It was recently acquired by technology company Ampush Media, so site developments are likely in the near future. #

Perhaps these online courses won’t be suitable for everyone, particularly those who are interested in the socializing experience of college or graduate school—simultaneously an important source of networking opportunities, and a problematic contribution to the “summer camp” atmosphere that pervades many campuses. But for people who are already working and want more knowledge about their field, or who are confident, self-motivated learners, these online learning platforms could provide access to elite education—at zero percent of the cost. #

Thanks to Misha Lepetich for the valuable story tips here. #]]> http://dowser.org/get-an-mit-education-for-free-with-soon-to-launch-mitx/feed/ 7 http://dowser.org/cant-pay-dont-pay-or-become-an-edu-punk-some-solutions-to-the-problem-of-student-debt/ http://dowser.org/cant-pay-dont-pay-or-become-an-edu-punk-some-solutions-to-the-problem-of-student-debt/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:01:54 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=16744

A college education has become the key to entering the middle-class, but do student loans negate that possibility?

In a healthy economy, students would ideally find salaried jobs upon graduation and begin paying loans back. But with unemployment in the U.S. hovering around nine percent, many former students are struggling to pay back loans or defaulting. One of the issues most prominent on the 99 Percent tumblr blog is the burden of student debt. Unlike other forms of debt, student loan debt will never disappear; it is carried by the debt-holder until he dies and even then can be passed on to a spouse or next-of-kin. And student debt is also a massive industry that brings in significant revenue for banks, collecting agencies (often owned by those very same banks), and the U.S. federal government. #

Alan Collinge, who founded StudentLoanJustice.org, was camped-out at Zuccotti Park in New York City with Occupy Wall Street, until the police raided it last Monday night. His mission there was to spread awareness about the predatory nature of the student lending industry, and the need for bankruptcy protection for student loans. #

Outside his tent (prior to the raid), Collinge explained why student lending is predatory: it profits from defaults, and therefore has no interest in ensuring that its recipients are actually able to repay. "Not only do the servicers and the lenders make far more money on defaulted loans than the loans that remain in good standing, the guarantor industry, across the nation, on average derives sixty percent of their gross revenues from penalties and fees attached to defaulted student loans," he told Dowser. #

A campaign to raise awareness about this issue called Occupy Student Debt is launching this week in conjunction with protests among students and faculty at the City University of New York against ongoing tuition hikes. The Occupy Student Debt campaign formed after New York University Professor Andrew Ross gave a teach-in called "Is Student Debt a Form of Indenture?" to Occupy Wall Street protesters. #

On November 21st, the group announced an online pledge that seeks one million signatures by people who will refuse to pay their loans until certain reforms are made to the student lending industry. Those reforms include federally-funded, tuition-fee tertiary public education, interest-free private loans for students, a requirement that for-profit and private universities open their financial books, and the writing-off of all current student debt. The campaign’s punchy slogan is: “Can’t Pay! Won’t Pay! Join Us! Don’t Pay!” #

In seeking to gain one million signatures, the campaign is looking for strength in collective action, which will be important if it is to succeed. One thousand people refusing to pay their loans - and potentially suffering the consequences of defaulting - will not make much of an impact. But one million could be an effective statement while launching a political movement. The Occupy Student Debt Campaign holds the potential to raise awareness about the issue, contributing to a slew of recent articles, asking whether the education bubble could be as dangerous as the mortgage one, noting that debt loads nationwide have risen during the recession, and examining the despair caused by rising unemployment alongside debt burdens. #

This political campaign is, like Occupy Wall Street, a radical gesture that may or may not have an effect. Many people won't want to sign the pledge for fear that not paying their loans will result in default, and a lifetime of ruined credit. But other solutions do exist. And they are radical, as well. #

You can become an EduPunk - and Do It Yourself. Senior Fast Company writer Anya Kamenetz wrote DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education in 2010 to outline the problem of student debt and propose alternatives. The main idea behind being an edupunk is peer-to-peer learning, and finding resourceful ways to learn without spending money at an accredited university. You can see this coming to life at Brooklyn's wildly popular Brooklyn Brainery, where any expert on a subject can sign up to teach workshops that cost barely more than thirty bucks. #

There is also the idea of a "nomadic" university, which has popped up in various places, most recently in New York City, where a cluster of professors and students are working together to bring it to life. The idea here is to expand learning beyond the Ivory Tower, creating new opportunities via the Internet and local communities for people to focus on learning specific subjects. #

Are these alternatives to the current university system viable? It's hard to say. They're fresh ideas with a lot of energy behind them. They may seem better than $200,000 in debt (the approximate cost of four years at New York University), but many would argue that the socializing experience of attending an established university is valuable in itself. #

And can the Occupy Student Debt Campaign reach one million signatures, now that Zuccotti Park has been evicted and the movement is recovering? “The movement is bigger than any one park or location. This really is a national movement that is only growing every day,” explained Suzanne Collado, a master's student at New York University and a student debtor, who is an organizer in the Occupy Student Debt Campaign. “When there are examples of an oppressive system that play out in events like the police pushing occupiers out of Zuccotti Park, it just brings to the surface all the injustices that people in this movement have been speaking out against in the first place,” she said. “It galvanizes us and makes us more secure in our fight.” #]]> http://dowser.org/cant-pay-dont-pay-or-become-an-edu-punk-some-solutions-to-the-problem-of-student-debt/feed/ 7 http://dowser.org/reading-writing-empathy-the-rise-of-social-emotional-learning/ http://dowser.org/reading-writing-empathy-the-rise-of-social-emotional-learning/#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:57:30 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=16537 Marc Brackett never liked school. “I was always bored,” he says, “and I never felt like any of my teachers really cared. I can’t think of anybody that made me feel inspired.” #

It’s a surprising complaint coming from a 42-year-old Yale research scientist with a 27-page CV and nearly $4 million in career funding. But Brackett knows that many kids feel the way he does about school, and he wants to do a complete emotional makeover of the nation’s schools. #

At a time of contentious debate over how to reform schools to make teachers more effective and students more successful, “social emotional learning” may be a key part of the solution. An outgrowth of the emotional intelligence framework, popularized by Daniel Goleman, SEL teaches children how to identify and manage emotions and interactions. One of the central considerations of an evolved EQ—as proponents call an “emotional quotient”—is promoting empathy, a critical and often neglected quality in our increasingly interconnected, multicultural world. #

Brackett quickly learned that developing empathy in kids requires working on their teachers first. Ten years ago, he and his colleagues introduced a curriculum about emotions in schools, asking teachers to implement it in their own classrooms. When he observed the lessons, he was struck by the discomfort many of the instructors showed in talking about emotion. “There was one teacher who took the list of feelings we had provided and crossed out all of what she perceived of as ‘negative’ emotions before asking the students to identify what they were feeling,” Brackett says. “We realized that if the teachers didn’t get it, the kids never would.” #

So in 2005, Brackett and his team at the Health, Emotion, and Behavior Lab at Yale developed a training program—now called RULER—that instructs teachers in the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary for emotional health, then helps them shift the focus to children. The program focuses on five key skills: recognizing emotions in oneself and others, understanding the causes and consequences of emotions, labeling the full range of emotions, expressing emotions appropriately in different contexts, and regulating emotions effectively to foster relationships and achieve goals. Classrooms adopt “emotional literacy charters”—agreements that the whole community agrees to concerning interpersonal interactions—and kids use “mood meters” to identify the nature and intensity of their feelings and “blueprints” to chart out past experiences they might learn from. #

But the curriculum doesn’t just exist as a separate subject— teachers are trained to integrate lessons in emotion into other subjects. A discussion about the protagonist in a young adult novel, can be an opportunity for students to practice reading emotional cues. History becomes not just a lesson about dates and battles, but a study in the ways in human emotion can be inspired or manipulated by charismatic leaders. #

Now in use in hundreds of schools around the country, RULER has been measurably successful. Research indicates that the average student in a RULER-enriched classroom has 11 percent better grades and 17 percent fewer problems in school. Now, Brackett’s group is embarking on a 10-year study of the longer-term effects of the RULER curriculum on 200 students in New York City and New Hampshire high schools. #

In one New York City school that serves a high number of special needs students, administrators attribute a 60 percent reduction in behavioral problems to the RULER approach. “One teacher used to go home with welts on her body because these kids were so emotionally challenged that they were kicking and hitting her,” Brackett says. “Since she’s been doing emotional literacy for two years, she’s had no incidents.” #

Why the change? “She told me that she developed a lot more empathy for her students when she grew to understand that emotions didn’t only exist when they exploded,” Brackett says, “Kids in these classrooms now have permission to say that they’re shifting in to the red quadrant of the mood meter, rather than exploding.” #

The idea of emphasizing emotional learning began in 1994, when Goleman created the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning. Now the group serves as a central body for programs like Brackett’s across the country and the world. #

CASEL president Roger Weissberg, says that it takes “the three Ps” to make effective social and emotional learning a reality: policy, at both the state and federal level; principals’ buy-in; and professional development. CASEL is teaming up with other leaders in the field to conduct a study of SEL standards in all 50 states. #

Despite substantial data indicating that SEL raises test scores, there are naysayers, particularly as school systems struggle with tight budgets. In a recent interview on a local television station in Connecticut, a newscaster said to Brackett: “The kids can’t read, but now they’ll learn how to whine really well.” #

He chuckled, but responded in all seriousness: “You have to think about what motivates students to want to learn. If you know how emotions drive attention, learning, memory, and decision making you know that integrating [SEL] is going to enhance those areas.” #

Interest in SEL spiked after Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge in September 2010 after being bullied by his roommate. Clementi’s death was one of at least a half dozen suicides of gay teens around that time, prompting the creation of legislation, the hugely popular “It Gets Better,” campaign, and an uptick in interest and foundation funding to the nation’s various SEL programs. #

But real change, Brackett says, will come from embracing SEL as a core part of the curriculum, not by parachuting into assemblies at schools trying to “solve bullying.” “Emotional literacy should be taught from womb to tomb, because the emotional challenges we meet vary as a function of our age,” he says. “You’re not going to teach a kindergartener not to alienate people, but you might point out that little Mario looks lonely. In middle school, it’s appropriate to start talking about alienation.” #

Brackett says his own experiences being bored and bullied in school contributed to his interest in emotional learning. “I think back to being 12 years old, sitting in 7th grade, having kids push me, bang my fingers in the lockers, draw on me with a pen, and no one was doing anything about it,” he says. “I didn’t want anyone to stand up for me, I just didn’t want it to happen. We have to make people more empathic.” #

Published in partnership with Good.is #

Photo via GerryT #]]> http://dowser.org/reading-writing-empathy-the-rise-of-social-emotional-learning/feed/ 1 http://dowser.org/interview-andrew-rasiej-on-technology-as-a-new-ecology-not-just-a-medium/ http://dowser.org/interview-andrew-rasiej-on-technology-as-a-new-ecology-not-just-a-medium/#comments Mon, 19 Sep 2011 14:45:42 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=5803

This week Dowser is revisiting our best tech stories while our writers report back from the Social Good Summit. Check back often for our conference coverage - we'll examine the power of technology and innovative thinking to create change.

Andrew Rasiej is what many would call a “serial entrepreneur.” A jack of all trades, Rasiej founded a number of ventures before stumbling upon his current calling: founder of MOUSE (Making Opportunities for Upgrading Schools and Education), an organization that runs three tech-based programs to educate and inspire under-served students to pursue careers in the Web-driven information economy. The MOUSE Squad trains students to run their own IT help desks inside their schools, and MOUSE Corp provides professional internship and career workshop opportunities. The third arm, MOUSE TechSource, focuses on research and evaluation of MOUSE programs. To date, MOUSE runs in 269 schools across seven states, working with 3,000 students who then provide technical support to over 240,000 students. Rasiej sat down with Dowser to talk about going head-to-head with Giuliani, getting stuck on a ski lift with a senator, and other adventures on the road to MOUSE. #

Dowser: You’ve got an eclectic work history – architect, real estate broker, music venue owner, and MOUSE founder. How did you get to MOUSE?
Rasiej: It sort of just happened. I was running Irving Plaza [a music venue in New York City] and at the time Rudy Giuliani was the mayor. He was publicly calling nightclubs bad for the city, and he had a task force to shut them down. I was getting visited by all kinds of agencies in the middle of shows, and was getting really frustrated with the city. #

I realized that I had to do something. So I joined a business group that had adopted a school just a block away from Irving Plaza. About the same time that I was doing that, I helped start an online music festival. I was webcasting live concerts and I was interested in the Internet as a democratization of the music industry. #

Tell me more about the school.
At this school, there were 3,000 kids, all on free school lunch, and there was not one computer in the school. I e-mailed some friends, asking if they would come help me build a computer lab on a Saturday with several used computers. To my surprise, 200 people showed up. And I thought, wow, here's this energy to get these young people in school to get onto the network. Of course, we didn't know what we were doing. And that’s how I started MOUSE. #

What did you learn in your first few years, and how did it influence the focus of MOUSE’s work?
I realized that the biggest problem wasn't really wiring the schools, or getting kids online; the biggest problem was getting the computers to work and getting people to fix them. There was only one systems administrator for the entire Manhattan district. #

How did you raise the money for that?
We raised money first from friends and family. Then I got a small grant from the New York Times Foundation, then CitiGroup gave us some money and it slowly started building. Soon after that, we created a program called MOUSE Squad that trains the kids to maintain the computers in their schools themselves. And then the program took off. Funding came faster because people were more willing to give money that was directly benefiting the kids. #

That sounds like a catalyst for a shift in strategy.
I started talking to education professionals – teachers, superintendents, chancellors, and then politicians, arguing for more money for technology. I like to say that they didn't realize that technology is not a piece of the pie, it's actually the pan. #

What was it like taking on politicians?
I started with Tom Daschle, then Dick Gephardt, then the Clintons, and I was invited to Washington to make speeches. But then I realized that politicians only listen to two types of people – the ones that they get a lot of money from and the ones that they give a lot of money to. Anybody who has an idea or some other valuable asset in between, they don't really pay attention to. So I really didn't get very far with the politicians; they basically nodded politely, said, this is great, now would you write us a $10,000 check please. #

What’s one of the most important interactions you had on the Hill?
The most important moment came about in the winter of 2000 when I was invited to attend a technology conference with a dozen senators and Tom Daschle, who was the majority leader at the time. There were all these big cable companies and telephone companies at the conference, and their reps said all the things that I had heard before and watching the politicians nod. #

We went skiing, I got on a ski lift with Tom and the ski lift got stuck. So we had half an hour to talk, and I convinced him that it wasn't enough to nod, that politicians had to start using the technologies themselves, and that it should empower them to do their jobs better and improve education, because ultimately education is the pillar of democracy. #

Seems like a good strategy, getting stuck on a ski lift with important people.
He invited me to Washington to make a speech, and a little later on in my life, I also ran for public office, trying to see if I could change the equation. It was a frustrating experience and I learned a lot from it, but the political system is still way, way behind. #

You’re still very busy working for social change. What insights have you gained over the years?
As much as things change, they also stay the same. The reason for 90% of human behavior is to maintain your position in life. And if all the best jobs got taken in the industrial age by the baby boomers 20 or 30 years ago, they're not getting out of the way; they're pretty happy where they are. So there are systems in place that take a long time to change. #

On the other hand, technology represents a huge opportunity to reboot our society, and my work is driven by a strong desire on my part for equity and justice. #

Where does that drive come from?
My parents were victims of the partition of Poland by the Germans and Russians. My grandfathers were killed by Stalin in a massacre of 20,000 Polish officers in one day. I grew up with stories of terrible things that had happened, so it ingrained in me this sense of justice. Through family stories, I realized that there is a lineage of community organizing in my family's blood. It’s not something that I decided I was going to do; I was just inclined to do it. In my work, I saw technology as a tool that could break the chain of social and economic inequity by exposing the truth. #

You’re an early adopter of technology. Would you describe yourself as a computer geek?
Not at all. I don't know how to write code. But my skill is having the ability to translate the implications of technology to an audience that isn't necessarily versed in it. Conversely, I’m able to explain to the people who do understand technology why certain groups don't change so fast. I'm a mediator, not a technologist, but certainly a big believer in technology. #

In your career as a social entrepreneur, what have been your hardest-learned lessons?
There were far more mistakes than there were successes. I think that the success of any project, whether it's for profit or not for profit, has a lot to do with timing. With many of my ideas, I can see what's going to happen further down the road, but the conditions for them to happen are not there yet. I learned to be more patient, because you can push all you want, but there are factors that you can't control. #

I've also learned that some of the institutions that we fight against aren't worth converting. I don’t waste my time trying to convince people who should get it but don't want to. #

You’ve got an analogy about horses and steam machines that speaks to this.
Imagine we were farmers or ranchers and all our friends were farmers or ranchers, and we visit a steam engine convention and we're exposed to perhaps the first locomotive. We go back and tell our friends, ‘Hey, check this out.’ And they say, ‘Hey, maybe we could use this to carry our horses to the field!’ #

It's like politicians thinking, ‘Oh, this is the Internet, maybe we could license e-mail addresses and make money.’ They don't see that it's converting the entire ecology of what they do. People frame the world through their own experiences, to understand how things work or to think about any given problem. But they don't necessarily recognize when an innovation is more than evolutionary, but revolutionary. #

Using this analogy to explain to people why this is so significant has proven to be one of the most pleasant parts of my own professional experience. #

This interview was edited and condensed. #

Photo: Elpias #]]> http://dowser.org/interview-andrew-rasiej-on-technology-as-a-new-ecology-not-just-a-medium/feed/ 0 http://dowser.org/heeding-obamas-call-to-rebuild-and-improve-our-nation%e2%80%99s-schools/ http://dowser.org/heeding-obamas-call-to-rebuild-and-improve-our-nation%e2%80%99s-schools/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:53:06 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=15833 During President Obama’s recent speech to Congress outlining his American Jobs Act, he acknowledged the state of America’s schools: “There are schools throughout this country that desperately need renovating. How can we expect our kids to do their best in places that are literally falling apart? This is America. Every child deserves a great school — and we can give it to them, if we act now.” #

The US Green Building Council’s Center for Green Schools is already heeding this call to action. #

In July, the USGBC kicked off the Green Schools Fellowship program, which is designed to provide school districts with the tools and resources to support green building efforts and implement improvements to their facilities and operations.  If Congress passes the Jobs Act, $25 billion was promised for such school construction projects. Dowser sat down with fellowship manager Anisa Baldwin Metzger to talk about the program’s mission and the role that USGBC can play to ensure sustainability initiatives take root in our country’s educational facilities. #

Dowser: The Green Schools Fellowship program kicked off this summer with the first two fellows. Tell me about how the fellowship works.
Metzger: The fellowship is a three-year program where USGBC selects and places sustainability directors in school districts. These fellows are committed to moving forward initiatives that the district wants to implement, but hasn’t had the capacity to do. These initiatives range from implementing comprehensive indoor air quality and moving recycling efforts forward, to getting teachers and students involved in energy savings, and even working on food sourcing for the district. The districts have to go through an application process in order to host a fellow, and there are a whole slew of things that we ask the district to identify for us in terms of their sustainability needs. This year, we received applications from 30 different districts that wanted a fellow and they had to provide details about what they wanted the fellow to work on. We then select the fellows based on their ability to meet the needs of the district where they will be working. #

Which districts were selected and what kinds of sustainability initiatives will the fellows be focusing on in their districts?
Since we only had two fellowship spots for the launch, we decided to kick it off with two districts that we knew would be the best hosts for the first official year of the program. They are Boston Public Schools and the Sacramento Unified School District. Boston and Sacramento each have very different focus areas for the fellows and they were selected with that in mind. Our Sacramento fellow, Farah McDill, will focus more on school-based initiatives, so she will be working directly with students and teachers to help set up green teams within each school. She will work with these green teams to help them perform sustainability audits on their own schools, which will then be submitted to the district as suggestions for what each school needs to work on. So the Sacramento fellowship is very school-by-school oriented. In Boston, the district has a strong connection with the city of Boston, which is a leader in green building and energy initiatives. The school district has been working really hard on implementing a strategic approach to energy savings, so the Boston follow, Phoebe Beierle will be working more on district-level policies and procedures, such as streamlining the system for energy savings and taking on other green initiatives across the board. #

What kind of background do the fellows have, and how much guidance do they get once they are placed in their districts?
One of the requirements for applying to the fellowship is that the applicants must have a graduate degree in organizational sustainability (the degree has different names depending on the school), or they need equivalent work experience. For example, a sustainability director at a corporation would have the appropriate background. #

This year we got 75 qualified applicants. Our Boston fellow has a degree in environmental science and has worked in the Boston area for about five years with state and local agencies that give money towards green school efforts. She has a deep knowledge of green schools specifically in Boston. #

Our Sacramento fellow has a master’s in construction management with a focus on sustainable building. In addition to working with a construction management firm for a number of years, through her graduate work she has also done research on creating green teams in schools and methods for getting teachers involved with sustainability efforts. #

In terms of guidance, that is really the value that we bring through this program, especially for the districts. The school districts can hire their own sustainability director, but the value we bring is that we have a national reach and can do a search and find really stellar people to fill that position for them. Throughout the fellowship, we keep in close contact with the fellows and provide ongoing training and travel to conferences that are helpful to their work. We also connect them to a national network of sustainability officers. #

Before your position as the fellowship manager, you were part of a USGBC pilot program where you worked in the New Orleans school district after Hurricane Katrina. How did your experience there inform the development of a dedicated fellowship program?
I started working in New Orleans in 2008. When Katrina happened, USGBC wanted to do something right away, but they held their enthusiasm until they saw the right opportunity. We didn’t want to just go in and do things that weren’t appropriate. #

When they started looking at the rebuilding process, the school district there (with the help of great local advocates) decided that they were going to build all their new schools to a minimum of LEED Silver status. I was hired by USGBC at that point to go down there just as the schools were getting their feet under them. Initially most of my time there was spent helping the school district understand the LEED certification process and get standards implemented that would make the certification process quicker and easier for them. #

To see more stories from the United States, click here.

In New Orleans, I had been sent a visitor who had a degree from Harvard, and she shadowed me in my job for a while. She had the exact skill set that these districts needed and that was the beginning of the idea for the fellowship. #

I was seeing the need from the districts and also seeing the available workforce, so it was just a matter of matching them up. While I was finishing up my time in New Orleans, the idea for the fellowship program was proposed and then last summer, we secured a commitment from United Technologies Corporation to be the founding sponsor for the fellowship. As part of their gift, they are funding the first two fellows. #

Given the growing demand within school districts to implement sustainability initiatives, how can USGBC respond to this widespread need and what are some of your goals for the fellowship program going forward?
The USGBC has been doing green schools work for a while. The LEED for Schools rating system came out in 2007 and there are many districts now that are pursuing LEED certifications. A really good example where that has become the standard is in Ohio; the state facilities commission there requires all of the schools across the state to accomplish LEED certification, so they have 250 projects in the pipeline. #

The USGBC also established the Center for Green Schools last fall and it’s the center to ground all the work that various departments at our organization are doing around green schools. The center connects all the programs around the mission to implement sustainability initiatives and it shows the districts all we have to offer to help move that mission forward. #

With the Green Schools Fellowship, we are planning on having a class of fellows each year and they’ll start in July, so we’ll be soliciting applications for the new class in January 2012. We’re currently working with several districts to secure the funding for that new group of fellows. Overall, we’re seeing that there’s a lot of energy and enthusiasm around this type of work, not just when we hire at USGBC, but also among people who are already in the workforce. I think a big part of accomplishing our goals is being able to capitalize on this growing interest in the green building movement and highlighting the impact that environmental sustainability will have for our schools. #

Photo: Kimberly Moa #]]> http://dowser.org/heeding-obamas-call-to-rebuild-and-improve-our-nation%e2%80%99s-schools/feed/ 1 http://dowser.org/sports-to-share-an-interview-with-dina-buchbinder/ http://dowser.org/sports-to-share-an-interview-with-dina-buchbinder/#comments Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:29:01 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=15600 Large-scale global initiatives can be challenging to interpret on a local level, especially when they involve goals for children and education. Deport-es para Compartir seeks to render the UN Millennium Goals for Mexican schoolchildren through physical activities to build students’ capacities for local action. Below, Dowser talks with General Director Dina Buchbinder about how games can translate goals, and about how a larger network for youth programming has inspired her local work. #

Dowser: How did your background lead you to developing programs for children?
Buchbinder: I worked in various camps growing up and always had a passion for children. I studied International Relations and realized that I was not interested in an exclusively government position. In 2007 I was one of eleven delegates to a program organized by the government of Japan called ‘Ship for World Youth,’ which aims to establish networks and activities for youth leaders across the world. There I met a Canadian woman named Dara Parker who was working on a program called ‘Sport in a Box,’ which introduces global themes through physical activities. I had always been a hyperactive girl involved in many sports and I was really excited by the opportunity to link themes this way.

How did you translate this idea to the Mexican context?
When I got back to Mexico I asked a fellow delegate if he would start a project like ‘Sport in a Box’ with me and try it out for a year. We worked together to adapt and ‘tropicalize’ the idea to Mexico and changed the games to be more identified with Mexico. We piloted one semester and we were amazed with the results.

How did and do you translate the UN’s broad goals into local ones?
The broad goal of the program is to invite children to be local change-makers, and to this end we emphasize five main values in all of our games – teamwork, fair play, respect, tolerance and gender equality. We have a huge obesity problem in Mexico, so we hope to also teach physical activity through these games. We train teachers to implement our activities in school and in indigenous shelters for underdeveloped municipalities so that a large diversity of students can get access to the program. We started in 2007 and ever since 80% of the students we work with are indigenous.

How do you help students to internalize these change-making goals?
The whole program is through games so that the kids are having fun while, say, realizing why it is important for them to treat others with respect. After each game – and at various points throughout the curriculum - students reflect on how they felt and how the games relate back to their own realities and personal values.

Where and how did you start the program? Was it adopted quickly by schools?
Our first year we ran semester-long programs and piloted them with zero pesos in our pockets. We started in a shelter in Chihuahua, and just started calling shelters and asking if we could come. We also piloted in two private schools in Mexico City, including Colegio Ciudad the Mexico, the one I’d attended. As we expand it’s been very important to us to maintain a diversity of public and private schools as well as indigenous shelters. It’s very difficult to add things to teachers’ jobs because they already have so much to get through, but with this program they seem to fall in love with it on their own. Teachers have said that just our three-day training has changed their whole perspective on teaching – made it more human, more motivating. To date we have had more than 30,000 participants.

How did you get connected and funded to work in schools? #

To see more stories from Latin America, click here.

How do you evaluate the results of the program? #

We measure qualitative results in terms of how much students’ self-perception changes and to what extent they begin to see themselves as change-makers with social capital. We measure quantitative results in three areas – students’ understanding of the Millennium Goals, how much they’ve adopted healthy lifestyles, and how much local community development is being enhanced through the program. #

Why do you think communities are so interested in adopting your program?
From the very beginning participating teachers told us in evaluations that they saw a huge change in children’s’ attitudes and parents reported that students were more cooperative and helpful at home. We always receive amazingly positive evaluations and have more applications for the program than we can handle. We’re looking to expand within the next five years to more area of Latin America, and ideally to migrant communities in the US. Alliances through Ashoka, the UN Network and the International Youth Foundation make this seem eventually possible! #

Photo: Deport-es para Compartir staff #]]> http://dowser.org/sports-to-share-an-interview-with-dina-buchbinder/feed/ 1 http://dowser.org/photographs-pencils-of-promise-leadership-institute/ http://dowser.org/photographs-pencils-of-promise-leadership-institute/#comments Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:51:53 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=14766 Photographs by Oscar Pocasangre | Text by Blair Hickman #

It's run mainly by people under thirty. It occupies an office in the hip Lower East Side. They've snagged endorsement from Justin Bieber. #

In short: Pencils of Promise exists to empower youth. They call it "The 49%," the half of their mission devoted to fostering a generation of changemakers. The other 51% of their energy goes toward building schools in developing countries. #

But it's that 49% that we think sets PoP apart and may, as founder Adam Braun said in this Journey of Action video, make PoP the defining nonprofit of the Millenial generation. It's a ripple effect, spread with several strategies: junior boards scattered across the states, fundraising campaigns that target school-age kids and advocacy toolkits customized for a range of demographics. #

This summer, Pencils of Promise also hosted a series of free Leadership Institutes for high school students, held in New York City. By bringing in speakers like Warby Parker's Niel Blumenthal, each day-long event aimed to teach participants the essentials of changemaking leadership: public speaking, entrepreneurship, advocacy. The list goes on. #

Dowser attended the institute on July 27th. We live-blogged the event, which you can find here, and also compiled this photo essay to give you a better idea of what it's like. Check out the slideshow to see young changemakers in action: #

• "We wanted to have something to allow young people to participate and donate something other than money, like time, their voice, and also just a way for us to engage young people."- Jocelyn Kmet, PoP

   

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• "For Pencils of Promise it’s not just about having these schools all over the world be successful and sustainable, but for us to actually sustain the movement behind it." - Jocelyn Kmet

   

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• "We numb ourselves with Facebook, the Internet, and gadgets so that we don't have to confront the pressing issues of the world we live in" - Koji Shiraki, musician/activist

   

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• "At the end of the day, doing good is good business." - Neil Blumenthal from Warby Parker, reflecting on how for-profit businesses can also have a positive social impact.

   

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• Lee Brenner strives to use his voice to make a difference in the world. This has taken him to start HyperVocal - described by Brenner as a mix of the Huffington Post and the Daily Show.

   

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• Participants listen to Lee Brenner talk about how he combined his interests in international relations and journalism through social media.

   

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• "Our main purpose is to help solve the global education crisis and that’s what we are trying to get these kids to become leaders in, and understanding what the global education crisis is is the first step to do that." - Jocelyn Kmet

   

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• The ability to convert one's passion into action was one of the things that resonated the most among the participants of the Leadership Institute.

   

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• Participants write down what they learned after the Leadership Institute talks.

   

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In much of sub-Saharan Africa, for example, education was historically associated with the colonial elite, which meant the majority of the population didn't have access to schools. That's changing – but slowly. #

After studying abroad in Kenya during her junior year at Wesleyan, Gabrielle Fondiller founded Hatua Likoni, an organization that helps students pay their school fees through scholarships and provides mentoring to get them into college. Starting with seven students in 2007, the program now supports 76 young Kenyans in the Likoni region, and has a staff of local mentors who work with the students to keep them motivated in an under-resourced education system. #

Dowser: Why do schoolchildren in Kenya have to pay school fees?
Gabrielle Fondiller: Until 2002, there was no free education in Kenya. Because of international influence, the government instituted free education in 2002, but it’s incredibly underfunded. And now, it’s receiving less funding because there’s been scandals and corruption in the Ministry of Education. #

So, there isn’t money to institute free secondary education – yet. But there is effort to reduce the cost of government secondary schools. For some families, it’s not outrageously expensive, but for some it’s unaffordable. #

How do you fund the program?
We have some support from foundations and corporations, and mostly individual donors in the United States. [It happened] mostly through networks: meeting people who then introduced me to people. Talking to people and explaining the story. Once you build a connection with someone it’s easier to interest them. #

What do you do at the orphanage and nursery school you support?
In 2008, we partnered with an organization that founded a nursery and an orphanage. We spent two years co-running our organization. They were struggling financially but had a huge amount of energy, and a lot of passion. So, each side of the partnership benefited from collaboration. We were able to help their programs grow; they were able to help our programs grow. #

We continued operation that way until October, when they felt they were stable and better able to manage their own affairs. Now instead of jointly running our programs, we support them. We pay for the education of the children at the orphanage, and we provide food at the nursery school and the orphanage. #

Do you have some takeaways from working in a cross-cultural setting?
Everyone I work with is Kenyan, with the exception of volunteers who come for three or six months. At the latest point we had a staff of seventeen, and I was the only non-Kenyan. Everyone is young in their twenties. Most are high-school graduates; some are not. These are young people, from the community we’re working in, with the same background as the beneficiaries we are trying to support. #

Working in Kenya is not easy. Corruption is rampant. It’s a factor in absolutely everything that you do. That makes for a very challenging working environment. #

Also, working with young people with a high-school education, you’ve got limited writing skills amongst the staff – but you also have an incredible wealth of local know-how, connections, credibility. A young Kenyan mentoring another young Kenyan has much more influence than I could. I think the advantages outweigh the challenges. #

My thinking is that one of the greatest sources of impact that an organization can have is on its staff. In order to live our mission, we need to be creating jobs for young people in our community – finding those talented, passionate people. #

What are the overseas volunteers doing for the project?
Short-term volunteers will have a fun activity, learn the culture, enjoy Kenya – teach at the nursery school or spend time at the orphanage, helping to cook, washing and ironing clothes, playing with the kids or helping them with homework. Longer-term volunteers have staff-like responsibilities. Often volunteer s come with better written communication skills than we have on our staff so they’ll have with writing, international donor outreach, event planning. #

What do you hope to do with it moving forward?
We’re going to focus on education. Our goal is to provide secondary high school scholarships for top students from low-income families. We have a rigorous application process. We mentor the students throughout and provide guidance. Our goal is to then continue on with those students throughout university. We graduated our first two students, and one is in college and another is about to enroll. We’re graduating eleven secondary students in November. #

The other goal we have is to improve the public school education infrastructure in Kenya. Scholarships do a great job in reaching top students. But there are 14,000 primary students in Likoni’s public schools, and we’re only able to add about 20-25 students per year into our scholarship program. So what we’re working on right now is fundraising to put desks into all the public primary schools in Likoni. Right now, there are enough desks for 9,000 students out of the 14,000. So if you crowd an extra student into each desk there are still 1,500 kids sitting on the floor. #

Interview has been edited and condensed. #

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Photo courtesy of Todd Shapera #]]> http://dowser.org/hatua-likoni-offering-scholarships-and-mentoring-to-kenyan-students/feed/ 5 http://dowser.org/in-a-failed-state-a-path-to-success/ http://dowser.org/in-a-failed-state-a-path-to-success/#comments Tue, 09 Aug 2011 16:39:05 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=15038 This is part of a series highlighting innovations and possibilities for action for the famine in Somalia. Most news frames the famine and political conflict as near unsolvable; we're examining the on-the-ground measures that can help - from the large scale and political to the local and preventative. #

At the start of every semester, Mohamed Abdirahman fills the back of his rattletrap station wagon with fresh fruit and vegetables and hauls it all to a tightly secured compound on the outskirts of the aptly named village of Abaarso (Somali for “drought”) where his teenage son goes to school. #

“Just about everyone finds a way to pay something,” says Jonathan Starr, who several years ago quit a career in finance and used the millions he made on Wall Street to conduct a experiment in education on the parched, windy plains of western Somaliland, a mostly stable, autonomous region of Somalia. #

Starr, 35, wanted to find out what happens when you immerse Somaliland’s brightest boys and girls in a “culture of English” with plenty of books and computers and a staff of dedicated teachers from some of the best schools on the planet. Abaarso Tech, the nonprofit organization he cofounded in 2008, is designed to do just that.
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It’s also designed, he says, “to be run like a business with the Somali people as both shareholders and customers.” And it’s in this respect that the former financial executive has most pointedly parted ways with convention, bringing a level of accountability to aid work that its critics have long found lacking. #

“Two key elements necessary to make aid work are feedback and accountability, the absence of which have been fatal to aid’s effectiveness,” wrote the economist William Easterly in his 2006 book “The White Man’s Burden,” a brazen assessment of the failings of foreign aid. #

Echoing Easterly, Starr recently asked readers of the Wall Street Journal to imagine if Marriott operated without any revenue or room-rate data. “Suppose it remitted money to cover salaries and other expenses, without knowing if any of it was producing a product for which customers were willing to pay…You don’t have to run a Fortune 500 company to know how quickly such a system would run amok.” #

Yet, he wrote, when it comes to international aid, that’s precisely the system in place. “Without revenue or other customer satisfaction metrics, NGO executives and donors have no way of knowing whether employees on the ground are providing a product of value to their impoverished ‘customers.’” He says that’s because those executives aren’t on the ground themselves. #

Starr, on the other hand, is on the ground year round. From the office he shares with a staff of eighteen teachers, he can watch his students play soccer on a sandy pitch and the guards as they pace the length of a 9-foot security wall with their Kalashnikovs and two-way radios, holdovers from the Somali Civil War. #

That war began in the mid 1980s, when dissident groups rebelled against Siad Barre, Somalia’s Soviet-backed military dictator. In 1988, Barre’s air force bombed Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, as well as several other towns, devastating the country’s infrastructure, including many of its schools. And perhaps none was a greater loss than the once-renowned Sheikh Secondary School. #

Founded by the British when Somaliland was still a protectorate of the crown, Sheikh was for many years the country’s premier prep school and a veritable pipeline to higher education abroad. As such, it produced many of the leaders of current day Somaliland society, including the president H.E. Ahmed Mohamed Mahamoud Silanyo and several members of his cabinet. #

But Sheikh is no longer what it was. Abandoned after the war, it was closed for more than a decade before being reopened by an Austrian charity in the late 1990s. Then, in 2003, the school’s headmaster and his wife, both highly regarded educators, were gunned down by members of the violent Islamist rebel group Al Shabaab. Ever since, Sheikh has struggled to recruit teachers, and only a handful of graduates have gone on to universities overseas—none of them in the US. #

Abaarso Tech, with its goal of preparing students for top-tier institutions in the US and UK, aims to fill that gap, and to do so with a focus on financial sustainability.  The school’s one hundred students, all of them selected from among the top 250 scorers on Somaliland’s national 8^th grade exit exam, pay what they can, while revenue-generating programs like adult English courses and an undergraduate school of finance make up the shortfall in tuition. #

And whereas recent other Western-led efforts to educate African children have spared no expense—Oprah Winfrey’s $40-million Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa features, among other extravagances, a yoga studio and a beauty salon, and the manager of Madonna’s recently-aborted $15-million all girls’ academy in Malawi made what auditors described as “outlandish expenditures on salaries, cars and office space,” according to the New York Times —Starr economizes wherever possible, most notably on staff salaries; Abaarso Tech teachers, who have included Ivy League graduates, PhDs in physics and chemistry, and professional engineers, are paid just $3,000 a year—proof, he argues, of the primacy of passion, not money, in creating positive change. #]]> http://dowser.org/in-a-failed-state-a-path-to-success/feed/ 5 http://dowser.org/the-mycelium-school-a-theory-of-fungal-education/ http://dowser.org/the-mycelium-school-a-theory-of-fungal-education/#comments Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:00:25 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=12267

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Mycelium are the vegetative part of a fungus, through which mushrooms absorbs nutrients from their environment as they spread out, latch on to the roots of plants and trees, and collect information about deficiencies in the forest floor. The Mycelium School is built on this model of learning: that students can come together and give to their environment and each other, while learning skills and nurturing their personal growth needs. #

Other ecological principles, such as diversity, integration, and systems-thinking will serve as the backbone for the school, set to break ground in Asheville, North Carolina in 2012. Through hands-on service-learning projects and a social entrepreneurship curriculum, the planners of Mycelium hope that young adults will build self-reliance and confidence. #

Dowser: Why is the Mycelium School needed and who is it targeted toward?
Founder and CEO Matthew Abrams: The school is meant to be a meeting place for people around the world who want to see change in their local communities. They will come to gain skills that they can then bring back home to effectuate the change they envision. But initially our student body will be largely domestic while we are becoming more financially stable. #

You spent years traveling around the world before entering graduate school and beginning this project. Did you have experiences working with organizations which helped you form your ideas about the limits of westerners going abroad and helping?
I was absolutely transformed by my travel experiences. When I started going abroad, I was working as a talent agent in New York City. But the more I traveled, the more it opened my eyes and inspired ideas to pop up in my head about changing the world. #

I worked with a natural-living organization in Costa Rica, founded by people from the United States, that inspired me. They spent time there first doing nothing but listening to what locals told them about their needs and concerns, before deciding how they would contribute to that society. They had an integrated leadership structure and the decision-making process occurred in open circles every day. #

But I’ve also seen naive projects that fail to account for local needs and interests. Those projects do not succeed, and instead they waste time and money. #

What really strikes me about the school is what you said about how it focuses on life design. Students will be growing their own food, learning permaculture, and even building the space itself. What led you to include this in the curriculum?
Physical, spiritual, and emotional well-being are all intertwined. When we develop self-sufficiency, we become more capable of contributing to the world, and also less likely to take basic services for granted. Also, the students are going to be learning different ways of doing things from each other while they are working together on these projects. #

There’s a lot of emphasis on community in the curriculum at Mycelium.
But also a strong focus on the individual. It’s not an either/or; both are so important. Our main pedagogical principal is that self-exploration and world-exploration can occur at once, and the school aims to provide students with the tools to connect the two, along with a sense of purpose. That’s why we want students who are leaders, who are looking to grow and willing to make changes. #

The program sounds like a lot of fun, and it seems like enjoying experiences to their fullest has been a big part of your life as well. Does fun have a role in the curriculum at Mycelium?
One of the greatest tragedies in our current model of education is how laughter has been stripped away.  I remember being sent to the principal’s office once for laughing in class. #

Meaningful education is a balance between freedom and structure. Education is not always fun, nor should it be. Sometimes it’s appropriate to push participants - and educators - to the edges of comfort. #

Who is someone that’s influenced your thinking or way of working?
Design pioneer Buckminster Fuller was an advocate of doing more with less, and that’s what we really need as a society right now. He focused on looking at things as they are and the services they provide, and then asking how they could be, what they could do. Also, late 19-century American artist Robert Henri saw critique as the downfall of innovation. I believe that critique limits the truths that live within us. And Brazilian education activist Paulo Freire also comes to mind. He talked about how education was seen as a system of 'banking': the teacher makes a deposit in the student’s mind, and the student spits it back out during a test, leaving her with nothing left. The aim of education is to grow, not regurgitate. #

Interview has been edited and condensed. #