Education
Education
Investigative Reporters, Editors and Bloggers
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 11/16/2008 - 10:07Yesterday, I attended a workshop on Watchdog Journalism hosted by Southern Connecticut State University and the Connecticut Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. In essence, it was two Investigative Reporters and Editors workshops combined into one full day of information.
The talk was very oriented towards people in traditional media, using buzzwords of the industry that I had times had to stop and figure out what they were saying. In addition, it was oriented towards people working in a newsroom, addressing issues about how to pitch stories to editors, how to make sure that the media companies’ legal department was properly informed of your investigations and so on.
Nonetheless, the conference was a treasure trove of ideas and hints on how to do better investigations and I would love to see more bloggers participate in workshops like this.
One idea that got me thinking was the admonition about getting organized and having a mix of quick hit stories together with stories that take longer to develop. I don’t know how I compare to other bloggers, but I’m not particularly organized. Almost all of my blog posts are ones that I write as a quick hit. Something happens, and I write a blog post. I might spend some time digging into the data for a story, doing some background work, and verifying information, but all of this is in a quick hit mode with the time between conceiving of a blog post and the time when the post is online being anywhere from less than an hour to less than a day.
In terms of doing watchdog journalism, you may need to spend a lot of time gathering data and information, watching trends develop and noting when something out of the ordinary happens. I have so many irons in the fire right now, I’m just not sure how I will incorporate this into my blogging, but the idea is intriguing and I’ll look for a way to get this done.
Another useful hint they had was that when you are working on a large investigative story, try to have a nugget of a small story inside of it so that if the large story collapses, you still have some sort of story to run with. Likewise, they spoke of the advantages of doing a “rolling investigation” where you come out with your first story, and then continue the investigation and do follow up afterwards.
This has the advantage of getting stories out the door, as opposed to working on a large story and then for some reason, never managing to get it finished. In addition, once your first installment is out, you may get more tips and you may change the course of what is happening. Follow-up stories add pressure for reform.
One of Kim’s top issues last year at Common Cause was the Citizens Elections Program. We have now gone through our first cycle with the program and there are plenty of interesting issues to follow up on. How did people spend their campaign funds? What parts of the program did not work as well as they could have? When the General Assembly gathers, how will the program affect the interaction between lobbyists and legislators?
Another interesting story to follow is ACORN. Now that the election is over, what has happened to the various cases brought against ACORN? What is happening to counter cases? Some of this will require longer term research and digging.
Another thing that was repeated frequently was that when you do longer term reports, write sections as you go. It captures the feelings of the moment better.
With this setting the tone for the day, we dug into how to do better investigative report. Neil Reisner of Florida International University spoke about making effective use of the Internet. This is something of particular interest to bloggers, and Neil’s comments started off provocatively suggesting that the Internet is Evil, that Google is the Devil and the Wikipedia is worst of all. They are too easy and the discourage reporters from being enterprising. We end up using the easiest source, one that shows up in Google, instead of the most informative source, and they may even lead us to false information.
He spoke about the invisible Internet, those parts of the internet that have not been indexed by search engines. He claimed that two thirds of the Internet is invisible to the search engines, and as an example, he noted websites that you can enter information into a form to gather information, but that the information from the results of the search is not something that gets indexed.
He provided a great list of resources faster than anyone could copy them down. Fortunately, however, he saved his presentations and will be making them available online. As I write this, the PowerPoint for his second presentation is up at betterwatchdog.wetpaint.com, and the PowerPoint to his first presentation should be up there soon.
He noted using sites like reporter.org to find resources and links to other journalism organizations and PowerReporting to find online sites for searching all kinds of data that doesn’t show up in Google.
He noted various government portals such as FedStats, First Gov, GPO’s list of databases, GAO Reports, and of particular interest, the GAO’s Official Guide to Special Investigators. I should find time to simply go out and explore these sites in much more detail. Neil noted that if you get yourself on the GPO mailing list and you’ll never be lonely again. He also talked about Census data and getting on their mailing list.
For international searches, he recommended the CIA’s Factbook, NationMaster which serves as an aggregator of various internation reports and the UN’s website.
One useful hint he mentioned was using White Pages ‘find neighbors’ search when gathering information for a story, as well as sites like Pipl for deeper searches about people online.
Later in the day, Neil taught another section on understanding the dataflow. Information online may start as a paper form filled out at a government office, or as data entered directly into a computer. It may have been aggregated and if you dig deep, you may be able to gain access to the underlying data and or documents. He encouraged people to always ask for the underlying data. He also told a great story about how he found one person by searching for tangential information. “You look for what you’re looking for, but you also look for what you’re not looking for.“
Tisha Thompson of WTTG, the Fox affiliate in Washington DC also taught two sessions. One was “The art of finding and cultivating sources” and the second was “The art of the Interview”. In many ways, the most important points that she spoke about were being respectful and honest. Treat people nicely, recognizing what they are going through and they will give you the information you are looking for. Don’t burn people. Don’t ambush them. Be careful of legal issues. Make sure you keep proper notes, yet also make sure you protect yourself and any informants you have, especially if they are a whistleblower.
It was great to hear her perspective on interviewing, about why the Palin and Couric interview was so good, why interviewers might need to appear dumb at times. She spoke about carefully orchestrating an interview, especially if it is a confrontational interview, and how some people will end up talking in the language of their profession and you have to dumb down what you’re saying and asking to get them to explain things in a way that people not in their profession will understand.
Other sessions included an attorney for the Freedom of Information Commission talking about how to get the information you need using FOI requests and complaints, a person from the Wall Street Journal talking about the importance of knowing how to use spreadsheets, database and statistical analysis packages, and Doug Haddix who is IRE’s current training director talking about how to make stories bullet proof.
It was an extremely valuable workshop which I’m glad I attended. Hopefully what I learned there will improve my blogging, and I’ll be able to get more interesting watchdog stories added to my blog going forward.
The Effect of Technology on Education Meetings
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 09:41There is a lot of talk about the effect of technology on education, but not a lot of it focuses on the effect of technology on meetings about education. However, last night, I observed three different meetings about education that provided an interesting contrast of how technology is affecting these meetings.
The Woodbridge Board of Education met last night for their monthly meeting. Yet this meeting was different. It was the first time that they used a program called Emeeting from the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education (CABE).
“CABE-Meeting is a user-friendly online service specifically designed to assist the board and superintendent, in preparing and running board of education meetings. “
At the beginning of the meeting, Nick Caruso from CABE, together with members of the technology staff at Beecher Road School assisted school board members get connected to Emeeting and learn their way around.
Superintendent Stella spoke about the importance of the board adopting new technology and modeling the appropriate use of technology for students, teachers and staff. He also discussed a committee being formed, headed up by Rick Wood, the technology educator at the school. The committee will include members of the Board of Education, and parents from the community and will address the three-year technology plan.
Dr. Stella also discussed the Connecticut Educators Computer Association (CECA). They are holding their 2008 CECA Conference today, “Surviving and Thriving in an e-Literate World”.
It was noted that Nancy White and James Crawford from Beecher Road School will be attending as 2008 CECA Award Winners for their work in Digital Storytelling.
This digital storytelling project involves a sixth grade class, a general education teacher and a special education teacher. This project integrates various elements of Language Arts, Social Studies and digital media to express the students’ thoughts and ideas on various subject matters. Students gain the necessary skills to produce their digital stories through a four-tiered approach in which the special education teacher is incorporating the teaching of successively sophisticated technical skills in a series of four mini projects. In this tiered approach the students learn how to take digital still photographs, create music soundtracks, record narration, use digital video cameras, and import these media into the iLife suite of software on their groups’ computers. Students then publish and/or present their work. Students are asked to evaluate their movies as they would for their writing for ideas, organization, voice, word (picture) choice, fluency and conventions. Digital Storytelling exemplifies a project that showcases how technology can be used to enhance learning for all students.
As part of the Superintendent’s report, there was also a discussion about the Connecticut Mastery Test and how the school is working on improving the already high results that BRS students receive.
I am not a big fan of standardized testing, the CMTs or No Child Left behind, and the presentation did not hold my interest. So, I checked on Twitter to see what some of my friends around cyberspace were doing.
This is how I observed a second meeting about technology in education. Christine, a woman I met through Twitter and Podcamp goes by the username of PurpleCar on Twitter. She was at some meeting where Katie Kessner was speaking. (For a brief bio of Ms. Kessner, check here.)
PurpleCar’s first Tweet about the talk said, “waiting for a 'the dangers of webkinz' talk to begin. If this woman has no facts and spreads panic, I'm politely gonna go BOOYAH on her.”
I noted that Fiona is working on her reading, writing, typing and math skills by using Webkinz. PurpleCar reported that the speaker talked about “the students denied access to college because of their facebook pages”. Another Twitter user, nazgul, noted “@dulceamargo got a scholarship to study motion picture arts at Interlochen because of an ad on Facebook. Life-changing.”
The discussion, both where PurpleCar was, and on Twitter, continued on and on, with many of us on Twitter coming to the conclusion that Ms. Kessner is an ill-informed fear monger.
The contrast between the Board of Education members, learning their way around a new system and talking about how technology is being used at BRS to improve education provided a sharp contrast to the meeting PurpleCar was at. It also provided an interesting insight into the standardized tests.
Standardized tests, like information technology can, and too often are, used to instill fear which thwarts education. However, they can also be a valuable tool to improve the educational process. It was clear from the presentation that the staff at Beecher Road School understood the benefits and dangers of standardized testing and were working hard to make sure they are used to the students best benefit.
The folks of Woodbridge should be proud of all the efforts that the teachers, staff and administration at Beecher Road School are doing to make sure that all tools, information technology, standardized tests, and so many other tools are being used in the best interests of students. I know I was.
Woodbridge BOE Enters the 21st century
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 18:45
The Woodbridge BOE starts using laptops for viewing the agenda and documents for the meeting
Reading Postman at a Democratic Town Committee
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 10/15/2008 - 13:22(Originally posted at Greater Democracy.)
The words of Neil Postman provides a peculiar juxtaposition to the committee reports of the monthly Woodbridge, CT Democratic Town Committee.
Next month, I will be speaking, in Second Life, to a communications class about the relationship between Second Life and other forms of media, blogs, online Second Life News, online traditional news, and so on. The class will be reading essays on Media Ecology at that point in their class and I hope they will have some good questions.
However, I’m not a communications scholar, and certainly not an expert on Media Ecology. So, I thought I’d try to get up to speed a little bit in preparation. The local library doesn’t have much on Media Ecology. The closest I got was two books by Neil Postman. Neither seems to be specifically about Media Ecology, but they are both interesting books that I’ve long been thinking about reading.
One book is The End of Education : Redefining the Value of School. Some of my friends in Woodbridge are encouraging me to run for Board of Education next year. I have lots of thoughts about education, and this book, together with his Teaching as a Subversive Activity are probably good books for me to read, even though I suspect they may not come up in any school board debates.
Setting that book aside, I thought I would start off with Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century. Postman sets the tone for the book with a quote by Randall Jarrell on the dedication page, “Soon we shall know everything the 18th century didn’t know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us.”
No Parent Left Behind
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 09/16/2008 - 15:08Last night, I attended the Woodbridge Board of Education meeting where many interesting issues were discussed. A key issue was how Woodbridge students did on the Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMT). The teachers and administration were particularly concerned to make sure that the board and any members of the public present, understood how Woodbridge could be one of the highest performing schools in the district reference group (DRG), and still not make adequate yearly progress (AYP) with regards to No Child Left Behind (NCLB). There was a long discussion about this, which reinforced my belief that NCLB is fundamentally flawed. No only on its focus on standardized testing and being an unfunded mandate, but in the way the test results are understood, and many other ways.
People spoke at the meeting about townspeople being highly concerned with the CMT scores. I must admit, any concerns that I have about CMT scores are about what may be lost in the educational process by too much focus on the CMT scores.
After the meeting, I asked a few school board members if anyone had done any research on how concerned townspeople really are about CMT scores. One person mentioned that there is a small group of people very vocal about these scores. Another mentioned that the PTO had done a survey where CMT scores did not end up being a major concerned. She went on to note that this was a skewed sample, since it was only getting data from parents there were involved in the school through the PTO.
It struck me at this point that there might be a logical explanation of this. Parents of students who perform well on the CMTs are perhaps less concerned about the CMT scores. Since, it is well known that students perform better whose parents are more involved in the school, it would all fit together. The parents who took the survey were involved in the school. As a result, their children performed better, and the parents were less concerned about CMT scores.
So, what is the best way to improve CMT scores? Perhaps it isn’t in altering the curriculum, or spending more time on test preparation. Perhaps the answer is in getting more parents involved in the school and their children’s education.
I was pleased to see that the school board seemed to have this as a focus in other issues as well. The first issue, which had a long presentation and discussion was about creating a quarter mile loop around the sports fields that would be used for exercise, not only by students, but also by parents and members of the community. Apparently, this is a topic that has been kicking around for some time, but they have made significant progress, thanks to a grant from the State, obtained by Sen. Joe Crisco, to do a study of putting in such a loop. The Woodbridge Recreation Department has been working with the school the Beecher Road School PTO to help bring this about.
Wellness is a concern expressed for the children at Beecher Road School, and by encouraging parents to become involved in recreation events at the school, the school is helping the students perform better in these areas as a result of this involvement. There was discussion about naming the quarter mile loop after Kevin Kucinskas, the well beloved fifth-grade teacher who died over the summer.
The other big issue was the school budget. Beecher Road School burns about 66,000 gallons of fuel oil a year. With the sharp increase in oil prices, this is expected to require an additional $50,000 for the school year to keep the building heated. It is hoped that savings in other areas will be able to offset this. There was a discussion about whether or not the 66,000 gallons was a recent figure, perhaps skewed by year-to-year temperature variations, or if it was averaged out over a longer period.
The schools business manager explained that it was based on longer term averages and the discussion went to methods of reducing the amount of fuel used. It was suggested that getting the students and the parents involved in efforts to reduce fuel consumption might be beneficial. Yet again, I come back to the idea of parental involvement. The more involved the parents are in efforts to conserve fuel, the better off the school will be, and hopefully, this will spill over into people’s homes. Families could save money and be more energy efficient by learning how to conserve through programs with the school.
It was a long, and interesting meeting, and it brought home the importance of parental involvement in all aspects of the school. Let’s hope that Beecher Road, and other schools, start spending a little more time on No Parent Left Behind as a better way of dealing with the testing issues for No Child Left Behind.
