I am currently taking a course, Economics and Urban/Minority Ed, here at TC with Professor Francisco Rivera-Batiz. So far, most of the first class sessions have focused on defining what and who constitutes urban and minority. The focused switched drastically in class last week where we had a spirited discussion around how public schools should achieve diversity. As I expected, we all agreed that diversity is important to one’s education, especially in our increasingly globalized world, but we were split on what role race based policies such as affirmative action should play in achieving this diversity.

The class discussion seemed timely considering the US Supreme Court is set to rule on an affirmative action case that could potentially have huge ramifications for how public universities treat its minority applicants. Bismark recently blogged about other factors used by colleges in their admissions process for minority applicants.

This notice was inside the subway cart en route to EdLab this morning. I couldn't help myself but snap a picture and let you know about it.

"This Spring We're Aiming Higher"

This spring, state exams for students in grades 3-8 will be different and more challenging. And test scores will reflect that at first.

We're raising standars. Under the new Common Core curriculum, students will be writing more. Thinking critically. Defending their ideas. Working in teams to solve real-world problems.

We're not satisfied with just teaching your children basic skills. We want them prepared for college and a career.

It's great to know that the NY governor, Andrew Cuomo has education reform as one of his main agendas. Here are some facts about education statistics which may have prompted him to move education forward.

New York State spends more money per student than any other state in the nation, but ranks 38th in high school graduation rates. 73 percent of New York's students graduate from high school and 37 percent are college ready. To address these major shortcomings in the state's education system, Governor Cuomo called for the creation of the New NY Education Reform Commission in his 2012 State of the State address.

When Nara reported what she learned in the Fluent Conf 2013 she discussed the benefits of using web icon fonts instead of image sprites. I was very interested in this new technique so gave it a try. The result was quite satisfying because with web icon fonts we can reduce download size of Vialogues Player by 15%.

The benefits of using web icon fonts instead of image sprites:

1. Reduce download size. Icon fonts are vectors. So they are potentially smaller than images if you have lots of them.

2. Easier to change. It is well admitted modifying image sprites is a huge headache because you may have to re-calibrate all other sprite icons every time you revise the size, location, or number of the sprites. Icon fonts, however, are relatively easier to modify -- not in terms of modifying the icon per se but other icons will not be affected.

3. Better display quality on hi-res displays such as Retina iPad. Because icon fonts are vectors, your icons will be always sharp and clear no matter where or how large you display them.

A recent paper [1] at ICWSM 2013 (The International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media) discussed the Friend Paradox: on average, you friends have more friends than you. The Friend Paradox theory can be traced back to a paper in 1991 [2]. The ICWSM paper re-examed the theory using a Twitter dataset.

The authors checked some variants of "Friend Paradox" on Twitter: (1) On average, your followees ( or followers) have more followers than you do; (2) On average, your followees (or followers) have more followees than you do. I think it's pretty easy to understand why your followees have more followers and followees. People tend to follow active users or famous people. But why my followers have more followers than me (everyone got an active followers) ?

[1] check this link here: Friendship Paradox Redux: Your Friends Are More Interesting Than You
[2] Feld, S. L. 1991. Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do. American

Knewton has announced a new partnership with publishing behemoth, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH). Knewton has developed an adaptive learning platform that creates personalize learning experiences that will be paired with HMH's more traditional print materials. Both parties hope the partnership will create new blended learning experiences for the millions of students in the HMH network.

From VentureBeat:

As schools shift to new models of blended and online learning, startups like Knewton claim they will form the “foundation” for a new way of teaching. By teaming up with HMH and Pearson, Knewton can augment core curriculum materials that are widely used in schools.

Do you feel partnerships this this will be the way forward for learning? Why or why not? How might a traditional educational setting benefit?

Check out this article about WiSee from arstechnica. Long story short, Wisee "uses radio waves from Wi-Fi to sense human body movements." The team at Washington is developing it to detect command gestures but I can imagine using this technology to do data capture of individual's movements in a dynamic multimodel learning environment.

Several folks in EdLab have written about the challenges facing doctoral students in the U.S. For example:

Interesting read- Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time

The Long and Winding Road to a PhD (Warning: depressing)

Drag Queen, Ph.D.

More Public Role in Solving Society's Problems and Clearer Career Paths for Ph.D.'s Outside of Research Universities

Well, it looks like our neighbors to the north are also confronted with many of the same issues.

What are the global implications of credential inflation? And more importantly what are the opportunities that we should be taking advantage of to generate new models of learning, evaluating, etc?

The Dominos Pizza Franchise are now developing a drone capable of delivering pizza. In the United Kingdom, they posted a video on Monday of the "DomiCopter" in which it was delievering two pizzas in the company's pizza bags. I found this short article interesting, as we are in the 21st century and the ideas of having a drone delivering pizza? It sounds pretty cool, but isn't this idea bad for the people who need jobs? I'm sure if these drones are ever approved (which might be highly unlikely), many job opportunities will be lost since other companies might want to follow the idea of using drones for their business. I am also curious to know more about the educational and professional background of the people who came up with such an idea?

Check out this short article, what are your thoughts on drones delivering your food? Is it a good idea or bad?

My high school, Frederick Douglass Academy, had a school newspaper as was custom for most high schools across the country. I always felt that the school was just wasting money print papers students barely read. Although, the newspaper mainly focused on school activities, events, and news, some students were not interested in reading the school’s newspaper. After all, the newspaper came out every month reporting old news, activities, and events. This was one reason why students and handful of staff members never enjoyed reading the newspaper. Additionally, one of my teachers complained that the newspaper had too many errors in it.

According to this article, only 1 in 8 New York public high schools have a student newspaper. This ratio clearly shows that not every public high school agrees with the idea of having a student newspaper. It is good for students to show their writing talent, but what is the point of it if no one is really paying attention to what they are writing. Another reason why students have chosen not to read their school newspaper is social media. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have proven to be the quickest way to read or hear about current news. It can be argued that these social networking sites inform people about current news quicker than the local news channel and newspaper. If having a student newspaper is costly to the government or school’s budget, then the best action to take is to terminate such extra curricular activity and turn into a school requirement, which could be a writing class.

Most of us EdLabbers have an iPhone and we all know how very fragile it could be especially when it doesn't have a protective case. Apple has made a new update to their Applecare protection plan.

Applecare, Apple's insurance plan used to replace iPhone's for any reason, cracked screens or drowned iPhone's twice $49 for a pop, has made a new update to the insurance plan.

According to Macrumors, Apple is replacing cracked screens or an unfunctional iPhone with a refurbished one rather than swapping the whole product for $149. Those without the plan might have to pay $229 for a refurbished model. Do you think Apple is doing this in order to save their customers money?