21st Century Digital Learning Environments (Pedagogy)

21st Century Pedagogy

Even if you have a 21st Century classroom (flexible and adaptable); even if you are a 21st century teacher ; (an adaptor, a communicator, a leader and a learner, a visionary and a model, a collaborator and risk taker) even if your curriculum reflects the new paradigm and you have the facilities and resources that could enable 21st century learning - you will only be a 21st century teacher if how you teach changes as well. Your pedagogy must also change.

So what is 21st Century pedagogy?

Definition:
pedagogy - noun the profession, science, or theory of teaching.
Source: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/pedagogy?view=uk

How we teach must reflect how our students learn. It must also reflect the world our students will move into. This is a world which is rapidly changing, connected, adapting and evolving. Our style and approach to teaching must emphasise the learning in the 21st century.

The key features of 21st Century Pedagogy are:
? building technological, information and media fluencies [Ian Jukes]
? Developing thinking skills
? making use of project based learning
? using problem solving as a teaching tool
? using 21st C assessments with timely, appropriate and detailed feedback and reflection
? It is collaborative in nature and uses enabling and empowering technologies
? It fosters Contextual learning bridging the disciplines and curriculum areas

Knowledge
Knowledge does not specifically appear in the above diagram. Does this mean that we do not teach content or knowledge? Of course not. While a goal we often hear is for our students to create knowledge, we must scaffold and support this constructivist process. The process was aptly describe in a recent presentation by Cisco on Education 3.0 [Michael Stevenson VP Global Education Cisco 2007]

We need to teach knowledge or content in context with the tasks and activities the students are undertaking. Our students respond well to real world problems. Our delivery of knowledge should scaffold the learning process and provide a foundation for activities. As we know from the learning pyramid content delivered without context or other activity has a low retention rate.

Thinking skills
Thinking Skills are a key area. While much of the knowledge we teach may be obsolete within a few years, thinking skills acquired will remain with our students for their entire lives. Industrial age education has had a focus on Lower Order Thinking Skills. In Bloom's taxonomy the lower order thinking skills are the remembering and understanding aspects. 21st Century pedagogy focuses on the moving students from Lower Order Thinking Skills to Higher Order Thinking Skills.

The 21st Century Teacher scaffolds the learning of students, building on a basis of knowledge recall and comprehension to use and apply skills; to analyse and evaluate process, outcomes and concequences, and to make, create and innovate. For each discipline in our secondary schools the process is subtly different.

Collaboration
The 21st century is an age of collaboration as well as the Information Age. 21st Century students, our digital natives, are collaborative. The growth of social networking tools, like bebo and myspace and the like, is fueled by Digital natives and Gen Y. The world, our students are graduating into is a collaborative one.

Collaborative projects such as Julie Lindsay's and Vicki Davis's Flatclassroom project and the Horizon Project, iearns and many others are brilliant examples of collaboration in the classrooms and beyond. These projects, based around tools like ning or wikis, provide students and staff a medium to build and share knowledge and develop understanding.

For example:

My own students are collaborating with students from three other schools, one in Brisbane, another in Qatar and a third in Vienna; on developing resources for a common assessment item. Collaboratively, they are constructing base knowledge on the technologies pertent to the topic. They are examining, evaluating and analysing the social and ethical impacts of the topic. But perhaps even more holistically they are being exposed to different interpretations, cultures and perspectives - Developing an international awareness which will be a key attribute in our global future.

URL: http://casestudy-itgs.wikispaces.com


Don Tapscott in Wikinomics, gives are many of examples of the business world adopting and succeeding by using global collaboration.

In a recent blog post from the Official google Blog, Google identified these as key traits or abilities in 1st Century Employees...

"... communication skills. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn't useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions."
"... team players. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team's expectations. "

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/our-googley-advice-to-students-major-in.html

So to prepare our students, our teaching should also model collaboration. A vast array of collaborative tools are available to - wikis, classroom blogs, collaborative document tools,social networks, learning management systems - Many are available at no cost. If you have not yet tried them, look at:
? wikis - wet paint and wiki spaces
? Classroom blogs - edublogs, classroomblogmeister
? Collaborative document tools - Google documents, zoho documents
? Social Networks - ning
? learning managements systems - Moodle etc
These tools are enablers of collaboration, and therefore enablers of 21st century teaching and learning.

Collaboration is not a 21st century skill it is a 21st century essential.

If we look at UNESCO's publication "The four pillars of Education, Learning: The Treasure within" Collaboration is a key element of each of the four pillars.

• Learning to know
• Learning to do
• Learning to live together
• Learning to be

(http://www.unesco.org/delors/fourpil.htm)

Collaboration is not limited to the confines of the classroom. Students and teachers collaborate across the planet, and beyond the time constraints of the teaching day. Students work with other students regionally, nationally and globally. Learners seek and work with experts as required. This is 21st Century Collaboration

Real World, Inter-disciplinary & project based learning
21st Century students do not want abstract examples rather they focus on real world problems. They want what they learn in one subject to be relevant and applicable in another curriculum area. As teachers we need to extend our areas of expertise, collaborate with our teaching peers in other subjects and the learning in one discipline to learning in another.
Projects should bring together and reinforce learning across disciplines. The sum of the students learning will be greater than the individual aspects taught in isolation. This is a holistic overview of the education process which builds on and values every aspect of the 21st Century students education.

Assessment
Assessment is still a key part of 21st Century Pedagogy. This generation of students responds well to clear goals and objectives, assessed in a transparent manner.

Students should be involved in all aspects of the assessment process. Students who are involved in setting and developing assessment criteria, marking and moderation will have a clearer understanding of:
? what they are meant to do,
? how they are meant to do it,
? why it is significant
? why it is important.
Such students will undoubtedly do better and use the assessment process as a part of their learning.

Students are often painfully honest about their own performance and that of their peers. They will, in a collaborative project, fairly assess those who contribute and those who don't.

This is their education, their learning and their future - they must be involved in it.

Linked to assessment is the importance of timely, appropriate, detailed and specific feedback. Feedback as a learning tool, is second only to the teaching of thinking skills [Michael Pohl]. As 21st Century teachers, we must provide and facilitate safe and appropriate feedback, developing an environment where students can safely and supportively be provided with and provide feedback. Students are often full of insight and may have as valid a perspective as we teachers do.

Fluency
What is fluency and why is it better than Literacy? Ian Jukes introduced this concept at NECC. He asserts that students need to move beyond literacy to fluency. They need to be
fluent in:
? The use of technology = technological fluency,
? Collecting, processing, manipulating and validating information = information fluency,
? using, selecting, viewing and manipulating media = media fluency,

What is fluency compared to literacy? A person who is fluent in a language does not need to think about speech, or reading rather it is an unconscious process of understanding. A person who is literate in the language must translate the speech or text. This applies to our students and their use of 21st century media. We need them to be unconsciously competent in the use and manipulation of media, technology and information.

The conscious competence model illustrates the difference between Literacy and Fluency. The person or student who is literate is in the conscious competence category. The person or student who is fluent is in the unconscious competence category.

As educators, we must identify, develop and reinforce these skill sets until students become literate and then fluent..

Conclusion and the path forward.

To teach using 21st Century pedagogy, educators must be student centric. Our curricula and assessments must inclusive, interdisciplinary and contextual; based on real world examples.

Students must be key participants in the assessment process, intimate in it from start to finish, from establishing purpose and criteria, to assessing and moderating.
Educators must establish a safe environment for students to collaborate in but also to discuss, reflect and provide and receive feedback in.

We should make use of collaborative and project based learning, using enabling tools and technologies to facilitate this.

We must develop, in students, key fluencies and make use of higher order thinking skills. Our tasks, curricula, assessments and learning activities must be designed to build on the Lower Order Thinking Skills and to develop Higher Order Thinking Skills.

Acknowledgements:
For being a brilliant critical friend, thanks for the advise and especially for the grammar - Marg McLeod.

By Andrew Churches

Arne Duncan Secretary of Education

Reform Starts Now: Obama Picks Arne Duncan

His secretary of education selection shows education is a priority.

by Grace Rubenstein
December 16, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama talked reform while announcing Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan as the next U.S. secretary of education.

"For Arne, school reform isn't just a theory in a book, it's the cause of his life," Obama said at Tuesday's press conference. Obama specifically mentioned pay-for-performance teacher salaries and charter-schools development as strategies with strong potential.

"If charter schools work, let's try that," Obama said. "Let's not be clouded by ideology when it comes to figuring out what helps our kids."

Duncan described his clear-eyed view of education in a June 2007 interview [1] with Edutopia when he said, "Quality public education is the civil rights issue of our generation."

Duncan, known for transforming underperforming schools and experimenting with new models, has a record as a pragmatist with a taste for innovations. His version of reform, judging by his record, centers on boosting teacher quality and supporting students with added services such as after-school programs. In the Chicago Public Schools [2], where 85 percent of the 400,000-plus students live below the poverty line, test scores, attendance, and teacher retention all went up during Duncan's seven-year tenure, while the dropout rate declined.

The Buzz
For weeks, pundits, educators, and education bloggers have speculated on what Obama's pick would show about his true beliefs on education.

"Arne Duncan has a type of personality that Obama seems to prefer, which is a pragmatist who will bring about change, but he'll do it in a way that will minimize confrontation in conflict," says Jack Jennings, president of the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy [3]. "He's brought about change in Chicago, but it hasn't been a head-on clash with the teachers' union. He's done it in a way that they all walk away from the table congratulating each other."

Supporters say Duncan has the right constitution for the job. On both substance and style, he has won praise from divergent interest groups, including the American Federation of Teachers [4] and the New York City-based Democrats for Education Reform [5].

Duncan shut down Chicago schools that performed poorly and reopened them with entirely new staffs. He started coaching and mentoring programs for teachers. He also supported a boom in new charter schools with diverse models, from military academies to single-sex schools, and piloted a program to pay teachers bonuses for top performance -- two controversial innovations Obama supports.

An Uncertain Future

Of course, an education secretary can't exactly dictate reform from on high. But he can use the bully pulpit to put a spotlight on certain problems and solutions, says Jennings, and hand out grants to support new innovations. He can also provoke change through regulations -- most notably those that guide implementation of the No Child Left Behind law.

On NCLB, Duncan is a middle-of-the-roader [6]; he supports the law's goals of high expectations and accountability but has challenged Congress to improve it by doubling its funding and amending it "to give schools, districts, and states the maximum amount of flexibility possible."

Not the least of Duncan's hurdles will be the nation's preoccupation with the economic crisis. In a sign of the media's interest in education, the first question at Obama and Duncan's press conference after the announcement of Duncan's nomination was about the Federal Reserve Bank lowering its interest rates.

The financial squeeze hitting schools could hinder Duncan's efforts.

Making money and resources key to success, Duncan and Obama both made the case for education by defining it as the path to prosperity; Obama called it the "single biggest determinant" of the economy's long-term health.

"We're not going to transform every school overnight," Obama said. "What we can expect is that each and every day, we are thinking of new, innovative ways to make the schools better. That is what Arne has done. That's going to be his job. That's going to be his task."

Grace Rubenstein is a staff writer and multimedia producer at Edutopia.

Begin with the End in Mind (Project-Based Learning)

WHAT did WE LEARN?

You Tube Challenge

School of the Future World Summit 2008

Evan Arthur - The Australian Digital Education Revolution

Martin Bean - What Technology Makes Possible

Randy Fielding - Design for the Creative Age - Part 1 (slides 1-49)

Randy Fielding - Design for the Creative Age - Part 2 (slides 50-75)

Randy Fielding - Design for the Creative Age - Part 3 (slides 76 - end)

Julio Fontan - Country Spotlight: Colombia

James Grant & Lee Burley - Building Schools for the Future

Bill Hill - The Digital Renaissance Age

Michael Horn - Disrupting Class

Allyson Knox - Career Forward

Victor McNair - Teacher E-Portfolios

Katrina Reynen - Innovation that Drives Transformation Across School Systems

Don Richardson - Innovation Management

Ratnasingam Selvarani & Angeline Fern - Transformational Learning - Part 1

Ratnasingam Selvarani & Angeline Fern - Transformational Learning - Part 2

Yasutaka Shimizu - NEXT Project - Part 1

Yasutaka Shimizu - NEXT Project - Part 2

Jaeshin Song - e-Learning of Korea

Wim Veen - Homo Zappiens: New Learning Strategies in a Digital Age

Tony Wagner - The Global Achievement Gap

UM-DEARBORN INNOVATION INDEX

Posted: Monday, 08 December 2008 5:28PM UM-Dearborn 'Innovation Index' Slows Down

Innovative economic activity in Michigan fell slightly during the second quarter of 2008, according to an “innovation index” developed by scholars at the University of Michigan-Dearborn School of Management. The index fell to 95.0 in the second quarter, down from 96.0 in the first quarter of the year. Despite the drop, innovative activity in the state is still significantly higher than it was in the last quarter of 2007, when the index tallied 89.9. The quarterly index, a project of UM-Dearborn’s Center for Innovation Research, or iLabs, provides a summary measure of economic innovation activity in the state of Michigan. The index tracks economic innovation in Michigan based on calculations of employment of “innovation workers,” trends in venture capital, trademark applications, incorporation activity, small business loans and gross job creation. Of the six indicators, three rose and three fell in the quarter. “The Index began to show the effects of the national financial crisis in the second quarter,” according to Lee Redding, associate professor of business economics and director of the Innovation Index at the UM-Dearborn School of Management. The positive indicators included venture capital, employment of “innovation workers,” and the number of trademarks applied for in the state. “Venture capital activity rose for the third straight quarter, adding two points to the Innovation Index,” Redding said. The proportion of “innovation workers,” or those employed in engineering or science fields, also grew slightly, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Trademark applications also were marginally ahead of their first-quarter level and slightly ahead of the year-earlier number,” according to Redding. “The second quarter’s total was the highest since the first quarter of 2006 and added 0.3 points to the index.” On the negative side, the number of loans arranged through the Detroit office of the Small Business Administration continued its decline. “This measure peaked in the second quarter of 2006 and has since dropped in seven of eight quarters,” Redding said. The number of new incorporations, while higher than the year-ago numbers, “declined somewhat from the first quarter number” and subtracted 0.6 points from the index, Redding said. The largest drag on the index was in “the reported number of new jobs created by new companies or companies adding jobs,” Redding said. While that number totaled 208,000 in the first quarter of 2008, that represents a significant decline from the 226,000 reported in the last quarter of 2007, causing a 2.4 point decline in the index. (Due to data availability, this item enters the index calculation one quarter late.) The Innovation Index for the third quarter of 2008 will be released in March. Redding collaborates on the project with economist Anne-Louise Statt.

© MMVIII WWJ Radio, All Rights Reserved.

PMP Pals' Network Blog: Post Operative Weight Loss & Nutrition

PMP Pals' Network Blog: Post Operative Weight Loss & Nutrition

In addition to the challenges of regaining lost weight (43 pounds), I have had two instances of intestinal blockage in the last two months. After the first I was told to eat a low-residue diet (low in insoluble fibers). (e.g. nuts or apple, pear, and potato skins.) But, four weeks later I had a second blockage. Both blockages were resolved without surgery.

Have others had this experience? Do you have any ideas on avoiding blockages? I was told that surgery to remove adhesions often creates new scar tissue, and so often isn't helpful.

DPS Edison Elementary on the Art Road

SOMETHING to stay EVER-MINDFUL of and ADHERE to!

A Middle School Student Makes a Scientific Breakthrough

Solar-Energy Star: A Middle School Student Makes a Scientific Breakthrough
William Yuan earns a $25,000 fellowship in an Oregon school district's laboratory.
by Jennifer Hillner

Dressed in jacket and tie, William Yuan sits in the basement of the U.S. Library of Congress, his hands clutching the bench beneath him. The thirteen-year-old has traveled to Washington, DC, from his hometown of Beaverton, Oregon, not to sightsee like most kids his age, but to take care of business.

Yuan has already met with his state's congressional representatives, and in half an hour, he will appear onstage to accept a $25,000 fellowship from the Davidson Institute. The seventh grader won the award for designing a new, more efficient solar cell -- a project he undertook at Meadow Park Middle School.

Yuan began working with solar cells two years ago, after science teacher Susan Duncan encouraged him to tackle an engineering project. He spent hours searching the Internet, brainstorming with Duncan, and talking with professionals before he found a topic that piqued his interest: the global energy crisis. Building on research from Georgia Tech and Notre Dame universities, Yuan found a way to improve the conversion efficiency and yields of solar cells.
Most solar cells absorb visible light to produce electricity, but his design harnesses both visible and ultraviolet light. That's particularly helpful in cloudy areas, such as where he lives in the Pacific Northwest, because the solar cell can continue to generate electricity even when clouds obscure the Sun. To achieve this result, Yuan applied various coatings, integrated nanotubes, and added specialized nanostructures to a typical solar cell. Experts have given his method a thumbs-up.

Solar-Power Prodigy

Yuan was one of twenty scholars under the age of eighteen the Davidson Institute recognized in September 2008 for their extraordinary work in subjects as diverse as literature, math, and philosophy. What sets Yuan apart? He is the youngest student ever to win in the science category, a testament to both his intelligence and his tenacity. "The scientific process can be slow," notes Tacie Moessner, who manages Davidson's fellowship program. "So although many of the fellows begin their projects at a younger age, by the time they have something to actually present, they may be sixteen or seventeen years old."

Yuan's solar cell is certainly not the stuff of a typical middle school science project. But his achievements are a shining example of what's possible when a public school -- or a school district -- makes a concerted effort to promote advanced learning. The Beaverton School District did just that four years ago when it started Summa Options, a program of advanced curriculum for students who score in the 99 percentile on standardized reading and math tests or a test of cognitive ability.

The idea was to bring exceptional children in grades 6-8 together to be active participants in their own education. This approach is a departure from that of many traditional talented and gifted programs, which tend to label kids but do little to foster their abilities.
"I was enrolled in a TAG program, but they just tested me once and said I was in," Yuan recalls. "They didn't really do anything." By creating an outlet for his energy and talent, Summa Options gave Yuan the support he needed to thrive.

Of course, placing a disparate group of geniuses together in one room could have been disastrous. Yet the Summa teachers quickly discovered that profoundly gifted kids flourish when they are among peers. "Though you may envision a room full of bored, lazy, and surly know-it-alls, the real dynamics are very different," says Summa humanities teacher Mark Wandell. "Students are no longer scared of being put down or misunderstood, and so discussions are consistently rich and passionate. Formerly shy and withdrawn kids become gregarious, and the gregarious learn how to truly lead."

This environment encouraged Yuan to excel. "My peers are at about the same level, so we're spurred to go farther because of the competition," he says. "We push each other."

Summa Substance

The Summa program emphasizes individualized instruction within a broad curriculum. Each student chooses a science research topic, investigates it, and then prepares a background research paper. Classes focus on meeting goals. For example, a student may spend months -- rather than days -- trying to solve a given problem through extensive research and experimentation. "As long as you get everything done by a certain date," Yuan notes, "you can go at your own pace, spending more time on a certain subject, as opposed to finishing something that you're good at and then being bored for the rest of the time."

Students devoted much of the first trimester of the 2007-08 school year to preparing a science fair project, some of which are nominated to compete in the Northwest Science Expo (a qualifying fair for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair). Their teachers helped by providing them with the materials they needed. "We work with local high school and college instructors to find equipment for particularly advanced projects," says science teacher Susan Duncan. "Fortunately, our science lab has enough equipment and space for students to work as individuals, as partners, or in small groups to complete labs each week." (Students use a form with rubrics that helps them refine their classroom and science fair projects. Download a PDF of the form.)

Duncan also helps her students avoid boredom by strongly encouraging them to take part in extracurricular activities that pair academics with practical skills. Competitions such as the First Lego League -- in which teams design robots using Lego bricks, sensors, motors, and gears -- allow the Summa students to gain confidence, work in a multiage setting, and, of course, have fun.

"Last year at Science Bowl, our team was made up almost entirely of eighth graders -- I was one of the only sixth graders," Yuan says. "That was a really great experience. We made it to the state finals." (Yuan and his teammates are highly decorated. This year, they placed second at the Lego league's International Open and at the Northwest Science Expo, and they won the Oregon Chess for Success State Tournament.)

Meeting of the Minds

Competitions also provide the students with ample opportunity to bond with peers and adults beyond their classmates, teachers, and parents. While working on a Lego project, Yuan and the rest of the school's Math and Science Engineering (MESA) Club visited a Portland State University engineering-design lab. There, Yuan met research professor Chunfei Li and became interested in nanotechnology.

"Later, when the Lego project was done, I went back and Professor Li taught me about nanostructures using the electron microscope," explains Yuan. He met with Li after school and on weekends to learn how to apply what he'd learned to the solar cell. Without his science teacher and mentors, Yuan feels things would have been different: "I probably couldn't have finished my solar-cell project. If even one of them was taken out, huge chunks of the project would collapse."

Another key supporter was Zhiyong (Fred) Li, a process engineer at Applied Materials and a friend of the family. Li recognized Yuan's interest in engineering and math and became the boy's mentor. "I am excited to see more and more young and talented people such as William interested and involved in green renewable energy projects," says Li, who spoke with Yuan regularly on the phone. "William's project deals with the heart of the issue in solar technology -- increasing conversion efficiency and yields, and lowering the cost of solar electricity. His solutions are very well thought out and make perfect practical sense in theory."

Yuan also received a great deal of support from his parents, who are both engineers at Intel. William conducted his first science experiment -- studying the life of a laptop battery -- when he was in fourth grade. He attributes his love of science to natural curiosity. "Listening to the news or watching the Discovery Channel introduced me to all sorts of concepts that you don't get by watching the Cartoon Network," Yuan explains. "I would take all those concepts and events and look them up and start integrating them in to what I knew, and then my perspective of the world would change."

Yuan also possesses the discipline of a pianist and the critical mind of a chess player (two pastimes he enjoys). "I notice problems or inefficiencies of a certain product or process, and then I think about ways I can fix them," he says.

Even on his way to Washington, DC, Yuan was thinking deeply. "If I'm sitting in an airport, I note the inefficiencies of the McDonald's line," he says. "I think about those things if I get bored." Yuan plans to save his Davidson prize money for college, where he aims to study science and technology. For now, he's headed back to the Meadow Park lab. There, he's building an optimization model of the parameters of his solar cell for the school's science fair.
"I want to verify my calculations and experiment more to make sure everything that I've calculated and tested works in the real world as opposed to a simple lab setting," Yuan says. He wants to be certain that all the work he's done on solar cells -- already worth at least $25,000 -- gets put to good use.

Jennifer Hillner is a New Hampshire-based freelance writer who specializes in technology.
This article originally published on 10/29/2008

ADD this to OUR Conversation

http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/reports/roundtable.html

SUMMARY: Informs Our Understanding

The OTHER-SIDE of the Coin!

Kids need more time in the land of make-believe


BY DAVID CRARY • ASSOCIATED PRESS • November 23, 2008


In one classroom, preschool teachers squatted on the floor, pretending to be cave-dwelling hunter-gatherers. Next door, another group ended a musical game by placing their tambourines and drums atop their heads.

Silly business, to be sure, but part of an agenda of utmost seriousness: to spread the word that America's children need more time for freewheeling play at home and in their schools.

"We're all sad, and we're a little worried. ... We're sad about something missing in childhood," psychologist Michael Thompson recently told 900 early-childhood educators from 22 states.

"We have to fight back," he declared. "We're going to fight for play."

The teachers then dispersed into dozens of workshops, some lighthearted, some scholarly, but all supporting the case that creative, spontaneous play is vital and endangered.

It's not a brand-new cause -- two years ago it was endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. But social changes and new demands on kids' spare time confront free-play advocates with an ever-moving target.

Among the speakers at the New York conference was Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a Temple University psychologist who contends that lack of play in early childhood education "could be the next global warming."

Without ample opportunity for forms of play that foster innovation and creative thinking, she argues, America's children will be at a disadvantage in the global economy.

"Play equals learning," she said. "For too long we have divorced the two."

Some of the factors behind diminished time for play have been evolving for decades, others are more recent. Added together, they have resulted in eight to 12 fewer hours of free play time per week for the average American child since the 1980s, experts say.

Among the key factors, according to Thompson:

• Parents' reluctance to let their kids play outside on their own, for fear of abduction or injury, and the companion trend of scheduling lessons, supervised sports and other structured activities that consume a large chunk of a child's nonschool hours.

• More hours per week spent by kids watching TV, playing video games, using the Internet, communicating on cell phones.

• Shortening or eliminating recess at many schools -- a trend so pronounced that the National PTA has launched a "Rescuing Recess" campaign.

• More emphasis on formal learning in preschool, more homework for elementary school students and more pressure from parents on young children to quickly acquire academic skills.

"Parents are more self-conscious and competitive than in the past," Thompson said. "They're pushing their kids to excel. ... Free play loses out."

The consequences are potentially dire, according to Thompson. He contends that diminished time to play freely with other children is producing a generation of socially inept young people and is a factor behind high rates of youth obesity, anxiety, attention-deficit disorder and depression.

Many families turn to organized sports as a principal nonschool activity, but Thompson said this option doesn't necessarily breed creativity and can lead to burnout for good young athletes and frustration for the less skilled.

Vivian Paley, a former kindergarten teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and now an author and consultant, argues that the most vital form of play for young children involves fantasy and role-playing with their peers.

"They're inventing abstract thinking before the world tells them what to think," Paley said in her speech to the conference. "It gets them thinking, 'I am intended to have my own ideas.' "

MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Report

Digital Media and Learning (Web-site)
http://digitallearning.macfound.org/site/c.enJLKQNlFiG/b.2029199/

Video on The Future of Education

"The Future of Education" a keynote by Jamais Cascio at Moodle Moot June 2008


http://www.theelearninghub.com/resources/video/JamaisCmm08Keynote.mov

NSF GRANT Workshop #3

Creation of the FIT Parent Network Blog-Site

FI3T Project PI's Meeting AGENDA November 22, 2008

FI³T Project PIs Meeting

November 24, 2008

5:00 – 7:00 pm

SOE Conference Room 251

Fairlane Center South (FCS)

University of Michigan-Dearborn

AGENDA

1.0 Welcome

2.0 Seminar Meeting Dec. 13

2.1 Structure

2.2 Celebration

3.0 Food ideas for 12/3 and 12/13

4.0 Advisory Board Meeting

4.1 Schedule for early January

5.0 Workshops - Winter

5.1 Students

5.1.1 Schedule – want to distribute on 12/13

5.2 Parents

5.2.1 Schedule – want to distribute on 12/13

6.0 PI Meetings - Winter

6.1 Schedule

7.0 Meeting with School Principals

7.1 Schedule

8.0 Others

9.0 Adjourn

WINDSPIRE INSPIRES GOING GREEN! (GREAT LAKES IT REPORT PRESS RELEASE)

An example of a Windspire installation

Posted: Monday, 17 November 2008 9:35PM

Warren Schools To Consider Renewable Energy Curriculum

A unique vertical-axis wind turbine would be installed at the Macomb Math, Science and Technology Center under an agreement to be considered Wednesday night by the board of the Warren Consolidated Schools.

The Windspire wind turbine would be installed by Southern Exposure Renewable Energy Co. of Ortonville. It's manufactured by Nevada-based Mariah Power.

The turbine is part of a larger proposal to create a "renewable energy institute" at the math and science magnet school, with the company and the school district working together to develop a new renewable energy curriculum.

More at www.mariahpower.com or www.seenergyco.com.

Recently Mariah Power partnered with Mastech of Sterling Heights to manufacture its Windspire product at Mastech's plant in Manistee. The first Michigan made wind turbines are scheduled to become available in February.

Framing for the Proposed Legislation (Previous Post)

Stephen Dill proposes a 21st Century system based on these objectives:

1. Extend education throughout life. Make it a part of our daily lives and have it begin with birth and end soon after death.
2. Take education out of centralized buildings (schools) and make it the responsibility of the family, community, nation, and the world.
3. Leverage technology to enable everyone to have access to the same resources.

Scenario

Let’s look at this from the perspective of the individual and step it out to the world.

Individuals

• Youth education is seen as a family function, augmented by a volunteer force of seniors, retirees, and experts available in the immediate and adjacent communities performing the roles of teacher, coach and mentor.
• Youth education begins in the home using modules with lessons for parent, child and siblings.
• Individual education is an individual’s obligation to society, advocated by federal law, supported by employers, communities and families.
• Course topics cross all philosophies, languages, religions and beliefs for the old and the young they are teaching.
• Team teaching is carried out in playgroups in neighborhoods in homes, community centers, parks and businesses. Groups of adults of all ages with similar interests meet in public and corporate settings as well as virtually within collaborative Web environments. Parents and children gather in homes and community centers, sharing interests and research and reporting progress among peers.
• When the individual exhibits enough maturity, progress is self-determined, self-monitored and presented to the relevant communities for input and use by others.
• Learning happens in life: in the workplace, the libraries, on the farms, in the factories of the immediate and adjacent neighborhoods.
• Scheduling, networking and cross leveling of resources is supported online.
• Education is not seen as a formal stage of life, instead a life-long habit of reading, reflecting, exchanging and growing.

US education system

• Facilitates discussions about learning, living and life.
• Teaches self esteem, self-confidence and the value of improving one’s self, community, nation, world and legacy.
• Gradually returns school buildings to alternative uses.

US culture

• Gradually encourages lifelong learning
• Respect for generations, races and all differences is built into every person’s thinking as they learn to rely on more and more people in order to learn, to carry out their obligation.

World culture

• Understanding and respect for nationalities, beliefs, generations, races and all differences is built into every person’s thinking as they learn to rely on more and more people in order to learn, to carry out their obligation.

Provided: By Don Carli

NSF ITEST Grant Advisory Board Member's Proposed Legislation FITS!

TRUST: Creativity, Risk, Playful Explorations by DESIGN!

Plusers! Breadth, Depth, Communications, Collaboration

NSF ITEST Grant Workshop # 2

WHAT a CONCEPT!

EDUCATION WEEK

Published Online: November 11, 2008

Published in Print: November 12, 2008

Commentary

Universities and Public Schools: A Partnership Whose Time Has Come

By Susan H. Fuhrman & Nancy W. Streim

Even after a presidential election that featured too little discussion of education, few Americans would not know that our public schools often fail the students who need them most, particularly those in the inner city. One promising strategy for lessening this systemwide deficiency involves enlisting new external partners to collaborate in school improvement, including for-profit companies, foundations, community-based organizations, and colleges and universities.

Each of these partners has much to offer, but the vote here is that colleges and universities—because of the resources they bring to bear, but also because of their stake in public schools’ success—are best equipped to do the job. As higher education leaders ourselves, we are admittedly biased, but we also speak from direct personal experience: our past involvement in creating Philadelphia’s Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School and the Penn Partnership Schools network, and our current efforts to create a range of partnerships between Teachers College, Columbia University, and public schools in the surrounding New York City neighborhood of Harlem.

These efforts have not only expanded educational options for children, but also completely sold us on the value of, and the imperative for, higher education’s being deeply involved in community development. Indeed, at Teachers College in late October, we convened a working conference of university and public school leaders from New York state who believe, as we do, that the moment is ripe for a new era of university-public school partnerships. The potential benefits for both sets of partners are huge, and the failure to realize them could in turn spell failure for the broader enterprise of American education.

Why universities? The answer lies in the problems that public schools face, and that underlie education’s achievement gaps in general.

More than a century ago, John Dewey argued that education is not merely knowledge received by students in sterile classrooms, but is instead an ongoing process of active engagement that occurs in churches, streets, communities, homes, and all the other theaters of life.

Of course, the corollary of this view is that the performance of a child in school is a reflection not only of the quality of her teachers, but also the supports and challenges in her home and community life, her economic and social well-being, and her mental and physical health.

We believe that universities, with faculty members working across a range of fields and disciplines, have the breadth of expertise to help public schools address all these issues. At the same time, universities have access to the highest-quality research and empirical knowledge to implement new models for schooling. And because they themselves are in the business of education, they understand firsthand the imperatives and challenges involved.

The last point underscores the stake that universities hold in public schools’ success. The students struggling in public school classrooms today are the students who—should they make it that far—will struggle in university classrooms tomorrow. If they arrive on the steps of higher education needing significant remediation, that becomes the universities’ problem to solve. Surely, for the most selfish of reasons, it is in the universities’ interest to fix the problem at the beginning of the pipeline rather than at the end.

Moreover, universities are also neighbors. Often they operate—and their students and many of their faculty and staff members live—in or next to poor communities. Beyond a moral obligation to be of service, universities can apply resources so that everyone prospers from strong and safe environments, accessible institutions, and a broad array of economic and educational opportunities.

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The case for universities as the partner of choice for public schools is evident. But the path universities must follow to make such partnerships work is less so. Here, from our own experience and that of others, are some of the factors we believe are essential for success.

Mutual respect. Too often, the divide between theoreticians at universities and practitioners in public schools is never bridged. Each camp believes that it knows best and that the other is incapable of “getting it.” In fact, whether the players acknowledge it or not, education at any level is a continuous loop between theory and practice. Academicians, for their part, base their ideas, results, and curricula on what occurs in the field. The goal should be to acknowledge and maximize this exchange and constantly harvest its fruits.

Sustained commitment. Successful, sustained partnerships are built on honest relationships and equal levels of commitment to agreed-upon goals. Making partnerships of any kind succeed takes time. The partners must learn one another’s strengths and weaknesses, adapt to one another’s cultures, and simply observe, over time, the programs they have implemented together to see what works and what needs improvement. Similarly, it takes time for fears, mistrust, and resistance to be overcome. At a minimum, a single cohort of students should have moved through a school before a partnership can be declared a success.

Quid pro quos. There must be genuine, agreed-upon benefits for both partners. The university that sends its researchers into a public school merely to obtain data will generate little more than resentment. Instead, universities must approach partnerships with the stated aim of improving student outcomes—and then take accountability for the results. They must also be willing to provide tangible benefits, such as professional-development opportunities for teachers, the assignment of on-site specialists and interns to decrease students-to-teacher ratios, and access to campus resources.

At the same time, the public school that looks merely for a handout will soon alienate its academic partner. Instead, the school must commit to a climate conducive to both research and change, with buy-in starting at the top and emanating across staff members, parents, and other stakeholders. All of this must result from careful assessment—both beforehand and ongoing—of where common ground lies and where the impact will be greatest. Technology? The arts? Mathematics? The answers depend on a painstaking effort to address the range of supports needed to ensure that all students reap the desired academic and social benefits of the partnership.

Engagement of all stakeholders. If, as Dewey maintained, education is a product of all societal institutions, university partners must work to engage other institutions to make a university-public school partnership work. These other forces include community leaders and parents; city, school board, medical, and mental-health leaders; and teachers’ union officials.

All of this takes not only time, but also hard work, the commitment of financial resources and people power, and, above all, the mobilization of political will. Obviously, there are risks for the higher education partner. If public school students perform poorly, it will reflect negatively on the university. If the university withdraws, the public school loses resources and the university loses credibility.

But the alternatives are far riskier. Schools and students will continue to fail. Universities will continue to be castigated for their indifference, generating ill will in their surrounding communities—and they will continue to be flooded with students who are unprepared to succeed in higher education and who require expensive and difficult remediation.

On the other side of the coin, the rewards of success are surely what we all hope for: a productive education pipeline; improved knowledge and practice of what works in schools; the closing of achievement gaps; the restoration of the U.S. education system as the world’s finest; and the revitalization of American competitiveness in the global economy.

Plus partners on the ground gain something more on the personal level. Three years ago, our university-assisted school partner, the Penn Alexander School, graduated its first class of 8th graders. Judith Rodin, then the president of the University of Pennsylvania, spoke at the ceremony, which the whole community attended. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

As educators, we had never been prouder.

Susan H. Fuhrman is the president and Nancy W. Streim is associate vice president of Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City.

MICHIGAN STEM SUMMIT?

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A STEM Stimulus Package

Some states look to jump-start STEM opportunities

By Isa Zimmerman and Massachusetts STEM stakeholders and volunteers

Converge Summer 2008

Along with the first American telegraph, the first basketball game and the first e-mail, Massachusetts was the first state in the union to hold a statewide STEM summit. It was 2004, following the U.S. Department of Education's National Summits on Mathematics and Science, when Massachusetts launched the nation's first summit on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The focus was to bring stakeholders together to define and discuss STEM issues in the Commonwealth and to pursue solutions.

The problems were clear: not enough students graduating with STEM backgrounds to fill the open positions in the marketplace; graduates choosing business rather than teaching; and fewer students indicating an interest in STEM careers.

At about the same time, the Massachusetts Legislature began investing in STEM workforce development through the Economic Stimulus Bill. This legislation was intended to improve education and preparation of students for the STEM pipeline and has provided over $10 million in funding for STEM programs.

While the programs have produced many ideas and engaged students, several people -- especially those in the private sector -- were frustrated with having to reiterate their needs and interests. Additionally, there was some repetition of initiatives, which meant that scarce resources were not being used to their best advantage. Slowly the notion emerged for a well-constructed, strategic plan. The plan would lay out an inventory and a comparison of actual resources versus needs, which would help focus the efforts of all the stakeholders in the Commonwealth.

In 2006, Jack Wilson, the president of the University of Massachusetts, himself a physicist, created a position to oversee STEM activities and a call went out at the fourth summit for volunteers interested in creating a state plan. Several networks were targeted to secure broad representation of the institutions and groups working on STEM.

Several face-to-face meetings, many e-mails and at least eight drafts, resulted in an outline. This volunteer group identified all the elements needed in a state STEM plan.

However, a volunteer group with no affiliation does not have the authority to promulgate the development of a plan. So the next step was to go to the Department of Higher Education, where the Pipeline Fund resides, and which oversees the functioning of the Robert H. Goddard Council, an oversight group mandated by the Economic Stimulus Bill. The council includes pre-kindergarten through higher education stakeholders, legislators and business representatives. The group proposed the development of a plan for Massachusetts, based on the outline created by the volunteers.

The council agreed and approved a contract to hire an overseer for the process.

On Nov. 7, 2007, the Goddard Council approved the development of a state STEM plan with the nonprofit organization Education Development Center, Inc., overseeing the planning process. An advisory committee was convened and a process determined.

In May 2008, the Massachusetts Legislature re-established its STEM Caucus to contribute to the plan. This is an informal group led by a state representative and a senator, which brings together other legislators, educators and the business sector to "resolve" policy and financial supports for STEM in Massachusetts.

Straight from the Plan
The following is excerpted from the Massachusetts STEM plan:

Massachusetts STEM Education Goal and Objectives
The goal of an integrated STEM strategy for Massachusetts is to increase, by 35 percent, the number of high school students preparing for and entering STEM careers by 2012, as measured by SAT indication of STEM career choices and college applications in STEM disciplines.

To achieve this goal, the following objectives should be met:

1. Increase significantly the number of students, including females and culturally and linguistically diverse and underserved students, who are aware of, interested in, and motivated to study STEM from elementary school through higher education graduation.
2. Raise the level of STEM achievement of all Massachusetts students, from elementary school through completion of higher education, by 10 percent a year increase in performance as measured by a variety of methodologies and indicators of achievement, including MCAS, NAEP, TIMSS, and college course completion rates within the next five years.
3. Increase, by 10 percent a year, the number of qualified teachers of STEM (pre-k - 16) who can provide solid STEM education for all students, through both teacher preparation and professional development, as measured by number of teachers licensed in STEM and hired to teach STEM subjects within the next five years.
4. Increase, by 10 percent a year, the number of students entering as STEM college majors who then graduate in these fields.
5. Improve and provide equitable STEM instruction, curriculum and programs from elementary school through higher education as indicated from an inventory to be prepared as part of the state plan.

Resources from the States
Massachusetts looked to the following state plans while developing its own:

1. Alabama:http://www.amsti.org
2. Connecticut:http://www.ctacad.org/files/2007KeepingCTCompetitive.pdf
3. Georgia:http://www.gaprism.org
4. Hawaii:http://www.hawaii.gov/dbedt/innovation
5. Kentucky:One of the recommendations of Kentucky's STEM task force is to engage business, industry and civic leaders to improve STEM education and skills in the Commonwealth and create incentives for Kentucky businesses that employ and invest in STEM-educated students.
   http://cpe.ky.gov/news/reports/cpe_reports/stem.htm
6. Minnesota's STEM Web site lets readers know that STEM is more than just math equations, lab reports and spreadsheets. It's about getting into subjects that can lead to exciting careers.
   http://www.mn-stem.com
7. Ohio:http://stem.ohio.gov
8. Rhode Island:Accountability for results in math and science has been assigned to the governor's new Statewide PK-16 Council. Through this structure, responsibility for and commitment to action will be shared among Rhode Island's educational and business leaders to ensure system improvement on each of the recommended strategies.
   http://www.governor.ri.gov/documents/TEC_M&S_FA_LR.pdf
9. Texas:http://www.tea.state.tx.us/ed_init/sec/thsp/tstem.html

STEM / ITEST Update

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National Science Foundation Awards Institutions Promoting STEM in K-12 Schools

By News Report

November 04, 2008

Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries and Clarkson University announced they have been jointly awarded $1.4 million through the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) grant program, a national award that recognizes innovative teaching approaches that foster science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills among high school students.

Beacon Institute and Clarkson received the award to expand their Student Enabled Network of Sensors for the Environment using Innovative Technology (SENSE IT) curriculum, a program that will teach 9,000 New York high school students to design, build, test, deploy and interpret environmental sensors used to monitor water quality in the Hudson and St. Lawrence rivers.

The program also includes intensive teacher training sessions on cutting-edge technological and education skills and requires long-term commitments by schools to utilize these methods. Students and teachers will work directly with the River and Estuary Observatory Network that is being implemented by Beacon Institute, IBM and Clarkson.

"For New York State and the nation to remain competitive in the global economy it is essential we develop math, science and engineering skills in young students," said John Cronin, director and CEO of Beacon Institute. "By combining an environmentally-driven purpose -- the monitoring and protection of critical waterways -- with advanced technological skills, we are preparing a new generation of innovators and leaders who can address one of our most pressing regional, national and global environmental challenges -- threatened water resources."

The SENSE IT program provides hands-on teacher and student training to construct sensors for the waters of the Hudson and St. Lawrence rivers with the goal of interesting students in STEM-based careers.

Disruption Seeks/Creates Cracks in the SILO!

Published Online: October 28, 2008

Published in Print: November 5, 2008

Scholars Discuss 'Disruptive Innovation' in K-12 Education

By Andrew Trotter

Washington

A latecomer to a panel discussion this week on “disruptive innovation” in K-12 education and health care may have suspected that he or she had entered the wrong room.

The main speaker, Clayton M. Christensen, was talking about the steel industry, not education or health. Then he discussed the automobile, radio, microchip, and software industries.

To Mr. Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business School, those industries offer profound lessons for K-12 schooling. In every case, the introduction of a new technology led to the upending of the established leaders by upstart entrants, he explained at an Oct. 27 panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute.

See Also

What technological innovations have changed the way you teach and the way your students learn? Share your experiences in our forum.

Mr. Christensen, the lead author of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, said similar changes will soon happen to public school districts, as providers of virtual schooling gradually claim more and more students, starting with those who are poorly served by their current schools.

'No Stupidity'

The book, published last spring and co-authored by Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson, predicts that those changes will accelerate until, by 2019, roughly half of all high school courses will be taken online. ("Online Education Cast as 'Disruptive Innovation'," May 7, 2008.)

To the roomful of policy experts and educators at the think tank’s luncheon meeting, Mr. Christensen explained that the leading companies did not lose their primacy through their managers’ incompetence. Instead, it was because they obeyed two hallowed principles of business: First, listen to your best customers and give them what they want; and second, invest where the profit margin is most attractive.

Rather, businesses need to be willing to act in ways that may be opposed to their short-term interests, and that lower their costs and simplify their products or services, making them more attractive to a larger pool of potential customers.

“It’s a story with no villains and no stupidity,” noted Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the AEI and the moderator of the discussion.

Mr. Horn, who runs Innosight Institute, a think tank in Watertown, Mass., devoted to Mr. Christensen’s theories, was on a panel at the event. Outlining the application to education, he cited Harvard education professor Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and said “children’s need for customization collides with schools’ imperative for standardization.”

The billions of dollars that have been invested to put computers into schools have failed to make a difference because “we have crammed them into conventional classrooms,” said Mr. Horn.

Schools and students have not been able to reap the benefits of technology, he said, because of the web of constraints—called “interdependencies”—that schools have not been able to escape, including the organization of the school day, the division of learning in academic disciplines, the architecture of school buildings, and the federal, state, and local mandates that educators must obey.

'Customization'

On hand at the Oct. 27 event as the official “responder and raconteur” was education expert Chester E. Finn Jr., the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington.

Perhaps to the surprise of some in the audience, Mr. Finn generally agreed with Mr. Christensen’s and Mr. Horn’s arguments.

Mr. Finn, who served in the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan administration, had two main points of contention. First, he disliked the authors’ reliance on Mr. Gardner’s theories, which, he asserted, are dismissed by “respectable cognitive psychologists.”

On that point, the authors are “wrong, but it doesn’t matter,” he concluded. “Gardner or no, I’m still in favor of greater individualization and customization of education.”

Second, Mr. Finn said, he thinks the authors have underestimated the power of politics to stymie the change in education, because in most cases it is the schools, not the students, that are the purchasers of the new technology-driven forms of education.

That means virtual schools will face “resistance and pushback and hubris, and a sort of smugness” from public education, Mr. Finn said.

As a result, he said, he did not expect regular public schools to become the “main route” for new technologies to be applied to K-12 education.

Mr. Finn added that a more likely route was for charter schools and families to purchase the technology directly, possibly in the form of supplemental private education, perhaps subsidized by philanthropies.

INNOVATION CONSTANT: IRRESPECTIVE of Space and Time!

Unboxed

It’s No Time to Forget About Innovation

James Yang

By JANET RAE-DUPREE

Published: November 1, 2008

BY its very nature, innovation is inefficient. While blockbusters do emerge, few of the new products or processes that evolve from innovative thinking ultimately survive the test of time. During periods of economic growth, such inefficiencies are chalked up as part of the price of forging into the future.

But these aren’t such times. Wild market gyrations, frozen credit markets and an overall sour economy herald a new round of corporate belt-tightening. Foremost on the target list is anything inefficient. That’s bad news for corporate innovation, and it could spell trouble for years to come, even after the economy turns around.

“To be honest, we had a problem with innovation even before the economic crisis. That’s the reason I wrote my book,” says Judy Estrin, former chief technology officer at Cisco Systems and author of “Closing the Innovation Gap.” “We’re focusing on the short term and we’re not planting the seeds for the future.”

In tough times, of course, many companies have to scale back. But, she says: “To quote Obama, you don’t use a hatchet. You use a scalpel. Leaders need to pick and choose with great care.”

There are important things managers can do to ensure that creative forward-thinking doesn’t go out the door with each round of layoffs. Fostering a companywide atmosphere of innovation — encouraging everyone to take risks and to think about novel solutions, from receptionists to corner-suite executives — helps ensure that the loss of any particular set of minds needn’t spell trouble for the entire company.

She suggests instilling five core values to entrench innovation in the corporate mind-set: questioning, risk-taking, openness, patience and trust. All five must be used together — risk-taking without questioning leads to recklessness, she says, while patience without trust sets up an every-man-for-himself mentality.

In an era of Six Sigma black belts and brown belts, Ms. Estrin urges setting aside certain efficiency measures in favor of what she calls “green-thumb leadership” — a future-oriented management style that understands, and even encourages, taking risks. Let efficiency measures govern the existing “factory farm,” she says, but create greenhouses and experimental gardens along the sides of the farm to nurture the risky investments that likely will take a number of years to bear fruit.

“I’m not suggesting you only cut from today’s stuff and keep the future part untouched,” she says. “You have to balance it.”

Yet even that approach has its drawbacks. Companies that create silos of innovation by designating one group as the “big thinkers” while making others handle day-to-day concerns risk losing their innovative edge if any of the big thinkers leave the company or ultimately must be laid off.

“Innovation has to be embedded in the daily operation, in the entire work force,” says Jon Fisher, a business professor, serial entrepreneur, and author of “Strategic Entrepreneurism,” which advocates building a start-up’s business from the beginning with an eye toward selling the company. “A large acquirer’s interest in a start-up or smaller company is binary in nature: They either want you or they don’t, based on the innovation you have to offer. The best way to foster innovation is to create something, put it to the test, build a good company and then get it under the umbrella of a world-renowned company to move it forward.”

David Thompson, chief executive and co-founder of Genius.com Inc., based in San Mateo, Calif., says that innovation “has a bad name in down times” but that “bad times focus the mind and the best-focused minds in the down times are looking for the opportunities.”

“You do have to batten down the hatches and reduce expenses, but you can’t do it at the expense of the big picture,” Mr. Thompson adds. “You always have to keep in mind the bigger picture that’s coming down the road in two or three years.

“The last thing you want to do with innovation is just throw money at it. It’s a very tricky balance.”

In fact, hard times can be the source of innovative inspiration, says Chris Shipley, a technology analyst and executive producer of the DEMO conferences, where new ideas make their debuts. “Some of the best products and services come out of some of the worst times,” she says. In the early 1990s, tens of millions of dollars had gone down the drain in a futile effort to develop “pen computing” — an early phase of mobile computing — and a recession was shriveling the economic outlook.

Yet the tiny Palm Computing managed to revitalize the entire industry in a matter of months by transforming itself overnight from a software maker into a hardware company.

“Our biggest challenge right now is fear,” she says. “The worst thing that a company can do right now is go into hibernation, into duck-and-cover. If you just sit on your backside and wait for things to get better, they’re not going to. They’re going to get better for somebody, but not necessarily for you.”

HOWARD LIEBERMAN, also a serial entrepreneur and founder of the Silicon Valley Innovation Institute, says innovation breeds effectiveness. It’s not about efficiency, he argues. “Efficiency is for bean counters,” he says. “It’s not for C.E.O.’s or inventors or founders.”

The current economic downturn comes as no surprise to him, he says, because it mirrors the downturn at the time of the dot-com bust. Then and now, the companies that survive are those that keep creativity and innovation foremost.

“Creativity doesn’t care about economic downturns,” Mr. Lieberman says. “In the middle of the 1970s, when we were having a big economic downturn, both Apple and Microsoft were founded. Creative people don’t care about the time or the season or the state of the economy; they just go out and do their thing.”

Janet Rae-Dupree writes about science and emerging technology in Silicon Valley.