User:Jacob J. Walker/iMet Cohort 11 – Statement of Purpose

Personal Information

 * Name: Jacob Walker
 * Email: [mailto:JacobWalker@grant.k12.ca.us JacobWalker@grant.k12.ca.us]
 * Current Employment: Grant Adult Education (Grant Joint Union High School District)

What are your life goals for the near future?
I currently am a computer instructor with Grant Adult Education, and plan to stay an instructor here for about 3 to 5 more years. I am simultaneously starting to work on the Effective Education Project (www.effectiveeducation.org), which has the ambitious (but doable) goal of creating an improved educational system from the ground up. This system will first be implemented in nations where people are at a level close to survival, and will assist people in improving their lives and the lives of those around them. This may become a full time career or it may stay as an equal project to my employment.

After finishing my Masters, I will probably work towards teaching in a program like iMet, or the BVE program, or some other progam where I'm helping to teach teachers. Beyond this, I have considered possibly joining the Peace Corp and/or possibly even applying to the Sloan School of Management at MIT to enter their Ph.D. program in Organizational Behavior.

How do you think the iMet Program might help you attain these goals?
Dr. John Cowan talked about how everyone has something to gain from the iMet program. We all have things to learn. I agree with this statement. I have struggled internally with justifying to myself about spending the money to get “a piece of paper”. But I believe the iMet will give me more than just a piece of paper. I am interested in working with a group of people who are dedicated to education, and who are at a higher level, working to achieve more. I truly believe the best ideas come from collaboration, compared to what we can generate on our own, no matter how intelligent or how much experience we have, we can always miss something. Jack Welch, arguably one of the most important CEOs of the 20th century, would purposely seek to talk with people from all walks of life and many perspectives, even those not directly involved with his business.

While I suspect that I already know much of the theory that will be taught in the classes, the iMet program will help fill in some gaps, reinforce some ideas, and assist me to dig deeper into certain ideas and see how they can really be implemented to improve education. Further, being part of a cohort of intelligent, passionate, and technologically-interested people will be excellent in helping to develop some of these ideas. With collaboration we can discover what ideas make sense, which ones don’t, and how to improve upon all of them.

The iMet Masters will of course also help me improve my current pay scale and give me more respect in the eyes of my peers and people I will be working with for the Effective Education Project. It also will allow me to teach at the college or university level in the future. But if these were the only reasons that I was applying, I would not apply. It is because I believe that the iMet process has something to give to me, and I have something to give to it, that I wish to join.

What role do you believe technology should play in K-12 or other education/training settings?
To understand what role technology can and should play in education, it is first important to understand technology. Any piece of technology is both a tool and a system. We usually think of computers as synonymous with technology, but in fact technology truly includes all human designed physical systems, including the buses that transport kids to school. And even the term "Information Technology" should be understood to include books, and the production of books, which is one of the older forms of technology used in education. While it is important to recognize the breadth of technology, I will limit my discussion here to that of computer based information systems.

Computers have the potential to truly benefit education. But during this discussion about how they can be of benefit it is important to attempt to be aware of the unintended consequences that any tool (technology) may have, and to use this understanding while designing an educational system.

One of the first unintended consequences that need to be considered with any technology can be summed by quoting Abraham Maslow: "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." Often school administrators and technology zealots see computers as a cure all to all education problems. They start to see every problem as something a computer can solve. While a computer is a tool that can probably assist in the solution to most problems, it is not the only tool that should be considered.

Another unintended consequence comes from Marshall McLuhan's observation that any extension of man (technology) amputates other extensions. . By this it is important to understand that if students only use the Internet or computers to try and understand the world, they may not use their natural senses as often to simply walk into a forest and observe the animals and plants. Since there is only a limited amount of time that an education system has to expose any learner in the system to different things, careful thought needs to be made in the engineering of the educational system to maximize all aspects of what a learner truly gains.

Cost to Benefit must also always be considered with the use of technology. As an example, I generally don't believe that SmartBoards are worth the extra expense to the educational gains that may be made by using them. Other technological solutions may be able to accomplish the same goals, nearly as effectively for less cost.

Yet, even given these and similar issues, computer technology has a lot that it can do for education. Combined with the Internet, computers can store and transmit information to a higher degree than ever possible before. This gives students the ability to gain information from many other locations than ever before. Computers also allow students to interact with information in different ways than previously. Utilized in a Constructivist fashion, technology like spreadsheets allow students to be able to use math as a manipulative, and if the educational system is engineered properly, this technology can also help students learn how math can be utilized. An example of this is being developed in the Public Pupil Pizza Project.

Every day in my classes, I use technology to help teach technology. I use LCD projectors so my class can see and follow along with the steps I am doing. I use the printer to make handouts that they can use later to review the lesson. I teach them how to use Windows, Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint. But with each one of these, I am moving towards a curriculum of applied academics. For example, I teach my students how to use Word and Publisher to make resumes, resume "business cards", cover letters, portfolios, and other job seeking tools. I show how Excel can be used in real life situations, and am working towards fully developing it with the Public Pupil Pizza Project. I teach my students how to do Business Intelligence with Access where they learn how to retrieve relevant information from a database and then how to analyze and use that information to improve an organization. These are all tangible things that technology has had a role in both assisting in education and being the content of the education.

What role do you think technology should play in creating a democratic and pluralistic world?
First, it is important to think about what it takes to create a democratic and pluralistic world. America, for all of its faults, is greatly ahead of much of the world in having an open society, democracy, wealth, and acceptance. As citizens of planet earth, if we truly believe that all humans were created equal, as our Declaration of Independence suggests, then we logically should focus on our human brothers and sisters who are in the most need. These are NOT the people in the United States. Even the poorest among us, who live on the streets, can make more money in one hour begging, than most of the world can in one day of hard work.

Also, before answering this question we must realize that technology is always a "double edged sword". It can be used for "good" or for "bad". As educators, I believe it is our ethical duty to attempt to make sure that what we teach will benefit the world. So while we are teaching about technology we also must be teaching about developing a system of ethics, and challenge learners to think about the consequences technology may have.

With that being said, computer technology has been shown to be an equalizing force in the world. Wikipedia is available to anyone who can access the Internet; it also gives the entire world an open marketplace of ideas where generally the best and most accurate ideas win, and a fuller picture is developed on any subject than within a traditional encyclopedia. India has been able to improve the welfare of many of its highly educated citizens by allowing them to get high tech jobs that were once only available in America or other "developed" nations. And thus has also forced America to compete in the global marketplace of ideas, and not be able to sit on our laurels. Thomas Friedman discusses much of this in his excellent book "The World is Flat"

With the Effective Education Project, I am working with Muhsin Jallal and the Northern Volunteers Group in Ghana to build a computer school there that they can earn money by doing transcription. We are working to develop a system where organizations in the U.S. and other developed nations who produce audio, such as college lectures, church services, talk radio, etc, can have this audio transcribed to text. You can find out more information about this in my article about Economic Leap Frogging through Trading Information via the Internet

How do you feel about joining a cohort program that requires that you make a commitment to teamwork and community?
I think the cohort has the potential to be the most positive aspect about the iMet program for me. Many of the ideas that I have started to develop, will not be able to grow by just me alone. It will take collaboration with people who are passionate about similar goals, and who are capable of helping to make these goals a reality. Being part of a tight cohort will give me the opportunity to express my ideas to people who are potentially within that subset. I hope that I will find others who can see the importance of the ideas I started, and further to be able to argue the advantages and disadvantages of different ideas, and be able to test the ideas through action research. I also hope that the ideas that I'm working will gain "co-ownership" from others within the group, so they are not "my" ideas, but end up being "our" ideas. The only way a cohort might be a negative experience for me, is I could not find people of similar enough viewpoint who would be interested in working with me on the projects that I'm passionate about.

What do you think might be the advantages to learning in an online environment?
For myself, in the iMet program, being in an online environment can allow for more flexibility. Asynchronous communication allows me to have flexibility with my time, and even synchronous communication will allow me to have flexibility with my location.

An online environment has other potential advantages for learners, which is the fact that they don't need to be geographically close to a teacher. This will be important to me as I work more with the Effective Education Project, because it will probably generally have a better benefit to cost ratio to do online training with students in less developed nations than with attempting to fly out to each country.

What do you think might be the challenges?
There are several challenges of online education. One comes from the medium of being "online" and the other comes with the benefit of flexibility.

As I had discussed earlier about Marshall McLuhan's perspective that one "extension of man" can amputate another, having only online education amputates many of the benefits that in person communication and schooling has. This is why I'm very glad that the iMet program still has the 25% component of being in person, and especially happy that it has the initial retreat. To me that seems to be a far more well designed educational system than what many universities are doing with online only education.

The inherent advantage of flexibility that is gained through using online education, requires self discipline and dedication to not have it become a problem. Procrastination is a common issue among people, and one that I've had problems with most of my life. Although, if I am passionate about a task, and take the time to plan the group of tasks ahead of time, and truly dedicate myself to them, I have shown that I can make great accomplishments. So I feel I am up to the challenge.

The issue of working with online education with people in other countries often has the additional challenge of making sure someone understands you, especially when English is not their native language. It also is more difficult to determine how they are progressing in tangible things. As the Effective Education Project gets developed more, these issues and others will need to find methods of being resolved.

Is there anything else you would like to add?
I think that I have written enough so far. Any of the topics I have thus far written can be expanded upon, and I am sure I will continue to learn more about each of them. I wouldn't be entering the iMet if I didn't feel I could or would learn more.