About 100 sailors were left behind when the USS Ronald Reagan lifted anchor and sailed out of Hong Kong to avoid an incoming typhoon. Considering that there are 6,000 sailors on the carrier a statistcian would say that is an acceptable error rate (1.6%).  But perhaps not for the 100 that are now homeless in a strange port. We are studying crisis plans in Education and benchmarking best practices in Managerial.  Crisis planning is a serious concern for all given terrorist attacks, weather attacks such as we have had in China and the midwest USA, and any and all times in the military.  US Universities have recently grappled with this problem, How and who does one notify on short notice?  UNT has established a databank of cell phone numbers. Eagle Alert can send a mass phone alert to thousands of students and stakeholders in the event of an emergency. Imagine trying to do that with 6,000 sailors in hong kong, well that got 98.4% anyway.

Yep like Freddie Krueger he is back.  Perotcharts.com  looks at how we spend money and what we get for it. He is concerned about the federal deficit and rightly so. However I doubt there is a way to make this a front burner issue. Fact is that politician use public money to buy votes for interest groups. This is why they do not want to let you invest your social security money, they want to control it. This is why they do not want to change the income tax system, they want to dispense favors with it.

At any rate take a look, one can learn a great deal from a good presentation, clearly this was professionally and painstakingly done.

The move to spread the wealth (read research funds) heat up. In this link the Dallas Morning News

supports the three in North Texas, interestingly the other four are not mentioned. IN addition to UNT, UT Dallas and UTA, I would guess Univ of Houston, Texas Tech, UTSA, and UTEP. Too bad Texas State.

In business classes we attempt to assess real or projected costs to projects. Educators do the same thing.  Here is an article from the Houston Chronicle 
deploring the Higher Ed  tuition increase in Texas. I will show you the UT response in class today. In addition we will look at the actual report of the Higher Coord Board CB though I am at a loss to find the numbers the Chronicle alludes to amid all the stats on the CB page.

But this is not the point. What is the real cost increase of attending UT Austin?  Earlier this week I read a plea from the UT President that the School was horribly underfunded as to research. We are studying communications, what is the truth?  What will be your reaction to the Chronicle story and then the UT response, which the Chronicle refused to run?  All of us grapple with the  famous dictum that  figures don't lie but liars….well you know.  And we all face some degree of disbelief when we parade numbers. What then can we learn about presenting our facts from two of the largest and most influential sources in Texas, the Chronicle and UT itself.

As Fox Says, we report you decide.

In Education Communication we focus this week on Vision Mission Outcomes. Many administrators make the common mistake of  substituting inputs as a measure of their school's success. For example, I once read the description of a campus by its President in which he paraded the appraised value of the buildings!  What pray tell does that have to do with student success or their outcomes? If they were studying in open shelters as perhaps Plato's students did, would that mean poor results?

As usual the expert on this is Tom Sowell  Click the link to read his latest column on inputs versus outputs. As he says, the USNWR survey focuses on inputs, not what happens to the students. We will read his column in class today. Check out his website

Again, one of the output measures I have for you as a class is to change you from a consumer of education information to an evaluator of information. Think how often you read a description of say a college or K-12 school and it cites these stats

Number of students (the all time administration favorite!)
Number and size of buildings – the library at SWT is cloaked in Italian marble, the President at the time made two trips to Italy to pick out the marble, imagine how that went over with faculty….
Number of books in the library – what is wrong here, is anyone reading them, circulation or book reports assigned would be far better
Athletics – we won regional whatever…
93% of faculty have PhDs in their field

None of these measures tell us anything about what happens to the students. I mentioned yesterday that the best of state colleges only manage about 61% graduation rates. What of the graduates themselves? What happens to the 39%  Remember 67% of the graduates move back home, gee how many does this leave that are in the workforce?  Remember the piece we read about improving providing a high quality college education – hmm how many people would automatically translate that to a high presidential salary?

This is a very important metric when we establish what our outcomes will be. Are  we measuring student success or are we just touting our inputs?

This is an example of how we would post on a blog.

Middle school diaries

Is blogging for you?  Here is a link to various middle school blogsites. We will discuss this in class today.

Blog is short of weblog. Blogging has exploded in the last couple of years as the latest internet phenomenon.  Bloggers are keeping political candidtes in check with what they say, whoosh, instant analysis online.

My experience is that blogging is simpler, much simpler than a website. It is a matter of finding a host such as typepad or blogspot,  setting up an account, and then using it much like a word processor.

It is easy to insert pictures. Here is a picture of a former  homeless individual who has come to live with us. Bentley as you can see is doing much better health wise than when he arrived.

The host blogging network sets up the space. One does not however have the ability to link to your own files, ie, there is no spot to say upload essays I have written and then put in a hyper link to them. So one has to put up what one wants folks to read.

Marshall McLuhan  suggested that we would become a 'global village.'  The computer would replace the printed page. Well, look what happened. A hot medium is one that allows for little participation on the part of the veiwer. He used movies as hot.  A cool medium is that that requires more participation and involvment. He used tv and comics as examples. I would say today that the realization of this vision has happened in much more cool mediums than tv. Let's take music.

It used to be that one bought an entire album to really get one or two songs, unless it was a complilation of best of hits.  Now one can select individual tunes and down load them.  While this could be done with records and casette tapes, it is much easier with digital storage which then goes to an iPod or CD. Now one has easily assembled their own album.  Blogging is perhaps the ultimate cool medium.  One creates hiw or her own medium, addresses his or her own issues, and posts without editorial interference.

Youtube takes this idea to video, now one can be his her own movie producer. And so the Global Village arrives at its own cool medium-original, in cyberspace and in either still or video editions!

 Melanie Hubbard  gives it a go at  a Tampa Bay High School. The results are not pretty. When will schools put the teacher back in charge?

This article by career counselor Marty Nemko suggest that we overrate the value of a college diploma. What do you think?  Lots of jobs do not require a college diploma, and they are not simple jobs either. Fixing a computerized Lexus, your home air conditioner, becoming a MSFT or CSCO engineer all are serious pursuits. And we continue to manufacture degrees to satisfy enrollment requirements or the desire for a degree from the shall we say, marginally qualified. The result, around a 50% completion rate for those that start a college degree and a mountain of debt for everyone. With tuition up 79% since Texas let Universities set their own tuition, is this a good deal? Sound off!

We have been experiencing intrusive parents in the USA. Parents are even complaining to their kids' employers about unfavorable treatment. now the problem is evident in Japan. Yep, mimicing the most American of idea, Snow White, educators relented so that all the girls, not just one, could play Snow White.

Nannyism to the extreme?  The criticism of No Child Left Behind is that the idea of self reliance and success or failure is disappearing.  Here is evidence of just that. How would you handle such an incident at your school?