A Learners’ View (ALV) Is Of Choices On The Shortest And Fastest Path To Learning, The Oxygen Of Social Life.
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New Era School Initiative (NESI) Press Release
THIS FICTITIOUS PRESS RELEASE INTRODUCES REAL AVAILABLE behavioral and social science features that boards of education can authorize today in order for educators to accelerate, increase, and deepen (AID) student learning promptly, and dramatically.
LANDGRANT UNIVERSITY
Office of Information, EduChoice Publications
CONTACT: O. N. Lyne, Information Officer
PRESS RELEASE
Normal, CA Dr. W. E. Doynit, Superintendent of Normal Unified Public School District (NUPSD), received approval last night from the school board to open New Era (charter) School Initiative (NESI) in Fall, 2012.
This approval followed a finding of support by the regional school accrediting agency.
The Normal board also approved a contract with Landgrant University to provide supporting academic and evaluation services for this initiative. The university’s Childrens Center for Research on Mobile Learning will fulfill this obligation as well as coordinate efforts between NESI and software developers and publishers as well as hardware manufacturers.
Six Years to Graduation
NESI will offer a six academic year PreK12 curriculum. That means that students entering school at six years of age or earlier in preschool could earn a high school diploma by age 12. This rarely happens in public or private schools today.
Instruction will follow a six cycle spiral curriculum with content that results in exceeding minimum state learning standards for high school graduation. Educators have monitored the development of this curriculum and its related instructional practices since they emerged into public view in the middle 1960s at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The number of students to open the school was not disclosed. School administrators estimate that 500 students will sign up to enroll across the 13 grades.
Using Off-the-Shelf Technology
Parts of the NESI academic package have been available through commercial publishers since the late 1960s. Their introduction online in 2009 of parts of this instruction spurred the imagination of Doynit to begin planning NESI. Their attraction has been the relative efficiency of student learning.
Other NESI parts have subsequently demonstrated their utility for learning efficiency.
Individual Learning for Less Cost
“Why should any student spend time waiting for slower students to complete any assignment?” Doynit asked in response to a board member’s question during the meeting. “NESI will demonstrate that more students will learn more in less time for less cost than through our regular school practices.”
“One of the stark realities in schools is that students respond to things in their own immediate best interest. Let’s give them a choice they can see and accept that’s also consistent with their world outside of school. They learn more when they see prompt individual consequences for academic behavior, and that’s what NESI curricula and instruction offers,” Doynit concluded.
Tablets Reduce Costs
The introduction of the Tablet PC in 2002 into schools has demonstrated that students and teachers learn quickly how to increase individual learning efficiency beyond that accomplished through conventional group and project based instruction.
Educators know that research shows that students in parts of NESI programs learn more in less time than through regular instruction with teacher made and most commercial learning materials.
The district estimates that the total NESI program for each student will cost 25 to 50 percent less than regularly budgeted items for comparable school time.
State-of-the-Art Schooling
“I voted for this project,” said Board member Ernest K. R. Full, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, “because it offers a state-of-the-art way for students to distinguish themselves academically at their own learning pace. That’s a valuable choice that public schools should allow every student to make without penalty.”
Each student will receive a Tablet or other mobile PC upon enrollment in NESI. They will use it at school and home to complete school assignments.
They will trade in their equipment for a new one every two years in order to continue using state-of-the-art communication equipment for learning. NUPSD will provide a maintenance and support program as do many private schools that require similar equipment.
Higher Education
Landgrant University has accepted a few rising teenagers as undergraduates. They did not pose unexpected problems.
Based on that experience, the university has appointed a joint faculty and administrative committee to guide preparation for an increased number of young undergraduates in the future.
“We will be prepared for them when they apply,” commented Dr. G. O. Forit, University President.
Reduce Rationed Learning
Interest in NESI among board members grew out of the university’s report Rationed Learning: A Conspiracy of Yes, but … 2002 – 2012.
“We concluded,” said Dr. Gather Fisher, a senior research associate on the project, “that the ideological divide among educators about uses of behavioral and social principles of learning in classrooms distributed learning among students according to their application in and out of schools.”
Board members listened to opposition from local teachers, their unions, and local community members to the proposal, but decided on a split vote of five to four to authorize the planners of NESI to proceed according to their proposed work plan.
References
- Children’s Research Center for Mobile Learning, Landgrant University. Rationed Learning: A Conspiracy of “Yes, but … 2002-2012”. Posted by The Tablet PC In Education Blog, February 13, 2009, at 3:29 PM. (Captured and edited April 10, 2010 at 4:50PM) http://www.robertheiny.com/2009/02/accelerated-k12-mobile-learning-press.html Now confirmed as of May 20, 2012, at 2:09 PM.at http://www.robertheiny.com/2009/02/13/accelerated-k12-mobile-learning-press-release.
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Last Edited: February 14, 2015