Club Troppo

A highlight of my calendar I have to say – since I inadvertently morphed into Mr Innovation and they started inviting me.

Did you have an absolutely fantastic science teacher? Now’s the time to get them some recognition.

NOMINATION CALL
2012 PRIME MINISTER’S PRIZES FOR SCIENCE

We are seeking nominations for Australia’s national science and science teaching awards, which are offered to Australian citizens or those who hold permanent residence status in Australia.

·        The $300,000 Prime Minster’s Prize for Science

·        The $50,000 Science Minister’s Prize for Life Scientist of the Year

·        The $50,000 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year

·        The $50,000 Prime Minster’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary Schools

·        The $50,000 Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools

These prizes are a key element of the Inspiring Australia national initiative to recognise and reward the achievements and successes of Australians in the sciences.

Please share this information with your networks and associates – The Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science relies on nominations from across many sectors of our nation, to reward and recognise the outstanding achievements of our Australian science researchers and science teachers.

Closing Date: 27 April 2012, AEST 5.00 pm

Further queries and contact - www.innovation.gov.au/scienceprizes

The Effects of Home Computers on Educational Outcomes. Evidence from a Field Experiment with Schoolchildren
Date: 2011-09
By: Robert Fairlie (Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Cruz)
Jonathan Robinson (Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Cruz)
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:net:wpaper:1114&r=exp
Are home computers are an important input in the educational production function? To address this question, we conduct a field experiment involving the provision of free computers to schoolchildren for home use. Low-income children attending middle and high schools in 15 schools in California were randomly selected to receive free computers and followed over the school year. The results indicate that the experiment substantially increased computer ownership and total computer use among the schoolchildren with no substitution away from use at school or other locations outside the home. We find no evidence that the home computers improved educational outcomes for the treatment group. From detailed administrative data provided by the schools and a follow-up survey, we find no evidence of positive effects on a comprehensive set of outcomes such as grades, test scores, credits, attendance, school enrollment, computer skills, and college aspirations. The estimates also do not indicate that the effects of home computers on educational outcomes are instead negative. Our estimates are precise enough to rule out even modestly-sized positive or negative impacts. The lack of a positive net effect on educational outcomes may be due to displacement from non-educational uses such as for games, social networking, and entertainment. We find evidence that total hours of computer use for games and social networking increases substantially with having a home computer, and increases more than total hours of computer use for schoolwork.

Here are two talks I’ve given in the last year. One was a couple of weeks ago at a Melbourne Conversation on Big Data. I talk about the serendipity of big data and the relevance for privacy regulation.  And tell a story about Kaggle. I recommend the talk before mine by David McCloskey of Deloitte. He’s a very thoughtful guy.

The other is a talk on Education 2.0 given to QUT senior staff. It’s only up for another week or so and it’s one gigabyte to download – which is ridiculous, but apparently reduced from four gigs.  It’s a zipped file.

Herewith my op ed from the Herald and Age today.

What is the good life and are we living it?

Assessing and measuring wellbeing has vexed us since ancient times. But a funny thing happened on the modern world’s way to the answer. The metric that economists used to dampen down the business cycle – Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – received such prominence that it ‘went viral’ as we say these days. It became the default measure of national progress.

But there’s lots wrong with GDP as a measure of economic wellbeing let alone more general wellbeing. Measuring gross activity, it ignores the growth and depreciation of assets – such as buildings, equipment, natural resources like farmland and mineral deposits, biodiversity and clean air. And that’s not to mention the greatest asset of all – our knowhow.

Moreover GDP is measured by money changing hands. So converting bread, mince and salad into a hamburger increases GDP in McDonalds but not at home. More starkly, an evening of passion and pleasure only adds to wellbeing as measured by GDP if it happens in a bordello! More broadly still, GDP takes no account of the distribution of income or of our physical or social wellbeing.

But considering how different all these phenomena are, how can we possibly measure their sum impact on national wellbeing in a single number? Because it would ‘dumb down’ complex issues, economics Nobel Laureate Amatya Sen initially refused to participate in the construction of a single index of human development to help guide development in poorer countries. But he relented because he appreciated that, however unsatisfactory a single wellbeing index might be, it was better than the alternative. Given the thirst for simple answers, the alternative is even more dumbing down as would occur if GDP yet again filled the vacuum. (Continued)

Troppodillians may recall a post of mine where I explained an avent I attended that was showcasing kids who’d undertaken exciting IT projects. Here’s an extract:

I got talking to Ben and Cameron. Ben had taught himself to program and been instrumental in building the app and getting it past Apple’s gatekeeping and onto iTunes. The picture is Ben, Cameron, Ben’s brother Jack and Steven Heppell. In any event, I’m afraid (be very afraid) this got me excited.  I spoke to Ben and asked if he’d like to teach other students how to program, as he’d helped teach this group.  It was obvious that he’d love to. So I said “Just wait there, I’m going to get the Head of the Dept of Education” and hightailed it off to Peter Dawkins who was circulating somewhat more systematically than me. I dragged him over to meet Ben and Cameron and suggested that we all see if it would be possible to get some peer to peer instruction in building apps going. Peter liked the idea, as did Ben and there was general enthusiasm for seeing what can be done. Indeed he immediately got his Director of Innovation over and said to her words to the effect “can we make this happen, and can we start tomorrow”.

So we’ll see what happens. But I think fantastic things could happen. Let’s hope so.

Anyway, we now have an even better exemplar for precisely the same course of action. Thomas Suarez who appears below.

and I thought I’d filled you in on what became of my work that day, but if I have, I’ve not done it in a postscript to the post. I didn’t want to get in the way, so I exited the scene. But I made a note to send Ben an email to ask what, if anything had happened. Of the two pieces of information he gave me, I was not surprised at the first, but I was surprised at the second. He told me that nothing had happened. And that he wasn’t surprised. I didn’t think he’d be that worldly wise at 14.

Edit – I really want opposing views. Anyone who thinks there is a strong case for a concerted push for more literacy, please give it in comments

At the Lowy Interpreter Andrew Carr says “One policy guaranteed to feature in the ‘Australia in the Asian Century’ White Paper is the take-up of Asian languages by Australians.” It’s a recurrent topic, and an interesting one for musing.

I certainly back Carr’s call that “One focus of the Asian Century white paper should be explaining how Australians can benefit from higher Asia literacy.” I back it because I don’t really understand the benefits of a concerted top down push for greater Asia literacy. I say this as someone who chose to study Mandarin at university, someone with family ties to Japan [fn1], someone who spends much of their free time reading about Asian societies and languages and someone who writes long posts such as this, (or this, this, this, this, this, this or this for just a sample). Asia literacy is interesting, but is it beneficial? I genuinely don’t know and if anything I should be biased towards that view. The need for Asia literacy, particularly language proficiency, is asserted frequently, but rarely argued.

The phoenix and the lyrebird

The economic case needs some bolstering. There doesn’t appear to be a major shortage of graduates that business is desperate for, else they’d be lurking around universities ready to  pounce just as the mining industry goes hunting for geologists and surveyors or they’d be providing the kind of salaries that would entice people to undertake such studies. And if they were, we wouldn’t need to discuss a government policy [EDIT - See fnA]. Carr recognises this when he says the individual rewards are minor, but the gains to the country as a whole are great. But this market failure needs to be demonstrated, not just asserted. What are the positive externalities generated by greater literacy and how do they improve economic ties? (Continued)

In campaigning for the State election John Brumby racked his brains wondering what he could promise for the state education system and, at some cost, came up with . . . school camps. Can’t say I thought it was the most important thing that could be done with a few additional millions of dollars in education, but what would I know?

School camps are all the rage in Australia’s private schools, or at least Victoria’s ones. They raise equity problems at state schools because they’re expensive. Not so much of a problem at the more expensive end of the private school market. Indeed some schools have you spending literally over a thousand dollars on carefully prescribed camping kit.

Of course if kids want to go on these things that’s well and good.  But lots of kids don’t.  But there seems to be a strong consensus in schools that these exercises are Very Good. So much so that some schools actually spend a term or a year in semi-camp conditions – although obviously for that period of time it’s a cross between a camp and a boarding school. This also seems to be growing in popularity.  I recall Prince Charles going to Timbertop, but now there are quite a few similar operations.

I heard the Principal of one Melbourne girls school say that their year 9 exercise where all the girls go away for the entire year really matures the girls. I’ve also heard of horror stories in which eating disorders surge and bullying reaches new heights.

Anyway, as you know Troppo shares virtually all of its basic philosophies with Fox News, most particularly our commitment to open and honest deliberation. In what may (but almost certainly wont’) become a series of such posts, we ask . . . . What do you think (Oh Troppodillians)?

Here is a guest post by Avi Waksberg. NG

Should we pay teachers performance bonuses for teachers based on standardised testing of their pupils? The teachers I’ve spoken to about this have invariably argued that it encourages them to ‘teach to the test’ whilst neglecting hard to test skills. In contrast, most economists I’ve spoken with favour some kind of ‘merit pay’, often raising promising examples from Israel (Lavy 2004) or Colorado (see de Grow 2007). However, imposing performance-based compensation upon hostile teachers seems a good way to ensure the approach does not work. (Chait 2007).

I am confident that people respond to incentives. However, teaching is difficult to quantify, complex and multidimensional. These are job characteristics that Dixit (2002) found tend to make performance pay less likely to be used. This leads to a situation where we focus on simplified metrics. But if incentives are not well targeted or the desired outcome accurately measured, then the response will be to overly focus on those aspects that are measured at the expense of other responsibilities. This is what underlies the complaint that teachers would be encouraged to ‘teach to the test’.

Moreover, there is no consensus on what constitutes teaching excellence. Is a teacher supposed to maximise: grades, enthusiasm for learning, clear thinking, university entrance, lifetime income, or life satisfaction? Goldhaber (2009) argued that while we may know little about how to objectively and accurately quantify teacher productivity, this problem is surmountable using merit pay programs with several evaluation components (such as Principal or peer evaluation, school-wide analysis, professional development and incentives for hard-to-fill skills and positions). However, any form of merit pay would still require the support of teachers, schools and administrators. Successful programs often emphasize collaboration and improvement rather than dividing teachers into ‘winners’ and ‘losers’.

I have a suggestion that, while incentive-based, seems to have registered a more positive response from teachers I have interviewed. Instead of rewards based on test results, I suggest offering prizes to teachers for posting excellent lesson plans to password-protected teachers’ forums (such as the Ultranet that is used in Victoria). This would potentially have the added advantage of encouraging a sense of sharing and collegiality among teachers, whilst not making them feel under-appreciated and judged in the way that bonuses based on testing can. If only teachers who are logged into secure forums can download the lesson plans, then it would be easy to simply record unique downloads (i.e. the number of downloads from different teacher logins as opposed to total number of downloads) and offer rewards to teachers for the most downloaded lesson plans in each year and subject. This approach has the advantage of addressing the tricky problem: what quantifies good teaching? In essence, we let the people who are best qualified to answer, the teachers themselves, decide what represents the best in their field.

(Continued)

Well the ABC God bless its cotton socks can’t quite bring itself to mount videos that can be embedded elsewhere – or I can’t see a way to do it, but they did a great story on Kaggle tonight – so I thought I’d post it here. Just click here and all will be revealed.

Update: someone has emailed me some code which enables me to frame the video here.

I have written a few posts about education.  But I’d not seen this presentation by Conrad Wolfram – brother of someone who may be one of the intellectual giants of our time – Stephen. (Since Stephen is a good deal older – born in 1959 with Conrad born in 1970 – perhaps one might call Conrad “Wolfram Beta”, but I digress).

Anyway, Conrad’s TED talk is very well worth watching. His case is simple and compelling. I couldn’t agree more.  It’s kind of tantalising, frustrating to have something so obvious within our intellectual grasp and yet to be so far off in terms of realisation, so far off because the workplace is a mass of routines. Even small routines can be difficult to break but usually they come in numbers which form a thicket which somehow kills off its enemies which die the death of a thousand cuts.

For those of you who don’t want to watch the video – I sympathise – after all you could read the words, jumping in and out at points of greater and less interest in a fraction of the time. If that’s you, you can read the words here.  Even better, I’ll summarise the basic message which is pretty straightforward.

Maths, Wolfram argues consists of four steps.

And as Wolfram says:

Here’s the funny thing. We insist that the entire population learns how to do step 3 by hand. Perhaps 80% of doing math education at school is step 3 by hand and largely not doing steps 1, 2, and 4. And yet step 3 is the step that computers can do vastly better than any human at this point, so it’s kind of bizarre that that’s the way around we’re doing things. Instead, I think we should be using computers to do step 3 and we should be using students to do steps 1, 2, and 4 to a much greater extent than we are.

Remarkably like the teaching of economics too – though it focuses on both calculation and model building, but only in passing on 1 and 2 and just a bit on 4.