Top-down - Bottom-up approach in new skills development

Transparency is a big issue in any government. It is easy pronounced, and quite difficult to realize. Somtimes government institution go ahead, but they do not get feedback and their efforts get recognized. Other institution monitor it. An initiative, which is not rewared, will not last long. "Good idea, but too early to implement", "We are not yet ready for this", "Come back in some years", "There are technical difficulties".
Elliott Masie has an interesting solution. Educate the public. Ask it!
Newsletter from 17 Feburary: "Skills for Government Transparency - Working Example and Ideas. One of the projects of the new administration is focused on adding increased transparency to government spending. The interesting question is to think about the skills that citizens will need to make sense of large amounts of public data on spending, projects, taxes and more. Take a minute to look at the website: http://usaspending.gov which has online access to Federal spending by district, agency or vendor. Poke around the site and send me a few ideas about your ideas of what learning would be optimal (or even performance support tools) to help individuals make sense of increased data access."
Very easily, these kind of approach could be used as well in Kazakstan. No investment required. No additional staff needed. A short announcement and a fresh approach can create momentum. Ask your client. Yes, we can!

Access to Open Education Ressources

It is an idea, I receive limited support:Create a small team of content developers, evaluate existing open content and disseminate it to the community. An advanced version could be to create an online evaluation meachanism, where the community vote which Open Resources to translate and localize. The advantages are clear: high-quality learning ressources, adopted to local circumstances, integration into the global educational market, use of latest approaches, becoming a member of OER community, creating momentum for whole education sector.
Why it does not happen? It is very new. Decision-makers luck the knowledge about the open source movement. There is no tradition of creating and funding of small, highly professional teams. Here is a good overview how OER ressources might be further used.

Government investment in education helps fight financial crisis, says IMF

The IMF has calculated multipliers for three policy options: tax cuts, infrastructure investment and "other" government spending. Public education would be included in the latter.

The paper says that the "other" category includes additional spending on safety nets, assistance to small and medium enterprises, support for housing markets and transfers to state and local governments. In many North American and European countries, a primary example of transfers to state and local governments is for funding public education.

The IMF assessment makes the point that “other” government spending has a considerably larger multiplier than tax cuts (1.0 vs 0.6), although infrastructure investment has an even higher multiplier (1.8 vs 0.6). Clearly, tax cuts are the least effective policy option.

Source

21st century learning

The slogan "21st century learning" disseminates fast: a google research for 21st century learning gives 75 million results. Some of the efforts are backed by leading corporation, for others it seems that it is also used as a marketing tool. The main consensus about is a switch to creativey, collaboration and cooperation, use of ICT technology, the independent, self-paced learning. Without doubts, these ideas are important. In an ever faster changing world, the old paradigm are replaced with new approaches. "21 century learning" seems me still a bit empty, comparing, for example, to connectivism, but the concept behind is powerful.
The diagram provides an overview. It is clear, it is structured and it gives a fast understanding of the underlying issues. I like that it provides a good orientation.
Discussing modernization in VET Kazakhstan, these issues are not yet addressed. One official said to me "we are not yet there to address 21st century skills". He has an argument that there are indeed basic issues to be covered, having, for example, a basic physical and institutional infrasturcture in place. Before speaking about higher skills, there should be the possibility to enter the system. Ressources and attention are limited, in a first step the priority is in following the traditional path.
Indeed, as the sector is starved from investment over the last 15 years, this is an important argument.
Is there an alternative? Should new approaches be addressed? Should it be considered, decision-makers, administrators and teachers qualified? The answer is yes, of course. However, there are limiting resources and the real danger to focus on lighthouse projects, small ilands of excellence within a sea of low performance and inefficiencies.
The solution is to switch, step-by-step, the balance to a more advanced way of these new learning methods, to lower the risk for decision-makers by educating them, to addresse the issue, to create appropriate capacities for dealing with new challenges.

Quality of Education and cost

It is an easy to understand relationship: under given circumstances, the quality of education correlates with investment.
Furthermore, comparing theUK with Kazakhstan, it seems that productivity and investment also follows a similar relationships.
As Kazakhstan has the challenge of the transformation from a still Soviet-style dominated VET system to a more market-oriented one, it can be expected, that some front-up investment seems necessary. As a strategic paper of the Ministry of Education of education points out,(page 19), Kazakhstan currently invests 3.6 % of GDP on education, while twice the figure might be more appropriate for its ambitous plans.

Knowledge worker productiviy 2.0: dream or nightmare

Andrea Back asks this questions, Jochen Robes provides his views: fast access to information, possibility to create networks, search for experience and answers. But at the end of the day, problem solving has not changed.
Challenges are to cope with the fast change, setting priorities, switching between different networks and avoiding a "mental overload".
Old habites die hard, so it is a individual experience to adopt permanently the personal style to new circumstances. One can not circumvent to make an evaluation of new technology for use: every situation is different.

Analyzing this blog

The website: http://www.typealyzer.com/ provides an online analyze of the writing style of blogs. I got the following answer: The long-range thinking and individualistic type. They are especially good at looking at almost anything and figuring out a way of improving it - often with a highly creative and imaginative touch. They are intellectually curious and daring, but might be physically hesitant to try new things.

The Scientists enjoy theoretical work that allows them to use their strong minds and bold creativity. Since they tend to be so abstract and theoretical in their communication they often have a problem communicating their visions to other people and need to learn patience and use concrete examples. Since they are extremely good at concentrating they often have no trouble working alone.

Of course, such a short analyze can not be taken too serious. However, it would be interesting to get feedback from readers: Do you agree this kind of evaluation? is it meaningful? If yes, to which extent?

New York Department of Education provides e-mail adressess

Contributing to better education is very often now more a question of imagination than financial ressources. The New York Department of Education set to give kida and parents e-mail addresses. The objective: parent engagement, keeping in contact, creating communities, avoiding the gap between haves and have-nots.
If one consider the funcitonality of Gmail (and other free E-mail accounts), a lot of problems and information deficiencies can be adresses. It does not need a lot. There is more communication, more problem solving, more involvement. A small solution with a potential big impact, even if considering that the change in daily routines is extremely hard work.