• Space-age Indian Preschool

    24Dec
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    Today I visited The Little Kingdom preschool in Batinda, Punjab in India. The entire outside of the building is designed to look like a castle. It’s a giant yellow castle, with colorful highlights. Inside, I found a thoughtful, pedagogically-intentional learning space. Preschools are somewhat of a new phenomena in India, and it seems like they are starting out on a great foot. In India, there are government schools and public schools—government schools are like U.S. public schools, and Indian public schools are similar to U.S. private schools, slightly confusing. One interesting difference though, is that the privately-run/owned schools are generally for-profit organizations. Education is a big business in India.

    The Little Kingdom school that I toured is one of those for-profit schools, but most interestingly it is a franchise. There is a group out of New Delhi selling franchises in this school. With a franchise purchase, one receives complete curricula and training, furniture schematics, room configuration plans, payrolls structures, administrative procedures, and more. Pretty much everything you need to know to run a school. Follow the manual’s setup section, hire some qualified teachers and you have yourself a school!

    in_preschool_comp
    Computers are still absent from many, many schools in India. This preschool however, had a computer room. The room interestingly enough was shaped like a helicopter, and the room was in the cockpit. Inside there was an astronaut-themed room setup with computers and printers. The computers were loaded with educational software which can be manipulated with simple mouse movements – needs to be easy for preschoolers!

    in_lk_rickshaw
    The school also had its own transporation team. They had a few vans, and some excellent rickshaws for the close-by students. Imagine seeing this pulling up to pick up your preschooler.

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  • Planned Growth

    21Dec
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    Things are growing so rapidly in India that planned growth is not always possible.
    in_electrical
    The demand for electricity is so great in Noida (planned city next to Delhi) that there is not always time for nice, pretty wiring. Does this look like any of your server rooms?

  • 21 Carat E-Mail

    19Dec
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    I have been encouraging my mother to check her e-mail more often, but it has not been
    easy to get her to be a regular. Since she has been in India, she has been checking her
    e-mail much more often. Her sister has e-mail in the house (as does my mother), which
    makes communication very easy. In the U.S., phones are so convenient and inexpensive,
    that they are a natural communication tool. Also, no one is more than a few hours off of
    your time zone. When in India though, people in the U.S. are 10.5 hours behind, so
    phoning is often a problem, not to mention it is expensive, and often there is a poor
    connection. So, e-mail becomes a natural choice. My mother has been e- mailing with my
    father and others in the U.S. and is quickly becoming more comfortable than she was with
    multiple computers back home in the U.S.

    This evening she was replying to an e-mail my father sent, and pulled me over to ask me
    a question, “Why do dad’s e-mails always have those nice little things on them?”

    “Nice little things,” I wondered? She was talking about carats— > (the
    greater than symbol). So I explained that the some computer programs put carats to show
    the original message, and then you write your reply above that area. She was shocked and
    went on to explain that she has been manually typing them at the start of each line
    because she thinks they look pretty! My brother and I couldn’t help but laugh. Something
    which we found so functional was something that was aesthetic to her. This little symbol
    had never really explained itself.

    How does one learn what the conventions of e-mail are without really being explained
    them. One would have to discover when they appeared and when they didn’t. You might
    think you would discover it without being told, but think about it: the carats never
    appear when you type a message. So as far as a new user is concerned, carats are not
    part of your e-mail system. You do sometimes see them on other peoples’ e-mail (when
    you reply or forward them, or if you are forwarded something), but you can never cause
    them to appear. Only once you understand the logic can you necessarily see its usage.

    This problem makes me think of how young people communicate with my electronically.
    Often when students e-mail me it looks like this,

    “heyz mr g, whas our hw for tonite, i didnt write it down in class and i don
    wanna get no points off for being late, k? email me back as sooon as u get this.
    thx!!!!”

    While this is a perfectly valid way of communicating with a 13-year old peer, we must
    make sure students are able to communicate appropriately online. You often see the same
    type of thing on electronic bulletin boards used for class discussions. My rules for
    those are to direct students to more formal writing, rather than social writing. There
    is a place for each, and we must help students understand those lines. How are people
    teaching appropriate voice online?

  • Is The World Flat?

    18Dec
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    A couple of the e-lists I am on (“ISED-L”, “NYCIST”) have been discussing Thomas Friedman’s World Is Flat and its implications for education. I am currently in New Delhi, India for a vacation, and have been overwhelmed with all the evidence supporting the flat-world theory. The last time I was here was 5 years ago. There has been much progress.

    To deal with extreme pollution, all public buses (and there are a lot) are run on natural gas now. McDonalds, Subways, Dominos are all over. Middle-class values are spreading like wildfire, and consumerism is everywhere. Cell phones ringtones are the background noise of any city street. Car varieties have increased 5-fold. Government control is out, market freedom is in. One of the most interesting things I have seen are the advertisements. As India enters a period of freer-markets, you can see the market battles emerging. Cell phone plans were so convoluted that no one could figure out which plan was better. It was far more confusing than U.S. plans. But, you can see the evolution as the market is working itself out, and producing more consumer-friendly plans as the competition increases (I am not a free-market economist btw, but I still see much of this). Last time I was here, credit cards could only be used in a handful of places. Today, I can use my AMEX all over. Credit is huge in India now, and is quickly causing Indians to feel like they can spend money, whereas old timers were mainly concerned with saving it.

    In the NYC subways, there are adds for Lufthansa everywhere—here there are nearly the same adds, but with an Indian touch. Global marketing only recently included India. It makes me think of Friedman’s support of outsourcing. Bringing American business to India has helped create a middle-class here which is driving a demand for American goods. And there are over a billion people here, huge huge new markets for American companies – Intel Pentium chips are everywhere, Coca-Cola and Pepsi signs are painted across this country from cities to country-sides. Yesterday I went by the Nike shop and passed Nine West too. The change in 5 years is just phenomenal. I can’t even imagine how much business is going to be had here for American companies.

    Side note: my cousins go to school in an American school in Mumbai (Bombay). They have a tablet-laptop program beginning in 6th grade. The educational competition is as real as it gets, and probably a little understated in Friedman’s book. He sort of espouses the rote-knowleldge efforts of developing countries like China and India, but may be missing the real efforts here to create higher-order learning institutions. Once that goes into play, the hegemony of the U.S. may be hanging on its amazing infrastructure rather than its amazing intellectual superiority. Once these countries can repair their roads, communications and governance systems (and they have improved greatly in the last 5 years), it will be time for us to get nervous. We as educators must be thinking of ways to lead the pack rather than follow it.

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  • The $300 Desktop Computer

    17Dec
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    Computers have dramatically come down in price. My desktop computer at home gave out
    after about 5 years, and since I have a new laptop, I
    was somewhat reluctant to replace it. But I was browsing a discount web shop and came across a number of desktops computers being sold for $299. The
    computer that has just died on me was about 9 times that price when I bought it less
    than 5 years ago. My monitor was still working fine, so I ordered the $299 computer (no
    monitor included), paid about $40 for shipping, and I had it within a week.

    Of course there is a rub – $299 gets you less RAM than you probably want, and small
    cost-saving measures by the manufacturer. Example: the computer comes with no
    re-installation CD’s. There is a section of your hard drive partitioned (sectioned off)
    that has all the reinstallation files in case of a total system software crash.
    Apparently, this is becoming popular with a number of vendors. The system does let you
    burn CD’s (7!) or DVD’s (2) with as emergency installation disks. But, they make sure
    that you understand that you will only be able to burn one copy of the disks. Once
    that happens, you can never burn another set of disks, so don’t lose that set! I suppose you could try copying those disks for backup. It is amazing to me that a vendor would be so restrictive over software I paid for. First of all, the computer should ship with the CD’s. Secondly, I should be able to create backup CD’s. If I break one, I
    should be able to burn another copy so as not to be stuck having to buy Windows, again. Come on Compaq , shame on you. Time to get a lot more
    customer supportive.

    I must say that it was nice to have a new desktop, but I did end up order some extra RAM
    to get the thing a little more decent speed. So bump the cost up to $299 + $40 shipping
    + $50 of ram. Still, for under $400, not too shabby.

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