"Blog Academy"
When I'm not traveling, I usually do the morning carpool for my son and his friend who lives down the street. They're 8th graders at Brother Martin High School, a Catholic high school with a long tradition of educating young men in New Orleans. On the drive in, one of the interesting post-storm sights we see are school recruiting posters on the neutral grounds of city streets. The posters are trying to draw drivers' attention to new charter schools opening in the city. There are 40 charter schools operating in Orleans Parish this school year, with another seven slated to open next fall.
One series of signs along the road advertise "Sci Academy," the nickname for the New Orleans Science & Mathmetics High School. While there are many critics of the charter school concept, if we use the pre-storm failures of the city's public schools as a baseline, even the charter schools look good. I propose to make lemonade with the charter school lemons and open my own school: The New Orleans High School for Visionary Thinking, better known as Blog Academy.
The notion of a school that focuses on developing math and science skills makes a lot of sense at first glance. Improving the global position of American students in those subjects has been a goal of educators since the Eisenhower administration. In the late 1950s, the fear was that the evil red menace of communism was going to overrun us with slide rule-wielding Russian engineers. Ironically, the engineers and programmers overrunning us now are from the world's largest democracy, India.
We got to the moon. We bankrupted the Soviet economy. Americans invented the Personal Computer. We're always going to be overrun by others in terms of numbers. We need to think not in terms of a new generation of scientists but rather a new generation of visionaries who will then get all those engineers and programmers to work on projects of their creation.
That's where Blog Academy comes in.
Don't worry, we'll come up with a much cooler name for the school, so kids will wear their senior rings and letterman jackets (earned for activities like debate or Academic Games) with pride.
The hallmark of most math/science schools is the notion that the school will eschew athletics in favor of more scholarly extracurricular activities. That way there are no distractions from the mission of producing kids who can pass the Calculus A/B advanced placement test in their senior year. All math, all the time. I'd rather see the kids writing than calculating, frankly. Let's put aside the fact that the developers of Sci Academy's website can't even spell "privilege," since that's not a fair indicator. I want kids reading and writing as much as possible.
The best way to do that is not to make them write essays by hand, but to give them blogs. Each student will be required to participate in at least three writing projects: A personal journal, a daily blog whose content goes beyond that of the personal journal, and a community/team project. The personal journal is the student's first-person narrative. The content blog is where they will write their assignments for class, as well as any comments on politics, sports, lifestyle, celebrity gossip, whatever is on their minds. Team projects will vary, since it's important that these be more grassroots in nature.
All this blogging is going to require technical support. OLPC-style computers will be provided to each student. Tech-savvy kids will be recruited to mentor their classmates. The school will have a data center where servers will be installed and maintained by students. Those who are interested in working on the back-end technology will have ample opportunity to do so. Most likely, their blogs will be filled with geeky goodness as they work out problems with various platforms at various levels. Even the geeks will have to write. They'll get the foundation they need to continue geeking at the college level, including the biology and chemistry that will get them a BS degree. They'll learn the physics behind the electronics they geek with in the data center. And they'll get daily doses of the math that is the foundation of it all.
And the non-geeks will have to learn tech. They'll all learn enough math to at least understand their checking accounts and what carrying a credit card balance at 1.5% a month means. Those that want more will get more.
But they all will read and write. They'll be challenged to think, not to just calculate.
Because we will continue to produce visionaries.
One series of signs along the road advertise "Sci Academy," the nickname for the New Orleans Science & Mathmetics High School. While there are many critics of the charter school concept, if we use the pre-storm failures of the city's public schools as a baseline, even the charter schools look good. I propose to make lemonade with the charter school lemons and open my own school: The New Orleans High School for Visionary Thinking, better known as Blog Academy.
The notion of a school that focuses on developing math and science skills makes a lot of sense at first glance. Improving the global position of American students in those subjects has been a goal of educators since the Eisenhower administration. In the late 1950s, the fear was that the evil red menace of communism was going to overrun us with slide rule-wielding Russian engineers. Ironically, the engineers and programmers overrunning us now are from the world's largest democracy, India.
We got to the moon. We bankrupted the Soviet economy. Americans invented the Personal Computer. We're always going to be overrun by others in terms of numbers. We need to think not in terms of a new generation of scientists but rather a new generation of visionaries who will then get all those engineers and programmers to work on projects of their creation.
That's where Blog Academy comes in.
Don't worry, we'll come up with a much cooler name for the school, so kids will wear their senior rings and letterman jackets (earned for activities like debate or Academic Games) with pride.
The hallmark of most math/science schools is the notion that the school will eschew athletics in favor of more scholarly extracurricular activities. That way there are no distractions from the mission of producing kids who can pass the Calculus A/B advanced placement test in their senior year. All math, all the time. I'd rather see the kids writing than calculating, frankly. Let's put aside the fact that the developers of Sci Academy's website can't even spell "privilege," since that's not a fair indicator. I want kids reading and writing as much as possible.
The best way to do that is not to make them write essays by hand, but to give them blogs. Each student will be required to participate in at least three writing projects: A personal journal, a daily blog whose content goes beyond that of the personal journal, and a community/team project. The personal journal is the student's first-person narrative. The content blog is where they will write their assignments for class, as well as any comments on politics, sports, lifestyle, celebrity gossip, whatever is on their minds. Team projects will vary, since it's important that these be more grassroots in nature.
All this blogging is going to require technical support. OLPC-style computers will be provided to each student. Tech-savvy kids will be recruited to mentor their classmates. The school will have a data center where servers will be installed and maintained by students. Those who are interested in working on the back-end technology will have ample opportunity to do so. Most likely, their blogs will be filled with geeky goodness as they work out problems with various platforms at various levels. Even the geeks will have to write. They'll get the foundation they need to continue geeking at the college level, including the biology and chemistry that will get them a BS degree. They'll learn the physics behind the electronics they geek with in the data center. And they'll get daily doses of the math that is the foundation of it all.
And the non-geeks will have to learn tech. They'll all learn enough math to at least understand their checking accounts and what carrying a credit card balance at 1.5% a month means. Those that want more will get more.
But they all will read and write. They'll be challenged to think, not to just calculate.
Because we will continue to produce visionaries.
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