Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry: 1909-2006

Fascinating paper by Thomas Philippon (New York University) and Ariell Reshef
(University of Virginia) on wages, skills and technology in the U.S. financial sector over the last 100 years.

Abstract
We use detailed information about wages, education and occupations to shed light on
the evolution of the U.S. financial sector over the past century. We uncover a set of
new, interrelated stylized facts: financial jobs were relatively skill intensive, complex, and highly paid until the 1930s and after the 1980s, but not in the interim period. We investigate the determinants of this evolution and find that financial deregulation and corporate activities linked to IPOs and credit risk increase the demand for skills in financial jobs. Computers and information technology play a more limited role. Our analysis also shows that wages in finance were excessively high around 1930 and from the mid 1990s until 2006. For the recent period we estimate that rents accounted for 30% to 50% of the wage differential between the financial sector and the rest of the private sector.

National Council for Hotel Management & Catering Technology (NCHMCT) JEE 2011 Hospitality Entrance Exam Result

National Council for Hotel Management & Catering Technology invites online applications from eligible and interested students to apply for Entrance Exam JEE – 2011 for getting admission into B.Sc. Program in Hospitality & Hotel Administration for the academic year 2011-12.



About the National Council for Hotel Management & Catering Technology :

National Council for Hotel Management & Catering Technology is an autonomous body under Ministry of Tourism, Government of India. The Council centrally regulates academics for B.Sc. Hospitality and Hotel Administration and other eleven structured courses of studies that are imparted at the existing 21 Central Institutes of Hotel Management, 12 State Govt. Institutes of Hotel Management, 19 Private Institutes of Hotel Management affiliated with NCHMCT. Five Food Craft Institutes located in different parts in the country offer Diploma programs in specific operational area. All Institutes uniformly follow standardized course curricula prescribed by the Council for the different professional program.

ELIGIBILITY FOR ADMISSION

Minimum Qualification

Pass in the examination of 10+2 system of Senior Secondary education or its equivalent with English as one of the compulsory subject. Those appearing in 10+2 or equivalent examination can also appear in JEE 2011 on provisional basis.

List of approved qualifying examinations for Indian Students

  
* Plus two level examination in the 10+2 pattern of Senior Secondary education of any recognized Central/ State Board, such as Central Board of Secondary Education and Council for Indian School Certificate Examination or State Boards of Secondary Education.
  
* Intermediate or two-year Pre-University Examination conducted by a recognized Board/ University.
  
* General Certificate Education (GCE) Examination (London/ Cambridge/ Sri Lanka) at the Advanced (A) level.
  
* High School Certificate Examination of the Cambridge University.
  
* Any Public School/ Board/ University Examination in India or in foreign countries recognized by the Association of Indian Universities as equivalent to 10+2 pattern of Senior Secondary education.
  
* H.S.C. Vocational Examination.
  
* Senior Secondary School Examination conducted by the National Open School with a minimum of five subjects including English as one of the Subjects.

Age Limit : upper age limit is 22 years as on 1.7. 2011 (for General and OBC candidates) 25 years for SC / ST candidates.

How to Apply :

  
* Candidates need to apply online and download the application form printout.
  
* Note down the Application Form number for any future reference or correspondence with National Council. Also keep a photocopy of the filled in Application Form for your future record/ reference.
  
* Send the duly completed Print Version of Online Application Form having Auto Generated Application No. to JEE Cell, National Council of Hotel Management & Catering Technology NCHMCT), A-34, Institutional Area, Sector - 62, NOIDA (UP) - 201301 so as to reach on or before 28.02.2011 . Registration Process will be completed only on receipt of duly completed Print Version of Online Application Form.
  
*Admit Card of only those candidates will be uploaded whose application form will be reached on the JEE Cell, National Council of Hotel Management & Catering Technology (NCHMCT), A-34, Institutional Area, Sector - 62, NOIDA (UP) - 201301 by 28 February 2011.

MAILING YOUR FILLED APPLICATION FORM FOR JEE-2011

Duly completed Application Form should be sent to "JEE CELL" National Council for Hotel Management and Catering Technology, A-34, Sector 62, Noida-201301" in the pre-addressed envelope. Ensure that the Application Form is not folded. (Application sent through private courier services will not be accepted). Applications mailed by registered Post/ Speed Post after last date shall also not be accepted.

My statement to Cathie Black last night

See video below of last night at the Panel for Educational Policy, my statement to the new Chancellor Cathie Black.

To address the need to reduce overcrowding and class size, she should immediately call a halt to all co-locations and school closings, which only lead to conflict, bitterness and more overcrowding. Each new school sharing space with an existing school sacrifices about 10% of precious classroom space to create administrative and cluster rooms.

And she should immediately re-allocate the $1 billion to be spent on new technology next year in the capital plan to building and leasing more schools. These are not "Sophie's choices" -- these are choices that would benefit all our kids.



For more on the $1 billion extra the DOE wants to spend on new technology, see today's NY Post. Typically, the city wants to blame this on the state and the feds mandating online assessments. This doesn't fly; nowhere else in the country are they spending these kind of dollars for this purpose. Instead, the real reason is they want to expand online learning and further degrade the opportunity for our children to receive instruction from a real live teacher.

Another excuse by the DOE and another way in which they are evading their own accountability for the massive waste that will result.

Technology and the brain

There has been a lot of press coverage recently on how computer usage affects the brain. One of the main proponents of the view that there are negative effects is Baroness Susan Greenfield who believes that the predilection for online living causes shallow, fragmented thinking, “Computer use could be cutting attention spans, stifling imagination and hampering empathy, as a result, the parts of the brain involved in these traits will not develop properly.” Critics argue that her assertions are no more than speculative, with no scientific evidence to support it. A recent paper in Neuron written by cognitive scientists provides an overview of the evidence. They point out that "'technology is damaging the brain / eating our children / harming our culture’ stories are over-simplified to the point of absurdity. No-one could get away with a scare story about the whole of ‘transport’ but you can with ‘technology’ because it plays to our anxious stereotypes". It will be interesting to watch the debate unfold.

Children, Wired: For Better and for Worse

Daphne Bavelier, C. Shawn Green, Matthew W.G. Dye

Summary

Children encounter technology constantly at home and in school. Television, DVDs, video games, the Internet, and smart phones all play a formative role in children's development. The term technology subsumes a large variety of somewhat independent items, and it is no surprise that current research indicates causes for both optimism and concern depending upon the content of the technology, the context in which the technology immerses the user, and the user's developmental stage. Furthermore, because the field is still in its infancy, results can be surprising: video games designed to be reasonably mindless result in widespread enhancements of various abilities, acting, we will argue, as exemplary learning tools. Counterintuitive outcomes like these, besides being practically relevant, challenge and eventually lead to refinement of theories concerning fundamental principles of brain plasticity and learning.

Mac or PC - Should researchers care?

I have been using a Macbook for the last three years. My subjective experience (n=1) has been neutral. It has better battery time than any other laptop I have owned, which is great. But I have not really noticed a definable advantage other than that for someone like me, who mainly uses Office, Firefox, Mail and STATA as my daily tools. Having said that, I know at least one Institute Director who swears by it and many others who have converted and claim that it has helped them be more productive. From the point of view, say, of a researcher starting here in Geary or someone beginning their PhD in Economics and about to purchase a laptop, does it make much of a difference? People tell me that one can simply install Windows on the Mac to get something from both worlds but lets restrict to the choice between Mac computer and default mac operating system versus a standard PC and windows operating system. There are a lot of claims about the relative security of Mac over PC that I can't evaluate. I am interested in whether anyone thinks the choice is an important one for researchers.

Don't worry I am running out of technology issues that interest me so these posts will dry up soon!

Online Lecture Content

A lot of us have been talking about providing online lectures and tutorials to students in our classes. I am going ahead with a limited version of this in my classes this year. Thinking about doing this and looking at the technology aspects has stimulated a lot of thought. Stephen Kinsella has written a lot about his experiences in UL, and has been advocating an idea where students would get the lectures up front as a podcast and the class then could be used to really probe ideas and generate discussion.

In thinking about how to do this, I think a lot of us go with the default option of thinking about something cheap and downloadable that can be used quickly on any computer. I have been working with Camtasia for the Mac (also on PC) and I have found it to be absolutely brilliant. Various people have been giving me tips about how to get it working fully but even the very basic recording is useable. Many readers will know the UCLA STATA tutorials, which are excellent, and recorded using Camtasia.  Another option though is to think of something with much higher production values. Michael Sandel's course at Harvard is still, for me, the best example of making lectures available online that I have seen. I don't know how much Harvard paid for the production but this doesn't look cheap. There is, at least, a professional cameraperson and a very high quality camera and a lot of website development. It is probably possible to do these things that well without much cost but it is worth remembering that thousands of people will be downloading and using these videos for several years so if quality can be improved by spending some money, the default option shouldn't be always that we try to do these things for free.

Again, this is one of those issues that gets people emotional. I have talked to colleagues and some students who believe that online content is the beginning of the end for traditional university education and an ominous development. As I have said here a few times I am a complete optimist for this technology both in terms of the massive expansion in access to quality learning that it opens up but also in terms of how it benefits me personally as a professional. It really is frustrating when half of your interactions with students are made up of very routine things that could be handled more effectively for both parties by directing them to a site. Secondly, it is frustrating for students to try to keep up with technical material that really is not meant to be digested in an hour. When I was watching the NBER videos of Imbens lately, I realised how much better it was to be able to stop the video when you wanted to digest a point or play with some notes. This just simply has to be a better way of learning technical material than a live presentation. Does this mean that Imbens becomes obsolete? No, completely the opposite - it means he has a much bigger audience of people that understand him and also that he can give more lectures about innovative things that he is deeply interested in and less lectures previewing standard material that everyone should know. It also augments standard courses given all round the world in a very effective way.

For me, this is the first year I am really going to try and work with this technology in my courses so I will post a bit on how things are going. More generally, I think figuring out how this technology fits with our careers is a useful thing for anyone in research and teaching to think about.

Regenerate science

Sitting in a meeting recently with a group of people each of whom was staring down into one or other electronic gadget, the following quotation came to mind:

“In our contemporary world it may be said that the more a man becomes dependent on the gadgets whose smooth functioning assures him of a tolerable life at the material level, the more estranged he becomes from an awareness of his inner reality. I should be tempted to say that the centre of gravity of such a man and his balancing point tend to become external to himself: that he projects himself more and more into objects, into the various pieces of apparatus on which he depends for his existence. It would be no exaggeration to say that the more progress ‘humanity’ as an abstraction makes towards the mastery of nature, the more actual individual men tend to become slaves of this very conquest.” – Gabriel Marcel, Men against Humanity (London: Harvill Press, 1952)

Technology is far from neutral, as it is frequently assumed to be in both popular and scholarly writings on this subject. “The medium is the message” (McLuhan), and a technology is not simply a technique that may be employed for good or ill. It bears within itself a value system and a worldview - perhaps even a metaphysics and a theology. Telephone, television and the internet, for example, change our sense of space and time, and have a variety of effects on the relationships within the family and the wider social community. Some of these effects will be humanly beneficial, others less so, but an assessment of the technology is not possible without paying attention to the overall pattern of these effects, and to the purpose or function of the technology in relation to the purpose of human life itself. In what respect is a given tool actually serving the true end of man?

As a matter of fact, I think the portable computers we all use now are a great boon, and I could hardly do without mine. But this does not stop me noticing that this very dependence is a kind of warning sign. We are addicted to technological change in a much more serious way than simply psychologically. This makes “technology assessment” impractical, to say the least. We are running too fast to stop and assess anything – if we are not to stumble over our own feet and be left behind in the race, we have to assume we are running in the right direction.

In his classic work, The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis compares the Baconian scientist with Goethe’s Faustus. “For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious - such as digging up and mutilating the dead.”

But Lewis is no Luddite. He thinks another kind of science and technology is possible. He goes on, “The regenerate science I have in mind would not do even to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself.” Goethe and the Romantics were on to something. My book is trying to point in that direction, to encourage us to reflect on the elimination of formal and final causes from science, and the disconnectedness of our lives, and to begin to imagine another way of doing business, another way of making scientific progress – a “regenerate” science, perhaps.

Image by Giovanni Sades from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Regenerate science

Sitting in a meeting recently with a group of people each of whom was staring down into one or other electronic gadget, the following quotation came to mind:

“In our contemporary world it may be said that the more a man becomes dependent on the gadgets whose smooth functioning assures him of a tolerable life at the material level, the more estranged he becomes from an awareness of his inner reality. I should be tempted to say that the centre of gravity of such a man and his balancing point tend to become external to himself: that he projects himself more and more into objects, into the various pieces of apparatus on which he depends for his existence. It would be no exaggeration to say that the more progress ‘humanity’ as an abstraction makes towards the mastery of nature, the more actual individual men tend to become slaves of this very conquest.” – Gabriel Marcel, Men against Humanity (London: Harvill Press, 1952)

Technology is far from neutral, as it is frequently assumed to be in both popular and scholarly writings on this subject. “The medium is the message” (McLuhan), and a technology is not simply a technique that may be employed for good or ill. It bears within itself a value system and a worldview - perhaps even a metaphysics and a theology. Telephone, television and the internet, for example, change our sense of space and time, and have a variety of effects on the relationships within the family and the wider social community. Some of these effects will be humanly beneficial, others less so, but an assessment of the technology is not possible without paying attention to the overall pattern of these effects, and to the purpose or function of the technology in relation to the purpose of human life itself. In what respect is a given tool actually serving the true end of man?

As a matter of fact, I think the portable computers we all use now are a great boon, and I could hardly do without mine. But this does not stop me noticing that this very dependence is a kind of warning sign. We are addicted to technological change in a much more serious way than simply psychologically. This makes “technology assessment” impractical, to say the least. We are running too fast to stop and assess anything – if we are not to stumble over our own feet and be left behind in the race, we have to assume we are running in the right direction.

In his classic work, The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis compares the Baconian scientist with Goethe’s Faustus. “For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious - such as digging up and mutilating the dead.”

But Lewis is no Luddite. He thinks another kind of science and technology is possible. He goes on, “The regenerate science I have in mind would not do even to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself.” Goethe and the Romantics were on to something. My book is trying to point in that direction, to encourage us to reflect on the elimination of formal and final causes from science, and the disconnectedness of our lives, and to begin to imagine another way of doing business, another way of making scientific progress – a “regenerate” science, perhaps.

Image by Giovanni Sades from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Students' use of technological tools

Ioannis Papadopoulosa and Vassilios Dagdilelis have written an article that was published online in the Journal of Mathematical Behavior yesterday. The article is entitled Students’ use of technological tools for verification purposes in geometry problem solving. Here is a copy of the article abstract:

Despite its importance in mathematical problem solving, verification receives rather little attention by the students in classrooms, especially at the primary school level. Under the hypotheses that (a) non-standard tasks create a feeling of uncertainty that stimulates the students to proceed to verification processes and (b) computational environments – by providing more available tools compared to the traditional environment – might offer opportunities for more frequent usage of verification techniques, we posed to 5th and 6th graders non-routine problems dealing with area of plane irregular figures. The data collected gave us evidence that computational environments allow the development of verification processes in a wider variety compared to the traditional paper-and-pencil environment and at the same time we had the chance to propose a preliminary categorization of the students’ verification processes under certain conditions.

Students' use of technological tools

Ioannis Papadopoulosa and Vassilios Dagdilelis have written an article that was published online in the Journal of Mathematical Behavior yesterday. The article is entitled Students’ use of technological tools for verification purposes in geometry problem solving. Here is a copy of the article abstract:

Despite its importance in mathematical problem solving, verification receives rather little attention by the students in classrooms, especially at the primary school level. Under the hypotheses that (a) non-standard tasks create a feeling of uncertainty that stimulates the students to proceed to verification processes and (b) computational environments – by providing more available tools compared to the traditional environment – might offer opportunities for more frequent usage of verification techniques, we posed to 5th and 6th graders non-routine problems dealing with area of plane irregular figures. The data collected gave us evidence that computational environments allow the development of verification processes in a wider variety compared to the traditional paper-and-pencil environment and at the same time we had the chance to propose a preliminary categorization of the students’ verification processes under certain conditions.

Technology in education: a ground-map, part a (revision 2)

CAC comment: This is an edited version of my original post from 9/13/08, taking into account comments received (thanks for those!) and some further thinking about this topic.


For this month's "Monthly Forum" (yes I know I'm late to start this was last month's topic), I'd like to get a conversation going about the role of technology in education.

For myself, I'm trying to develop a "ground-map of the province" (if you will allow me an obscure reference to Dewey) of issues related to technology in education. This is part of a project that will result in a chapter on philosophical issues related to technology in education for a forthcoming book to which I've been asked to contribute.

Key question #1: What is educational technology?

Technology is "the application of science (or knowledge) to meet objectives or to solve problems." (source)

Technology is not science itself, which is primarily concerned with the production of knowledge and the sorting out of which knowledge is privileged within the academy society, by certain people who call themselves "scientists," or by policy-makers. While science clearly has a role in education (both because we want to have a public that understands its methods, issues, and major findings, and because we want to know how people learn best so we can design education to be efficient and effective), this essay isn't dealing with science per se, but with its application. When we apply science/knowledge to solve educational problems, we are (often? always?) using technology. On this broad definition of technology, schooling is largely a technological enterprise.

(Schooling is the systematic formal process whereby the behaviors [and ideas] of [mostly young] people are shaped to meet adult expectations. Education is the [largely informal] experiential process through which a person comes to know and be who s/he is. These definitions were developed by my FND 510 class this quarter.)

Technologies used in schooling include classrooms, chalkboards, books, podiums, graded classrooms, chair-desk, bells, bell schedules, school buses, school buildings, playgrounds, athletic fields, band rooms, band instruments, colored chalk, the architecture of schools, p.a. systems, teacher certification systems, the ways we "divide" subjects into "disciplines," testing (and other assessment approaches of all kinds), school districting, "catchment" areas, curriculum plans, "standards" statements, and many many other activities/processes/devices/frameworks. It is important to emphasize, "technology" isn't just things, but the systems of ideas that legitimate and constrain the use of things. On this expanded notion of technology, we can say that "schooling" is the application of technology to make mass education the mass alteration of the behaviors [and ideas] of [mostly young] people not only possible, but affordableand effective.

(Of course, it's also the application of technology to do things schooling achieves other things as well, such as warehousing kids, but let's leave that aside for the moment.)

Related to this, technologies can roughly (thanks Jason!) be divided into those that are "old" (that is, taken for granted as being "necessary" for schooling) and those that are new (that is, still being negotiated in terms of their role--or lack thereof--in schools). This, of course, depends on one's perspective, since a technology that is taken for granted by a young person might be still be considered to have an unsettled role to an older person. Similarly, technologies that are taken for granted in wealthier, suburban or private schools (such as interactive whiteboards) are often considered exotic or a luxury in poorer, urban schools. Such differences in attitude are never about whether a particular technology is really needed for education; they are always about whether they deserve to be funded or mandated for all schools--again, the central question of educational policy.

But we don't tend to talk about this question as if it were a question about technology. Instead, we limit our explicit discussion of technologies to a subset of those that are applied to policy questions about schooling, as if educational technology policy was only "about" relatively new, digital technologies, especially those tools and approaches that are not yet universal (or nearly universal) in their application to schools. "Technology," then, is used as a euphemism for "things that we're still trying to decide whether we need," or "things that only some schools can currently afford."

This limitation of the application of the concept of technology tends to draw attention away from certain critical perspectives (such as those of Michel Foucault, Neil Postman, or Michael Apple) which talk about, for example "technologies of [political] control." Surely these critical perspectives are justified in used of the word "technology," just as much as the common person is justified (in some ways) in limiting discussion of technologies to what I've described above as "digital technologies." What's important is realizing that any limitation of the word "technology" to particular types of technologies has both motivations and consequences, which should be examined. Thus, the limitation of the discussion to "digital technologies" tends to take OFF the table many of the other things I've listed, such as bell schedules and P.A. systems, even though THOSE technology are pernicious and omnipresent in schools.

I guess wWhat I'm saying is, the question of what we MEAN by "technology" is ahas political oneimplications that perhaps logically antecede questions about the use of particular technologies in particular situations. [However, let me add here, without going into it in greater detail, that a "technology" can not be completely separated from the "use" of that technology, because, well, a technology without an application in a specific situation isn't a technology at all.]

Key question #2: What criteria do we use in evaluating educational technologies?

Like all technologies, each item on the list I just generated above can be critiqued from several many different perspectives, using many different criteria. Among such criteria for criticism include effectiveness (in reaching whatever objectives are desired), efficiency, humanity, cost-effectiveness, opportunity costs, ease-of-use, standardizability (can they applied in a consistent manner), teachability (can teachers/administrators/students actually learn to use them), fairness, beauty, "fit," conformity to [public] values of all kinds, carbon footprint, etc. etc.

(For the general public, probably, the most important criterion is whether the use of a technology conduces to the achievement of [whatever measure of success is given credence, for example] higher standardized test scores. But that criterion is hotly disputed by many.)

Given the importance of the choice of criteria to apply, perhaps I'd say the essential question of educational policy is the question of which criteria to apply to evaluating the technologies of education, because this question is basic to other questions such as what resources should we make available to all schools or all students, or to which students, and why. A key corollary of this insight is that anyone who merely argues for or against using a given technology without spelling out exactly what criteria go into (or are being ignored in) making that recommendation is not to be trusted without further investigation.

Okay, enough revision for now. Stay tuned for Part B, where I'll talk about some of the political, cultural, and ideological forces at work in discussions about educational technology, including those that are ostensibly concerned with student learning.

Technology in education: a ground-map, part a (revision 2)

CAC comment: This is an edited version of my original post from 9/13/08, taking into account comments received (thanks for those!) and some further thinking about this topic.


For this month's "Monthly Forum" (yes I know I'm late to start this was last month's topic), I'd like to get a conversation going about the role of technology in education.

For myself, I'm trying to develop a "ground-map of the province" (if you will allow me an obscure reference to Dewey) of issues related to technology in education. This is part of a project that will result in a chapter on philosophical issues related to technology in education for a forthcoming book to which I've been asked to contribute.

Key question #1: What is educational technology?

Technology is "the application of science (or knowledge) to meet objectives or to solve problems." (source)

Technology is not science itself, which is primarily concerned with the production of knowledge and the sorting out of which knowledge is privileged within the academy society, by certain people who call themselves "scientists," or by policy-makers. While science clearly has a role in education (both because we want to have a public that understands its methods, issues, and major findings, and because we want to know how people learn best so we can design education to be efficient and effective), this essay isn't dealing with science per se, but with its application. When we apply science/knowledge to solve educational problems, we are (often? always?) using technology. On this broad definition of technology, schooling is largely a technological enterprise.

(Schooling is the systematic formal process whereby the behaviors [and ideas] of [mostly young] people are shaped to meet adult expectations. Education is the [largely informal] experiential process through which a person comes to know and be who s/he is. These definitions were developed by my FND 510 class this quarter.)

Technologies used in schooling include classrooms, chalkboards, books, podiums, graded classrooms, chair-desk, bells, bell schedules, school buses, school buildings, playgrounds, athletic fields, band rooms, band instruments, colored chalk, the architecture of schools, p.a. systems, teacher certification systems, the ways we "divide" subjects into "disciplines," testing (and other assessment approaches of all kinds), school districting, "catchment" areas, curriculum plans, "standards" statements, and many many other activities/processes/devices/frameworks. It is important to emphasize, "technology" isn't just things, but the systems of ideas that legitimate and constrain the use of things. On this expanded notion of technology, we can say that "schooling" is the application of technology to make mass education the mass alteration of the behaviors [and ideas] of [mostly young] people not only possible, but affordableand effective.

(Of course, it's also the application of technology to do things schooling achieves other things as well, such as warehousing kids, but let's leave that aside for the moment.)

Related to this, technologies can roughly (thanks Jason!) be divided into those that are "old" (that is, taken for granted as being "necessary" for schooling) and those that are new (that is, still being negotiated in terms of their role--or lack thereof--in schools). This, of course, depends on one's perspective, since a technology that is taken for granted by a young person might be still be considered to have an unsettled role to an older person. Similarly, technologies that are taken for granted in wealthier, suburban or private schools (such as interactive whiteboards) are often considered exotic or a luxury in poorer, urban schools. Such differences in attitude are never about whether a particular technology is really needed for education; they are always about whether they deserve to be funded or mandated for all schools--again, the central question of educational policy.

But we don't tend to talk about this question as if it were a question about technology. Instead, we limit our explicit discussion of technologies to a subset of those that are applied to policy questions about schooling, as if educational technology policy was only "about" relatively new, digital technologies, especially those tools and approaches that are not yet universal (or nearly universal) in their application to schools. "Technology," then, is used as a euphemism for "things that we're still trying to decide whether we need," or "things that only some schools can currently afford."

This limitation of the application of the concept of technology tends to draw attention away from certain critical perspectives (such as those of Michel Foucault, Neil Postman, or Michael Apple) which talk about, for example "technologies of [political] control." Surely these critical perspectives are justified in used of the word "technology," just as much as the common person is justified (in some ways) in limiting discussion of technologies to what I've described above as "digital technologies." What's important is realizing that any limitation of the word "technology" to particular types of technologies has both motivations and consequences, which should be examined. Thus, the limitation of the discussion to "digital technologies" tends to take OFF the table many of the other things I've listed, such as bell schedules and P.A. systems, even though THOSE technology are pernicious and omnipresent in schools.

I guess wWhat I'm saying is, the question of what we MEAN by "technology" is ahas political oneimplications that perhaps logically antecede questions about the use of particular technologies in particular situations. [However, let me add here, without going into it in greater detail, that a "technology" can not be completely separated from the "use" of that technology, because, well, a technology without an application in a specific situation isn't a technology at all.]

Key question #2: What criteria do we use in evaluating educational technologies?

Like all technologies, each item on the list I just generated above can be critiqued from several many different perspectives, using many different criteria. Among such criteria for criticism include effectiveness (in reaching whatever objectives are desired), efficiency, humanity, cost-effectiveness, opportunity costs, ease-of-use, standardizability (can they applied in a consistent manner), teachability (can teachers/administrators/students actually learn to use them), fairness, beauty, "fit," conformity to [public] values of all kinds, carbon footprint, etc. etc.

(For the general public, probably, the most important criterion is whether the use of a technology conduces to the achievement of [whatever measure of success is given credence, for example] higher standardized test scores. But that criterion is hotly disputed by many.)

Given the importance of the choice of criteria to apply, perhaps I'd say the essential question of educational policy is the question of which criteria to apply to evaluating the technologies of education, because this question is basic to other questions such as what resources should we make available to all schools or all students, or to which students, and why. A key corollary of this insight is that anyone who merely argues for or against using a given technology without spelling out exactly what criteria go into (or are being ignored in) making that recommendation is not to be trusted without further investigation.

Okay, enough revision for now. Stay tuned for Part B, where I'll talk about some of the political, cultural, and ideological forces at work in discussions about educational technology, including those that are ostensibly concerned with student learning.

Technology in education: a ground-map, part a

For this month's "Monthly Forum" (yes I know I'm late to start), I'd like to get a conversation going about the role of technology in education.

For myself, I'm trying to develop a "ground-map of the province" (if you will allow me an obscure reference to Dewey) of issues related to technology in education. This is part of a project that will result in a chapter on philosophical issues related to technology in education for a forthcoming book to which I've been asked to contribute.

Allow me to do some "thinking out loud" here.

Technology is "the application of science (or knowledge) to solve problems."

Technology is not science itself, which is primarily concerned with the production of knowledge and the sorting out of which knowledge is privileged within the academy, by certain people who call themselves "scientists," or by policy-makers. Science clearly has a role in education because we want to have a public that understands its methods, issues, and major findings, and because we want to know how people learn best so we can design education to be efficient and effective.

When we apply science/knowledge to solve educational problems, we are (often? always?) using technology. On this broad definition of technology, schooling is largely a technological enterprise. Schooling technologies include classrooms, chalkboards, books, podiums, graded classrooms, chair-desk, bells, bell schedules, school buses, school buildings, playgrounds, athletic fields, band rooms, band instruments, colored chalk, the architecture of schools, p.a. systems, teacher certification systems, the ways we "divide" subjects into "disciplines," testing (and other assessment approaches of all kinds), school districting, "catchment" areas, curriculum plans, "standards" statements, and many many other activities/processes/devices/frameworks. On this expanded notion of technology, we can say that "schooling" is the application of technology to make mass education possible, affordable, and effective.

Of course, it's also the application of technology to do things other than "education" as well, such as warehousing kids, but let's leave that aside for the moment.

Like all technologies, each item on the list I just generated can be critiqued from several different perspectives, or using many different criteria. Among such criteria include efficiency, effectiveness, humanity, cost-effectiveness, opportunity costs, ease-of-use, standardizability (are they applied in consistent manner), teachability (can teachers/administrators/students learn to use them), fairness, various aesthetic criteria of beautify and "fit," conformity to public values of all kinds, carbon footprint, etc. etc.

Indeed, I'd say the essential question of educational policy is the question of which criteria to apply to evaluating the technologies of education, because this question is basic to other questions such as what resources should we make available to all schools or all students, or to which students, and why.

But we don't tend to talk about this question as if it were a question about technology. Instead, we limit our explicit discussion of technologies to a subset of those that are applied to schooling. Most commonly, we refer to digital technologies such as computers, networks, software, digital cameras, interactive whiteboards, peripherals, etc.

Other ways to delineate a subset of technologies to be referred to are certain critical perspectives (such as those of Foucault or Michael Apple) which talk about "technologies of control." Surely these perspectives are justified in referring to technologies, just as much as the common person is justified in limiting discussion of technologies to what I've described above as "digital technologies." What's important is realizing that any limitation of the word "technology" to particular types of technologies has both motivations and consequences, which should be examined. Thus, the limitation of the discussion to "digital technologies" tends to take OFF the table many of the other things I've listed, such as bell schedules and P.A. systems, even though THOSE technology are pernicious and omnipresent in schools.

Perhaps the common approach,then, is to limit "technology" to those tools and approaches that are not yet universal (or nearly universal) in their application to schools. "Technology," then, is a euphemism for "things that we're still trying to decide whether we need," or "things that only some schools can currently afford."

I guess what I'm saying is, the question of what we MEAN by "technology" is a political one, that perhaps anteceeds questions about the use of any particular technologies in any particular situation.

Okay, I will come back later to continue.....

Technology in education: a ground-map, part a

For this month's "Monthly Forum" (yes I know I'm late to start), I'd like to get a conversation going about the role of technology in education.

For myself, I'm trying to develop a "ground-map of the province" (if you will allow me an obscure reference to Dewey) of issues related to technology in education. This is part of a project that will result in a chapter on philosophical issues related to technology in education for a forthcoming book to which I've been asked to contribute.

Allow me to do some "thinking out loud" here.

Technology is "the application of science (or knowledge) to solve problems."

Technology is not science itself, which is primarily concerned with the production of knowledge and the sorting out of which knowledge is privileged within the academy, by certain people who call themselves "scientists," or by policy-makers. Science clearly has a role in education because we want to have a public that understands its methods, issues, and major findings, and because we want to know how people learn best so we can design education to be efficient and effective.

When we apply science/knowledge to solve educational problems, we are (often? always?) using technology. On this broad definition of technology, schooling is largely a technological enterprise. Schooling technologies include classrooms, chalkboards, books, podiums, graded classrooms, chair-desk, bells, bell schedules, school buses, school buildings, playgrounds, athletic fields, band rooms, band instruments, colored chalk, the architecture of schools, p.a. systems, teacher certification systems, the ways we "divide" subjects into "disciplines," testing (and other assessment approaches of all kinds), school districting, "catchment" areas, curriculum plans, "standards" statements, and many many other activities/processes/devices/frameworks. On this expanded notion of technology, we can say that "schooling" is the application of technology to make mass education possible, affordable, and effective.

Of course, it's also the application of technology to do things other than "education" as well, such as warehousing kids, but let's leave that aside for the moment.

Like all technologies, each item on the list I just generated can be critiqued from several different perspectives, or using many different criteria. Among such criteria include efficiency, effectiveness, humanity, cost-effectiveness, opportunity costs, ease-of-use, standardizability (are they applied in consistent manner), teachability (can teachers/administrators/students learn to use them), fairness, various aesthetic criteria of beautify and "fit," conformity to public values of all kinds, carbon footprint, etc. etc.

Indeed, I'd say the essential question of educational policy is the question of which criteria to apply to evaluating the technologies of education, because this question is basic to other questions such as what resources should we make available to all schools or all students, or to which students, and why.

But we don't tend to talk about this question as if it were a question about technology. Instead, we limit our explicit discussion of technologies to a subset of those that are applied to schooling. Most commonly, we refer to digital technologies such as computers, networks, software, digital cameras, interactive whiteboards, peripherals, etc.

Other ways to delineate a subset of technologies to be referred to are certain critical perspectives (such as those of Foucault or Michael Apple) which talk about "technologies of control." Surely these perspectives are justified in referring to technologies, just as much as the common person is justified in limiting discussion of technologies to what I've described above as "digital technologies." What's important is realizing that any limitation of the word "technology" to particular types of technologies has both motivations and consequences, which should be examined. Thus, the limitation of the discussion to "digital technologies" tends to take OFF the table many of the other things I've listed, such as bell schedules and P.A. systems, even though THOSE technology are pernicious and omnipresent in schools.

Perhaps the common approach,then, is to limit "technology" to those tools and approaches that are not yet universal (or nearly universal) in their application to schools. "Technology," then, is a euphemism for "things that we're still trying to decide whether we need," or "things that only some schools can currently afford."

I guess what I'm saying is, the question of what we MEAN by "technology" is a political one, that perhaps anteceeds questions about the use of any particular technologies in any particular situation.

Okay, I will come back later to continue.....

Snag -- can you help?

We've run across a snag in the WWI podcast project: GarageBand. We have no idea how to use it, and were mystified when we tried to figure it out. That means it's going to be that much harder to teach to a whole class of 9th and 10th graders. (Although, in reality, they could probably figure it out faster than we can.)

Has anyone out there used this program? Do you have any tips? Do you think it's user-friendly enough for students?