Push, Pull, Design

As soon as anyone gets involved in education, they are exposed to the origin of the word “education”. It doesn't really matter much what the origin is, but it is a nice conversation (or blog-entry) starter. The origin of the word education is said to be the Latin educere, made of - ex- and ducere. “lead out”. This origin is often used to remind us that education has to do with bringing out what’s already there in the child. Yet the average schooling system works hard on pushing things from the outside into the student’s mind. In a time prescribed by the education system, a teacher prescribed by the system speaks the prescribed words about the prescribed issue, and the students must accept the lesson pushed at them. This can sometimes work, depending on the charisma of the teacher. But charisma is hard to come by, in any profession.

Alternatively, one can think of the origin as pointing to the idea of leading the student out of ignorance. Our school systems often try to yank the student out of ignorance, at a pace and content set by the system. And what does a normal human do when yanked? Same as a donkey - Resist! The system then tries to do what the average donkey-master would do: Beat the beast into compliance with either a stick or calling the parents; Bribe the beast into compliance by either giving it some hay or permission to go and play a ballgame.

A worthy goal in some schools of education is that of letting each kid set the pace and content of learning. The kids can pull information from various sources: Their environment, books, Internet, experiments. They can even ask the teachers for assistance. One of the questions here is whether enough kids will pull information and construct knowledge, skills and habits in domains that will serve them throughout their life. Many kids like to play ballgames. If we let them pull information and practice time, they may become good soccer or basketball players. Most of us will be uncomfortable with the idea that a student graduates a school being very good at basketball, but not quite being able to read. We talk about the freedom to pull anything, but we do have a hidden agenda of things we think would be good for the student to learn. There is a real benefit in having the student learn what is personally relevant to them and what they asked to be taught. There is also a definite benefit in developing certain specific skills. How do we get to enjoy both?

One way sometimes being attempted is to pull from the other end. The teacher pulls the pupil’s interest by asking questions. For example, the kid who likes soccer may be aware that many exceptional players come from South America. A teacher might want to use this to get that kid interested in Brazil and its history. Maybe by asking the kid what he thinks makes Brazil a place where great soccer players grow. In some cases, and with a skillful teacher, this can work well. But one danger with this method, is that the kid may not be readily pulled from playing a game to anthropological query. This may quickly deteriorate back into yanking the pupil around.

The question remains: How to reconcile what the kid wants (play soccer) with what the parents want (that the kid learns certain skills relevant for civilized life)? It would be nice if we can gently lead the students from ignorance towards worthy knowledge, skills and habits. This doesn't need to invoke the need for great Capital-L "Leadership", which is scarce. It does have to do with encouraging the desired interests in the kids.

Looking at ways to lead the kids so that their genuine interests are better aligned with those of the parents and society, we can start with extreme methods, and work our way back to where we feel more comfortable. The extreme can be represented by tricks such as those used by Derren Brown, who is able to manipulate a victim into wanting something, or into inventing something - exactly as Brown wanted them to. Hairy stuff, and by the way, this is not the worst of it. Using this sort of manipulation in the context of education would make most of us unhappy, and anyway it requires uncommon abilities that are not easily teachable. But it does point in a certain direction:

Designing the environment in which students play and study, can have an effect on what they are inclined to do and feel about learning. This is not a new idea. In many classrooms, one sees "targeted decoration themes" relating to the studied materials, such as the ABC, numbers, etc. These decorations sometimes include motivational messages, morality issues, materials that may enhance self esteem, and whatever the decorator thought conducive to a learning environment. Unfortunately, in most cases this design work is done as an afterthought based on overly simple guidelines, and not as part of a systematic methodology. And of course there is no feedback - there is no systematic checking of the actual effect of one design choice or another. This state of affairs can be improved: Persuasion design is currently mostly concerned with the effect of Internet web design on the tendency of a surfer to continue using the web-site. The same principals can be adapted to classroom, lesson and study-material design. The knowledge and method behind Derren Brown's work mentioned above, can be softened and used to encourage the kids in the desired directions.

There are pitfalls inherent in discussing a "desired" attitude: Desired by whom? By the powers that be? By the politician temporarily in control of the Ministry of Education? The immediate answer is "Desired by the parents." Since the system of education that emerges from this text gives parents the choice of where and how to educate their children, this should be an important part of that choice. Of course there should be some careful control here, like the control over the materials being taught. A question of regulation, which we need to address anyway.

For those who feel terrible about brainwashing, do bear in mind that what the kids want (and let’s reluctantly admit that - what we want) is immensely affected by the standard brainwashing by media - mostly TV, politics, market, … Suggestions are already there in abundance. What we may do here is add some suggestions that will hopefully benefit the kid rather than the commercial or political interest of someone.

One final thought: Imagine being able to get kids to have an attitude of curiosity rather than fear with regards to mathematics.

Premises... Premises...

A discussion about any topic is meaningful only if the participants in the discussion are in agreement regarding some basic premises. Otherwise, we get a normal political discussion - a mess of misunderstanding and anger.

There are a few such assumptions in the base of all the entries in this blog, and it would be good to make them explicit, so if some readers disagree with any of these assumptions, they can just leave this text alone, since it is irrelevant to their beliefs. No hard feelings.

Premises:

1. Learning is important

• Learning is important for the genius rocket scientist, brain surgeon or rocket surgeon, to learn the basics of their profession, and then to keep up with the new knowledge being accumulated by their peers and by experts in fields adjacent to theirs. This is what will make it possible for them to make the most of their genius

• Learning is important for the mentally retarded. If they can learn to talk well, to read or even to perform a job, this can enable a great improvement in the way they are treated by society and their quality of life

2. Kids' happiness is important

• There is a discussion about whether kids’ happiness is paramount, in the context of education. Some say it we should let the kids be kids totally, and let them learn only when and what they want to learn. Some say we shouldn't bow to a child’s every whim.
  The "happiness is important" premise doesn't get into this discussion. It just states that part of our responsibility is for the children’s happiness

3. Learning comes naturally

• Not only to humans - also to just about any other animal, but that’s beside the point

If the reader feels that these assumptions are true, then the rest of the blog should make some sense.

Knowledgebase Access Methods

It is not enough to collect a lot of data and organize it nicely. We need to be able to look at the data in a useful way. Security issues issues were discussed earlier, so now we are free to concentrate on the happier aspects of a database - useful access methods.

The database must be easily searchable. A good starting point of comparison for organized knowledge is an Internet search engine such as Google, but it's not enough for complex and statistical searches. We need the database to be easily computable. An initial anchor for comparison to computable knowledge is Wolfram Alpha. The Semantic Web is not there yet, and the tools we have so far are not enough. Internet search often fails to find and identify meaningful information. Computation inquiries often fail to be computed themselves. But we can dream, and this type of dreams does tend to come true soon enough. In the mean time, we can get ready.

Visualization tools for query results must be available. From simple interactive tools such as TinkerPlots, to complex tools such as Matlab. Since the former is specializes in schools, and the latter is a specialized tool for scientists and engineers, there is a lot of room for more tools suitable for the uninitiated public. Graphs, tables, statistical analysis - all interactive and intuitive, oh my. Gapminder has some interesting data nicely visualized with Google Motion Chart. It makes one optimistic about the near future visualization capabilities.

Another requirement of the knowlwdgebase is that it will be amendable by the public. Anyone with an insight will be able to add it - wiki-style. This means that notes, comments and tags can be added to any item in the database, and immediately become a searchable and computable part of the knowledge base. Naturally, an anonymous tagging will have to be marked as less dependable - part of the Knowledgebase Data. There can also be room for opinions to be entered into the knowledgebase. Some practices may be designated as suggested "Best Practices". As long as these are clearly marked as opinions, they can sit there without interfering with the consensus.

In addition to comments and tags, any ad-hoc analysis made by a knowledgebase user (the public) may be fed back into the knowledgebase. For example, if a lay researcher (any member of the public) discovers a meaningful rise in the test scores of a certain age group in a certain school district, this fact may be recorded in the knowledgebase, so it can become a building block for subsequent queries by others - like looking into the possibility that the school district superintendent might be doing something right.

With a powerful tool of any kind, comes the danger of abuse or misuse. In the case of a tool for managing information, this danger translates into disinformation, misinformation and misinterpretation. Disinformation and misinformation are quite successfully minimized in wikipedia, so there is room for optimism. Misinterpretation is a much tougher problem, since it leaves no mark on the knowledgebase, and therefore can't be corrected by those who know better. In a computable knowledgebase, this problem is even more severe than in a merely searchable knowledgebase, such as wikipedia. The only thing the knowledgebase can do to minimize misinterpretation of information , is to discourage simplistic analysis.

The most complete way to discourage simplistic analysis is to educate the masses to such a great extent, that everybody knows very well how to perform valid analysis. Forget it. Not even when the new and improved education system is in place. The human drive towards misunderstanding and simplistic views is too great, and this isn't going to change any time soon.

A less complete way is to nurture a healthy sense of scientific doubt: To encourage people to look at any result with a critical eye, bearing in mind the fallibility of data and of opinions that can be derived from it. This should be easier, since the late 20^th century and early 21^st century did a good job shaking our belief in any authority. Some see this as part of post-modernism. There is no need - or easy way - to educate the masses in general towards this tendency. The access venues to the knowledgebase can keep reminding the user of the limitation of the analysis. The access venues can also use some of their own background analysis to emphasize the doubt when appropriate: When much of the data at the basis of the analysis is tagged as not very dependable; when the analysis is based on a small amount of data; when there is extrapolation involved; when the system has detected similar analyses producing dissimilar results; when the system detects an iterative activity that may be an effort to fine-tune the analysis results according to a preconceived target, etc.

As usual, the problems and solutions described here are just a part of what reality is. It's the part that can be seen from the outside of the Research-Based Education project, and much more will become apparent the more we go into that project.

What was unthinkable a few decades ago - freely available statistics about huge piles of information - is now a mundane fact, with computers and the Internet being widely available. We need just a bit more than that in order to achieve real research-based education.

Knowledgebase Data

The Education Research Knowledgebase is the almost-physical embodiment research-based education system. It is one of the main benefits a school gets from “the system” in a semi-anarchic education system. The knowledgebase has two main attributes: Data organized and accumulated in a database, discussed here. And methods to access the data, discussed elsewhere.

The more detailed information exists in a database, the more information can be analyzed by the public, and the more informed the public can be. The Internet is a fine example of that. Or going to be some day. On the other hand, giving information to irresponsible people, is harmful to the system, to the schools and teachers, and ultimately to the very people who get that information. A trivial example is that of giving a violent parent the name and address of the teacher who failed his kid at a test. This problem is wider than the violent fringes: Giving raw information to the ignorant, gives the unscrupulous a good opportunity to shape that information in any way useful to them. See any hatemonger for examples. Worse yet, “the ignorant” is a pretty large group. It may even include people we meet in the mirror. For example, in the past few months we got a lot of raw information about Swine Flu. Bottom line: Should I worry about it? Is it dangerous for me and my loved ones? It is not all that clear to me. I am too ignorant.

The Education Research Knowledgebase should be widely accessible, in order to maximize its usefulness. The more people work with the knowledgebase, the more diverse ideas and thinking can go into it and come out of it. How wide? All qualified researchers and educators? All researchers and educators? All? Let’s go with All, as a working assumption, and we’ll see if we need to scale it back a bit. If we manage to stay with “All”, it will be a good step towards taking education seriously as everybody’s business.

In the current thinking about privacy, we must minimize the public’s access to the identity of individual students. On the other hand, the less details are available, the less information can be analyzed. A database open for everybody needs to be carefully anonymized.
Let’s consider a few types of details:

Individual student names must and can be kept out of reach.

Individual teacher names: In the current climate, they will have to be unreachable, though a culture can be created where the teachers don’t mind, and parents considering a school demand the information.

School-names: This item suffers a lot from the information-to-the-ignorant problem. One needs to have very keen critical thinking, coupled with considerable familiarity with statistics to avoid pitfalls in comparing between schools. For example, suppose School A has a 90% success rate in SAT, and school B has a 70% success rate. Most people will conclude (and nearly all people will feel) that School A must be better than school B. But maybe School A just pre-tests students, and prevents the less successful from even trying the SAT? Maybe School B takes those students dumped by School A, and manages to get an amazing success rate of 70%? Simplistic analysis is a danger, but instead of giving up and keeping information away from “All”, we can try to meet this danger head on, and remove it - See discussion of access methods. The school name is also a problematic piece of information because it is partially identifying: It can be used to identify individual students, especially in small schools. But this would take an effort of a data-savvy person, and such people are known to find all kinds of information, such as medical information, credit information, etc. even without a publicly accessible database. Let’s go ahead with “All” a few more steps and see how far we get.

Researcher details: Name, current activities, past activities, etc. Freely accessible. If a researcher wants to remain anonymous, it may be possible, but then the research has to be marked as suspicious…

Individual parameters: Date of Birth; Ethnicity; Address of residence; Medical history; Family circumstances, etc. These suffer from being partially identifying, and should be partially anonymized one way or another. For example, the date of birth can be rounded to the Month of Birth, and the Address can be replaced with a few measurements along lines such as affluence, altitude, air quality, noise level, etc. Alternatively, the types of analysis can be limited so that such partially identifying information will not be visible for groups smaller than 100 people.

Test scores: Individual (anonymized); Association with school; Association with teacher (anonymized for now); Association with individual parameters etc. All can be freely accessible.

Individual choices, such as courses taken, associated with dates and correlated with any other information in the database. These are also partially identifying and can be partially anonymized, and then be made accessible.

Research dependability quotient: Calculated from details such as the number of times the research was repeated by different teams, the number of pupils participating in the research, scores of formal reviews, dependability of researchers, etc. Freely accessible.

Formal research details: Ah, there's the rub. Formalized, quantifiable details are essential. But the more formalized the data is, the more it loses the “juice” - those details that were not expected by, the designers of the research or the designers of the database. And this is where most of the meaning of the research may be. I have been dancing around this issue for a while now, and there are no answers yet. Generally, one can guess that there will be semantic markings on such details, creating a semantic web. Some people are working on such projects.

Raw research details: Until we got the Formal Research Details engine right, and I don’t expect it in the 21st century, we will need to keep the raw details available. This again brings up real privacy issues, discussed earlier in the blog. It may be that here access will be restricted and recorded: Restriction can be to generally qualified personnel, further restricted to preapproved people, or discussed on a per-request basis, to minimize the possibility of recognition of specific students by anyone accessing the raw data. Also, there could be different levels of rawness of the data: For example, a video footage with blurred-out faces may be more freely accessible than the same video in the raw.

These are examples of items in the database. The full database design would take more time than that required to write a blog entry.

Research in Context

So, we have some excellent research. We checked it twice, and we know something. Maybe we know that a certain teaching method, works better than another for a certain age group. Or maybe that a certain teacher-training method produces more teachers who produce more students with better retention of … something. Now what?

The fact that a researcher found some truth, doesn’t easily translate to a real world result. We need a bidirectional effect here. One direction is field-to-research: The effect of the lessons from the field on the research. Formal research should be made about what is interesting and necessary for the teachers in the trenches, and not about purely theoretical issues. The other direction is research-to-field: Beyond the need to perform research that is applicable in its nature, there is a need to create the framework that will encourage the application of that research - that will make the research actionable. Without these two bridges, we remain with an unbridged gap between research and teaching. For both bridge-directions to be open, the teachers should be aware of the research activity and potential, and the researchers should be aware of the teaching activity and considerations. Much of it is about communication, and we should create the mechanisms and culture to support this communication. Much of it is about discipline, and again there can be mechanisms and culture to support such a discipline.

Some successful commercial companies have in place a set of such mechanisms, policies and cultural dynamics to support such cooperation between research and the field. The field (Marketing, Sales, Engineering, …) informs the researchers (Economics, Psychology, Physics, …) what is necessary. The researchers produce results and inform the field what can be done. In the best organizations, the communication between researchers and field-people is so good, that when research turns out an unexpected opportunity for the field, the field people become aware of it and can act on it. This strong bridge is not easy to achieve and maintain, since the researchers and the field-people are two separate groups, with separate background, jargon and even values. It is quite a feat to bring them together to a common ground that will enable cooperation - both in terms of leadership and in terms of administration.

In the world of education, the first tier of field people includes teachers, principals, school administrators, pupils, parents, ... Not necessarily in that order. There is also a second tier, but I don’t want to start talking about religion, philosophy and politics at the moment. The first tier of researchers includes psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, organizational experts, economists, designers, engineers, … A very wide range of skills can be used here.

Enough theory. Now for some more practical thinking. And I will start with technical mechanisms and policies, since they are more straightforward than a discussion of culture and leadership.

Complete financing of research: This issue was visited in a previous blog entry. Research funding needs to take into account the need for additional investment to make the research useful. A few activities that need to be financed, and need to be budgeted in advance:

1a. Plan

• Both the research and its scheduled follow-up

• Initiation led by the field

• Details of research led by researchers

1b. Do the research - experiments and all

• Led by researchers

1c. Review results

• Led by the field: Look for opportunities in the field that may have been unearthed by the current research, and suggest action plans

• Led by the field: Look for potential spin-off research that may be suggested by the current research

• Led by the field: Decide whether to perform the scheduled follow-up

1d. Assimilate into the Education Research Knowledgebase

• Not a trivial task. Will be discussed in a future post

2a. Revisit the plan for scheduled follow-up research

• The decision to perform the follow-up has already been made. This stage may only make some modifications to the research plan

• Led by researchers

2b. Do the scheduled follow-up research

2c. Review results

2d. Assimilate into the Education Research Knowledgebase

Notes:

• All activities should be multidisciplinary: Have involvement of different types of researchers, as well as field people

• The “led by ...” notes are not to be interpreted as “forcefully controlled by ...”. In general, the field people are the customers, and they should lead the “what to do” part. The researchers are the experts in their specific fields, and should lead the “how to do” part

• Then there can be any number of iterations of: Re-plan --> Follow-Up Research --> Review --> Assimilate. Since these future iterations may not be scheduled in advance, budgeting doesn’t need to be done in advance. The first 4 steps - the initial research - must always be budgeted and planned for, even if the experiment was a complete failure. The next 4 steps - the scheduled follow-up - must be budgeted and planned for, though in case of a total failure of the initial research, the follow-up may be dropped

• The research itself may need to be very formal. All other activities are more open for unexpected activities and consequences – innovation

Wrapping up with the theoretical thinking above: The field-to-research bridge is taken care of by the fact that field people participate in all research-related activity, and are the leaders of the initiation and review (or evaluation) of the results. The research-to-field bridge direction is hiding behind the “action plan” part of the results review. This heavy challenge of causing change in behavior as a result of the research will be discussed in a future post, if I manage to wrap my mind around it.

Price of Freedom

Freedom is good. The freedom to create schools with very different goals, and very different curricula is one of the necessary foundations for an adaptable education system. But freedom has its price.

One general problem with freedom is that it clearly puts the weight of responsibility on the free person. In this case, freedom to choose means that we - the individual parents - have the responsibility for our children’s education. We can’t sooth ourselves by saying that the powers that be know what’s right. We can’t blame the government for bad choices. This is the type of price we already pay in higher education, where we choose much of what we do. In many countries there is also such freedom of choice with medicine, associated with the same side-effect of shouldering the responsibility. Barry Schwartz wrote a whole book about the problem - The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less and gave a great TED talk about the matter.

What can we do about it? First of all, control expectations: Even with 100 choices for a school, the best one will not be perfect for the discerning parent. It will “only” be much better than the no-choice school assigned to a kid because of the address where they live. Secondly, learn to forgive ourselves for errors: We cannot correctly compute all the differences between those 100 schools (or 10,000 if we are willing to relocate), especially when we don’t know what the world will look like in 10-15 years, after the kids graduate. We could also give up on the project, and settle for the 18^th-19^th century mode of education. This is a real option and not a mockery, since it’s the familiar way of doing things, and that has its comforting effect. The effect is so strong, that I expect that creating the 21^st-22^nd century mode of education will be an uphill struggle. Anyway, keeping things as they are is not the scope of this blog, so let’s move along.

But there is also a technical problem that needs to be addressed. What happens if a kids enters a technology oriented school, and after 5 years decides that an art oriented school is a better choice? Or - just to emphasize that there are more than just these two choices – if the kid wants to move from a social-responsibility oriented school to a science-oriented school? The social-responsibility curriculum possibly emphasizes sociology, psychology, politics, etc., but probably very little science-related material. How would the kid pick up 5 years of calculus and theoretical physics? This problem must be addressed effectively to allow freedom of choice without lifelong commitment at the age of 6 (or even 3).

One answer is to allow for catch-up time. On the extreme end, we can allow 5 full years to catch up. This will enable the kid to catch up completely, but a “penalty” of 5 years is more than what most pupils will consider. On the other extreme, the kid can just move from 6th grade of school A to 6th grade of school B, but the student will just be lost in a world of unfamiliar concepts and missing skills. Even if the school tries to help the new student by attaching tutors, the gap will be too large to work well. A possible middle-ground is one year of intensive catching-up with the main issues taught in the new school. We have some good experience with children moving from a relaxed democratic school to a stricter school, and picking up missing material and skills during the summer vacation. We also have good experience with preparatory courses to university, enabling students who took a relaxed approach to school, to achieve university-entry capabilities. Some choice may be offered here, too, regarding the length and intensity of the preparatory phase - maybe allocating Two years instead of one year will enable deeper catching-up. More choice may be given to parents in employing special catching-up teachers - paid either by the parents or by the state.

This catching-up time is a straightforward solution, but it may encounter some opposition. One source of such opposition is the state: The state likes people to start being economically active (read: paying taxes) sooner than later. This opposition should be dealt with on the political level. Many states also like to conscript young people at 18 or so, but most of them also allow delays in the military service for extended studies, so the framework is already there. Another possible source of opposition is parents who are unhappy about delaying their child’s entry into real life. But this concern will have to be weighed in the light of the importance of the change in the child’s interests: Another year at school, vs. continuing in the wrong direction for years. Something like “throwing good time after bad”. Also, if we do a good job, being at school will be considered as a pretty good way to use time.

Grand Plan vs. Specific School Ideas

Over the past 6 months, I have been writing down thoughts about education and schooling. Since there was no outline prepared before writing, the blog entries took their own direction. Or, so it seems - two distinct directions: One group of entries has to do with specific ideas of how to teach a kid, or a class, or how to run a school. The other group has to do with a grad plan for an education/schooling system, that should be useful for any type of school. There is a bit of a contradiction between discussing the Grand Plan and discussing Specific School Ideas, since one of the premises of the grand plan is that there are many sets of specific school ideas, which are equally valid. From the point of view of the grand plan, specific school ideas have very limited value. Still, they are my ideas, so like them.

I will now put some order into the previous entries by categorizing them as either Grand-Plan-related or Specific-School-Idea… Or somewhere in between.

1. April 11, 2009 - About K12 Education - Grand Plan introduction
2. April 14, 2009 - Bare Necessities: Goals - Grand Plan basics
3. April 15, 2009 - Scope: Education for whom? - Grand Plan scope
4. April 18, 2009 - Bare Necessities: Measurement - Grand Plan basics
5. April 19, 2009 - Bare Necessities?? Research - Grand Plan basics
6. April 20, 2009 - Bare Necessities - A summary - Grand Plan basics
7. April 20, 2009 - The State Of The Art of Education - 2009 - Both Grand Plan and Specific School Ideas - context
8. April 22, 2009 - The roots of the problem - Grand Plan context
9. April 23, 2009 - "It can't be helped" - Grand Plan context
10. April 25, 2009 - I don't have a plan - personal
11. April 26, 2009 - Some old ideas - Specific School Ideas - context
12. April 27, 2009 - Goals - Foundation Layer - Grand Plan foundation
13. April 28, 2009 - Measurement - In Practice - Grand Plan practicalities
14. April 30, 2009 - Finland - How to form a reform - Specific School Ideas - context
15. May 1, 2009 - Primum non nocere - First, do no harm - Grand Plan basics
16. May 5, 2009 - Learning and Meaning - Grand Plan basics
17. May 7, 2009 - Critical Mass of Learning - Specific School Ideas - basics
18. May 8, 2009 - Pedagogic Urgency - Grand Plan basics
19. May 9, 2009 - Teaching and Salesmanship - Grand Plan basics
20. May 10, 2009 - What we can take home from school - Grand Plan basics
21. May 14, 2009 - Hear, See, Do - Grand Plan basics
22. May 15, 2009 - Education and The State - Grand Plan basics
23. May 16, 2009 - Emotional Involvement in Learning - Grand Plan basics
24. May 17, 2009 - Explaining to a six-year-old - Specific School Ideas
25. May 18, 2009 - Customers - Grand Plan practicalities
26. May 21, 2009 - Long Term Results - Grand Plan practicalities
27. May 24, 2009 - Wild Ideas - Student Teachers - Specific School Ideas
28. May 25, 2009 - Experiments? NIMBY! - Grand Plan practicalities
29. May 26, 2009 - Tests and Announcements - Specific School Ideas
30. May 27, 2009 - Learning to Err - Specific School Ideas
31. May 28, 2009 - The Ultimate Knowledge Work - Grand Plan philosophizing
32. May 30, 2009 - The Main Course: Feedback - Grand Plan practicalities
33. May 31, 2009 - For Whom the Test Tolls - Specific School Ideas
34. June 1, 2009 - Wild Ideas - Anarchy - Grand Plan wilderness
35. June 2, 2009 - Mind the Gap - Grand Plan practicalities
36. June 6, 2009 - If We Build It, Will They Come? - Specific School Ideas
37. June 7, 2009 - Research Based - Grand Plan practicalities
38. June 9, 2009 - Teaching Teachers - Grand Plan details
39. June 10, 2009 - Paid Volunteers - Grand Plan practicalities
40. June 17, 2009 - Defining a system - Both Grand Plan and Specific School Ideas - practicalities
41. June 18, 2009 - Ask Around - Grand Plan practicalities
42. June 20, 2009 - Dumbing Down - Grand Plan context
43. June 24, 2009 - Let Kids be Kids - Specific School Ideas
44. July 2, 2009 - Administration Remystified - Grand Plan practicalities
45. July 3, 2009 - Communicate^3 - Grand Plan practicalities
46. July 4, 2009 - Wild Ideas - Distributed Establishment - Grand Plan practicalities
47. July 4, 2009 - Education Market Analysis - Grand Plan practicalities
48. July 5, 2009 - What... Is Your Mission? - Grand Plan mission
49. July 8, 2009 - Mission - The Easy Part - Grand Plan mission
50. July 8, 2009 - Mission - Complicating Factors - Specific School mission
51. July 9, 2009 - Regulation - Grand Plan practicalities
52. July 11, 2009 - KIPP, SIPP and HIPP - Both Grand Plan and Specific School Ideas
53. July 11, 2009 - Example: Technology Oriented Schooling - Grand Plan specific examples
54. July 14, 2009 - Interim Summary - Both Grand Plan and Specific School Ideas
55. July 15, 2009 - The Essence of Time - Grand Plan philosophizing
56. July 18, 2009 - Still No Plan - Both Grand Plan and Specific School Ideas practicalities
57. July 19, 2009 - Example: Art Oriented Schooling - Grand Plan specific examples
58. July 20, 2009 - Centuries 21 and 22 - Grand Plan context
59. July 21, 2009 - Australia - Specific School Ideas - context
60. July 23, 2009 - The Graduate - Grand Plan basics
61. July 24, 2009 - Education System Architecture - Grand Plan basics
62. July 25, 2009 - Information Exposure - Grand Plan context
63. July 27, 2009 - Data Crunching - Specific School Ideas - practicalities
64. July 29, 2009 - Limitations of Data - Specific School Ideas - practicalities
65. July 30, 2009 - Evolution vs. Revolution - Grand Plan basics
66. August 22, 2009 - Creativity - Specific School Ideas
67. September 20, 2009 - Too busy - Grand Plan practical philosophizing
68. September 23, 2009 - Unspecial Education - Grand Plan basics
69. September 23, 2009 - Quotes - Both Grand Plan and Specific School Ideas philosophizing
70. October 7, 2009 - Research and Student Privacy - Grand Plan practicalities
71. October 8, 2009 - Research - Technical Issues - Grand Plan practicalities

The classifications above - Grand Plan or Specific School Ideas - are open to debate. Often the grand ideas stray away from the consensus, and should be demoted to specific-school-ideas. Sometimes specific ideas are actually general enough to qualify as part of the grand plan. Still, the above list gives a good idea of the content of the posts.