The picture above was taken of Michael Phelps after he won the 100 meter butterfly in the Olympics in Beijing by 1/100th of a second. Anders Ericsson (2004) would say that the 1/100th of a second difference between winning and losing was the result of “Deliberate, difficult practice undertaken over a long period of time, while receiving informative feedback, and having opportunities for repetition and correction of errors, which leads to elite performance.”Phelps deliberate “difficult” practice includes swimming 80,000 meters a week (50 miles). He practices 365 days a years (52 days per years more than most other competitive swimmers. Every race that he swims is filmed above and below the water – every meter is broken down mathematically and analyzed by fluid mechanics programs. Numbers of strokes, speed of stokes, angles of fingertips entering the water, and the tilt of is head is adjusted based on this “feedback” to “correct his “errors” so he can reduce water resistance and increase his speed. His blood is drawn and a comprehensive blood analysis is run after each race to measure how many millimoles of muscular waste needs to be cleared out of his system before his next race. This “feedback” directs Phelps regarding the speed and the number of warm down laps he needs to swim after his races to drop his lactic acid levels back down to peak performance levels.
Why do I introduce you to this notion of deliberate practice and offer Michael Phelps as an example? I highlight the concept of deliberate, difficult practice, with meaningful and actionable feedback for the correction of errors (certainly not standardized tests), because foundational ideas like hard work, ambition, and dedication (time investment) were noticeably absent in the US National Education Technology Plan.
How can we possibly “Strengthen Leadership” without accountability and no mention of performance reviews with “teeth?” How will “Innovative Budgeting” ever occur in an educational system run by an undisciplined government that has proven it can’t fiscally manage anything well? The concept of “Improving Teacher Training” sounds good, but who is accountable for making it happen? I find it interesting that while completing my M.Ed at Temple (1999-2003) and my LST MS here at Lehigh (2005-2010), I have not had one online course. If not me, who? The grand generic verbalization continued with “Support eLearning”, “Encourage Broadband Access”, “Move Toward Digital Content”, and “Integrate Data Systems”, but I was left wondering about substance. If we actually achieve these goals as written and develop and disseminate quality educational content utilizing technology who will come if we haven’t addressed the foundational ideas of hard work, ambition, and dedication (time investment)? For example only 105,000 intrinsically motivated students enrolled for courses at the Florida Virtual School in 2008 (FVS Minutes, 2008), representing only 4% of the state’s total 2,640,000 students (Florida Department of Education, 2006).
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The Florida Virtual School has truly embraced US National Education Technology Plan. If fact, based on my brief investigation of their work I was impressed by the diverse, robust curriculum and quality of the content. Clearly, the effort at FVS is to serve motivated, ambitious students who have high expectations by offering them coursework that might not be available at their school. Who else but the top 4% of students would want to take courses like AP Microeconomics, AP Art History, AP Computer Science, AP Statistics, AP Calculus, Mandarin Chinese, Latin, Marine Science, etc.? I took a brief tour of the Mandarin Chinese course and was amazed at its depth. Students are immersed in the Chinese culture as virtual exchange students in China as they learn to listen, speak, read and write the language. If fact, my brief exposure to the Mandarin course content has motivated me to call the school to see if I can enroll as an out of state (adult) student. Out of state students can participate in FVS courses for a fee. If this is an option I am also interested in taking the Flash Animation course and the AP Art History course, as well. FVS is an awesome example of what is possible, but it is, unfortunately, an exception. But the FVS example also exposes our bigger “foundational” problem – the elephant in the room that no one has the political courage to address – How do we create a culture of “chasing excellence” in which the remaining 96% of Florida students want to participate in the same kinds of challenging coursework? By serving only the top 4%, 10%, or 20% we still lose as a nation.
According to Craig Barrett (Intel Presentation, 2008), there are more kids in China learning English than our 307,305,000 US citizens (US Population Clock, Aug 29, 2009). In the United States, only about 24,000 students in grades seven through 12 study Chinese (Aratabi, 2006). We are doomed by these kinds of numbers unless we adopt an Asian culture in which everyone in the United States is passionately devoted to educational excellence that only results from hard work, ambition, and life-long dedication (time investment).
References
Aratabi, Lori (2006). With a Changing World Comes An Urgency to Learn Chinese. Washington Post. Saturday, August 26, 2006. Accessed at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/25/AR2006082501418_pf.html, August 29, 2009.
Florida Department of Education, accessed at http://www.fldoe.org/news/2006/2006_11_17.asp , August 29, 2009
Florida Virtual Schools Board of Trustee Official Minutes, Tuesday, June 24, 2008, accessed at http://www.flvs.net/Pages/default.aspx, August 29, 2009
K. Anders Ericsson, Ph.D. / Department of Psychology / Florida State University
Ericsson K.A. (2004). Deliberate practice and the acquisition and maintenance of expert performance in medicine and related domains. Academic Medicine. Vol. 79, No. 10: S70-S81
US and World Population Clock, accessed at http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html, August 29, 2009.
