Tuesday Open Thread

Looks like someone's trying to revive the reviled Inbloom (the $100M public education data cloud that Gates created) by making a kinder, gentler one.  I, along with some other student data privacy advocates, see this as much less threatening than InBloom but I would have to see all the particulars before I could say it was okay.  From Washington Monthly:

Koedinger launched LearnSphere earlier this year with the hope of making it easier and faster for researchers to analyze big datasets — mostly student keyboard clicks —  in order to test educational theories and boost learning outcomes from elementary school to college. 

“In some ways, it’s a deep philosophical difference,” Koedinger said. “We are not looking that much at collecting demographic data and certainly not any kind of record information. Those are the things that tend to be particularly sensitive.”

No student names, no addresses, no zip codes, no social security numbers, he says. No race, family income or special education designations. “The student identifier column, even if yours is already anonymized, we re-anonymize it automatically,” he added. 

Unlike inBloom, which wanted public school districts to use its servers to store student information, Koedinger has no plans to store school records and doesn’t anticipate that school officials will upload anything to his virtual warehouse of data. Instead, he wants education researchers and software developers to upload their data.  Those who want to share data can upload it to one of the sites that LearnSphere is managing, or they can keep it on their own server and control who gets access to it. The goal is to build something called a “distributed infrastructure,” which allows researchers access to data on someone else’s computer. 

I happened to drive past the Wilson-Pacific site the other day.  Every building is down save one.  It's pretty interesting seeing them dig up all around the remaining three houses on the block including Licton Springs.  And, it appears Capital Projects has put up a solar panel structure at one corner of  site, presumably for electricity use.  Good for them.

You may have heard the news story about two 14-year old boys who are missing after their parents gave them permission to take a 19-foot boat out into the Atlantic ocean to fish.  Their overturned boat has been found but no sign of the boys.  It is unlikely the boys, as experienced fishermen and boaters, would have been wearing their lifejackets.  The hope is that they were able to realize the danger and to have put them on and are floating around somewhere.

One question (from the Washington Post via the Today show) burning up social media:

Why were the teenagers, Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen, allowed to take a 19-foot, single-engine boat onto the Atlantic Ocean without adult supervision in the first place?

Naturally, this is the kind of accident could have happened to adults who are experts as well.  But here's what former Coast Guard safety expert who now does rescues and investigates accidents had to say:

He said teenagers can spend years on the water and still be emotionally and mentally unprepared to deal with emergency situations. Asked whether teenagers should be allowed to go boating offshore without supervision, he said parents should consider the question very carefully.

“I would rephrase the question,” he told The Post on Monday. “They should ask: Should I send a teenager who has no experience with crisis out into the largest wilderness in the world, completely surrounded on all sides by something that will kill them if they get in it?

“Then the answer becomes obvious: No.”

Do you struggle with giving your teens the chance to explore and test their abilities to react to new situations?

What's on your mind?