Does the Length of a School Year Help Increase Competitiveness?

President Barack Obama said in March this year that he would like to increase the length of a school day and a school year to help the American kids compete in the world. Last year too, he had mentioned in his speech that the American children need to compete with the Indian and Chinese kids. The Education secretary, Arne Duncan, echoed his views – “You’re competing for jobs with kids from India and China. I think schools should be open six, seven days a week; 11, 12 months a year.”

Are Obama and Duncan right in thinking that the American children need to be more competitive? In a word, yes. Definitely. But what about them believing that increasing the length of a school day and year would lead to the children studying more and being competitive? Again, in a word, doomed. This proposal, I think, is based on the assumption that the more time you spend at school, the more you study (or spend on academic activities). But is it necessarily true? No, it is not. While it’s true that the result of an activity is a function of the time spent on that activity, including studying, it’s a misconception that children would study more if they stay at school longer.

In the past, studies have been conducted with children in advanced countries across the world and it has been found that Singapore children score the highest on standardized tests though they spend lesser time in school than American children. India and China were not included in those studies so data is not available for Indian and Chinese students.

What increases competitiveness is competition. And the fear of competition, failure, and not getting where you want to be. The American children have always had it easy. All physical amenities from the day they are born. There is nothing to aim higher for. If you already have a house and a car, other things are pretty much way cheap. If you have a stable job, you can easily keep paying installments on the car and the mortgage payments on the house. There is a small fraction of very talented people who start up companies, help grow businesses, and in the process create lots of jobs, which are available to the rest of the population. When the children know that they are going to have everything easily, there is nothing to go after, and hence, there is no will or necessity to be competitive.

Macs Are Virus-Free? Think Again.

I read a very interesting article on ZDNet yesterday.  Security researcher Charlie Miller says Safari on Mac is the easiest to hack, and so is Firefox on Mac. This is coherent with what many people say – Macs are not inherently secure. There are just not enough hackers wanting to spend time and effort writing viruses for Macs becuase of the small number of Mac users compared to Windows.

Here’s the post – http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2941

Here’s another – Apple security is ’struggling,’ researcher says

Microsoft vs. Apple – The Ad War

I’m not a fan of  Microsoft but I’ve been a PC user all my life. And I Admire Bill Gates – he is a genius. And, surprisingly, I admire Steve Ballmer too – he is a great CEO and very aggressive.

I’m not an Apple fanboy either but I admire Steve Jobs – he is a design genius. And Apple products are simply great.

Apple has been making fun of Microsoft for too long, but with a new $100 million ad campaign, Microsoft is hitting back. It is a clever campaign, not just ads, but a campaign. And it’s hurting Apple and I have a feeling it’s going to get worse after Windows 7 launches given the rave reviews it has received even from Mac users.

Though the initial ads generated criticism, I loved the Bill Gates-Jerry Seinfield ads. So here it is, the first two ads and the laptop hunter ads launched so far.

1. Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates Buy Discount Shoes

2. New Family – Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates Ad (Long Version)

3. Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion

4. Laptop Hunters $1500 – Giampaolo gets an HP HDX

5. Laptop Hunters $1500 Lisa and Jackson get a Sony VAIO

6. Laptop Hunters $2000 – Sheila gets an HP HDX

7. Laptop Hunters $1700 – Lauren and Sue get a Dell XPS 13

And here’s Apple’s response.

1. Apple’s “Get a Mac” Web ad: “Elimination”

2. Apple’s “Get a Mac” Web ad: “PC Choice Chat”

Immigration Policies and Long-Term Competitiveness

Mr. Mavinkurve, a 28-year-old Indian immigrant who helped lay the foundation for Facebook while a student at Harvard, instead works out of a Google sales office in Toronto, a lone engineer among marketers.
Excerpted from “Tech Recruiting Clashes With Immigration Rules ” by Matt Richtel (New York Times, April 11, 2009)

This Google engineer lives in Canada because his wife does not have a work visa that would make her eligible to work in the US. Every year, many highly talented people are forced to leave the US and return to their home countries or go to other countries because of arcane immigration laws in the US. When immigration bills are discussed, legal and illegal immigration are always clubbed together, which results in the bills not getting the approval of the house and the senate. Nobody likes illegal immigrants in their countries though millions of illegal immigrants have lived in the US for a long time and make an honest living working here.

Every year, thousands of international students graduate from American universities. Some voluntarily return to their home countries, while some are forced to return because they are not able to find an employer who is willing to sponsor a H1B work visa for them. The students get a one year optional practical training period after graduation to practice the skills they have learned in their study programs. This one year period is essentially becomes a narrow window for finding a job. The petitions for H1B visas are filed starting April 1. The number of applications received by the USCIS is much more than the annual quota of 65,000, and this quota is filled within a few days, sometimes on the very first day itself. If someone’s application is not files on April 1, chances are slim that s/he will be able to work in the US.

Silicon valley is long considered a hub of innovation. Sun, Yahoo, Google, Intel, HP, the list of valley companies is endless. These companies started as a typical startup and grew and provided employment to thousands. Many of the founders of these innovative companies were immigrants or children of immigrants. In fact, more than 5o% of the startups in silicon valley were launched by immigrants.  A high percentage of employees, who helped grow these companies, were also immigrants – highly educated, higly talented.

If these talented people were forced to leave the US, it would be difficult to imagine the innovative culture of silicon valley as it is today. If we put everyone in one of five categories, say 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, in increasing order of talent or capabilities, should the companies hire only people with a rank of 5? No, because there would not be that many people available. If companies hire people with ranks 4 and 5, these highly talented employees would help develop new products, create great services, and therefore help grow the companies they work for. These companies would then need more workers and they would be forced to hire people with ranks of 3, 2, and 1.However, if the companies start hiring rank 1, 2, and 3 people before rank 4 and 5, it’s anybody’s guess what’s going to happen to those companies. In the short-term, more people will get employment, but in the long-term, growth will stagnate or become negative, thereby resulting in decreased revenues, layoffs, and rising unemployment.

The Obama administration, by restricting companies that receive federal bailout money from hiring foreign nationals, has created exactly the situation explained above. What these companies need right now is the best people to help tide over the economic crisis. A much less publicized fact is that the USCIS has said that this restriction will be valid for only two years. The impact of this policy is difficult to measure but the damage to these companies would surely be done.

Should the government allow a free flow of immigrants? Of course not. This would lead to chaos and misuse of the system. But allowing the best people to live and work in the US without any restriction would help the country with maintaining the competitive edge, which many believe the US is losing to other countries.

My situation? I have a master’s degree from Stanford University. I’d rank myself 4 (if not 5). I work for a major publishing company and I’m happy with my job. However, if I want to leave my job to take a long vacation or become a stay-at-home dad, I can’t. Because I have a H1B work visa from my company. I can’t remain jobless even if I choose to. I have to be in another job or I’ll have to leave the US. Permanent residency (green card) takes many years to get. My options? I don’t have any.

Additional Readings
What U.S. immigration policies mean to Google
Bill Gates Says Immigration, Education Reform Needed For U.S. To Compete

New Year Resolutions – Quarterly Review

The first quarter of this year has ended and it’s time to review my new year resolutions and evaluate how I’m doing on each of the resolutions.

1. Stop procrastinating (this should be priority number one every day of my life) – I’m getting there. Better than before but not yet satisfactory. (3/5)
2. Spend more time with my kids, engaged with them, not just being home – Started off quite well but lost steam. (1/5)
3. Resume exercise, after a four months break – Had started hitting the gym three days a week but lost motivation. Have resumed after a break. (1/5)
4. Write a post on this blog every week and focus on what interests me most – technology-based learning – Getting better and trying. (2/5)
5. Learn PHP – Changed goal. Learning css-based Web design first.
6. Learn Economics (I manage the technology projects for Economics in my company so it makes sense to know the subject matter) – Had started but changed goal to learning about the current recession. (2/5)
7. Work on the prototype for a Web 2.0 learning product – Have started with learning web design. (1/5)
8. Improve focus (on personal as well as professional things) – Not much improvement. (1/5)
9. Not waste time (I don’t waste much time anyway but …) – Not sure how I’m doing on this one. Same as before. (3/5)

Overall, my self evalulation resulted in my realizing how poorly I’m doing on my new year resolutions. The good news is that I have not dropped any resolution, which means I still have a pretty strong chance of scoring 5/5 by the end of this year.

Happy Square Root Day

I happened to stumble upon this entry on Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_root_day. Though I’m late by almost a month, I thought it would be  interesting to cover it in a blog post. The last square root day was on 3/3/09. The next will be on 4/4/2016.

My First Court Case … and a Small Victory

Yesterday, I settled my first court case.  I’d filed a case last month, which was an open and shut case, so the defendant decided to settle it out of court.

I used to live in Sycamore Creek Apartments in Cincinnati and moved out in October 2008. Per the rules, I should have received my rent deposit, an amount of $468 after some deductions, after two weeks. However, I received a letter detailing the deductions and the final amount but not the check. After waiting for a few days, I called up Sycamore Creek and was told that the check had returned because of incorrect address. My address starts with 727 and they had written 272 on the envelope. I gave them the address again and checked the letter I had received. The address indeed started with 272, and the letter reached me, but not the check.

I waited for a month and then called them again. This time I was told that the owner of Sycamore Creek – AIMCO – had sold the property to another business, and AIMCO would send me the check. I again waited for the check and contaced AIMCO. This time, I was told that the funds had been transferred to the new owner, so they should send me the deposit check. The lady at Sycamore Creek was dead sure that AIMCO would send me the money because when I vacated the apartment, the property was still owned by AIMCO. The property manager once told me that I would receive my check within a month, only to be told a month later that the manager had quit her job. And I was back to square one.

I shuttled between Sycamore Creek and AIMCO for a few months more. Then I read a blog post about a small business owner who had sued Google and won. This gave me an idea. I did some research on the Internet and learned about the municipal court in Cincinnati and it’s small claims division. The best part was that I could claim double the amount if the landlord didn’t refund my deposit within 30 days. One morning, I went to the court and submitted a short form along with a payment of $53. The clerk at the counter asked me for a convenient hearing date and put the date after 30 days on the form.

I knew that I would get a call from Sycamore Creek soon. And I did get a call. The new property manager told me that my check for $936 was ready and I can pick up the check any time and sign a releaase form. If I had decided to take them to court, they would have had to pay an additional $53 in court charges. I decided not to take this route. I was getting double the deposit amount anyway, so I took the check and signed the release form.

I enquired about how I could drop the case and was told that I can submit a form or I can just not appear in court in which case the case will be dismissed anyway. I have decided to submit a form. This was all pretty easy and convenient. I don’t know if everyone is aware of this facility that our tax dollars are paying for. I’m glad I’m paying my taxes and the money is being put to good use.

Zero-teen, One-teen, … and the Importance of Pattern Identification

My three-and-a-half year old son, Divyanshu (who became Divi to help people at least pronounce his name), knows the numbers 0 through 10. Last week, I got a set of flash cards to teach him 11 – 25. As an utterly clueless father, I don’t know how other children at this age react to learning, but Divi is a very avid learner, with an attention span of five seconds.

I started teaching him trying to relate the new larger number to the smaller numbers he already knows:

Say one and one eleven.
One and two twelve.
One and three thirteen.
… and so on.

After 25, I started again from zero. In this round, he somehow figured out that if you insert ‘teen’ after a number, it becomes another number – four-teen, six-teen, seven-teen, eight-teen, and nine-teen. And when I reached 20, two and zero, he said ZERO-TEEN. However, I continued and so did his idea of the new numbers. After zero-teen came one-teen (21), two-teen (22), three-teen (23), four-teen (24) and five-teen (25). I smiled, corrected him, and restarted from 0. To my horror, he didn’t identify 10 by ‘ten’, which he knows but ‘zero-teen’. This is when I realized that he had identified a pattern, to suffix the number at units place with a teen. And this round resulted in yet hilarious ‘new’ numbers. So both 11 and 21 became one-teen, 12 and 22 became two-teen, and so on.

Divi might have developed misconceptions by identifying a pattern in the numbers, but pattern identification is what differentiates an expert from a novice. By pattern, I mean the underlying principles, meaningful arrangements, and logical reasonings.

If a chess board with some randomly placed pieces are shown to a chess expert and a non-expert for a few seconds and then asked to arrange the pieces on another board from memory, both persons fare poorly. However, when the pieces are arranged in a meaningful way, as in an actual game of chess, the expert chess player is able to arrange most of the pieces correctly, while the non-expert fares as poorly as before. The expert, in the second case, is able to identify the pattern of the pieces on the board.

Similarly, expert students are able to identify the appropriate laws of motion in word problems while novices try to plug in variable values in formulas and do not know the underlying principle on which the problem is based.

Divi’s is an oversimplified case (and resulting in a misconception) but … you get the idea.

The Problems with Technology-based Learning? The Technology Itself.

I’ve been working in the technology-based learning industry for many years now, initially as an instructional designer on Computer-based and Web-based training courses for information technology users and school children and later managing technology-based products and projects for higher education.

Technology has been in use since times immemorial. Leaves, rocks,  and paper are the earliest forms of technology. These days technology has become synonymous with the Internet, though other electronic devices such as audio and video tapes, projectors, and mp3 players are examples of technology too. Technology solves a number of problems, most notably convenience and learning. You can use technology to make your life convenient (ebooks) or you can use technology to learn a subject matter (online videos). The problem arises when one is confused with another. A still bigger problem is the perception that technology will help people learn a subject no matter how poorly designed or presented the content is. A case in point is the conversion of  a physical book into a pdf document or a Web site and the conversion of a pdf document to a Web site. Having a Web site instead of a book has its benefits such as searching or anytime, anywhere access, but a static Web site does not help with learning any more than a book.

Many people believe that multimedia elements such as podcasts, PowerPoint presentations, and videos will help people learn effectively irrespective of the design, context, or structure of the online materials. Unfortunately, learning is a very complex and time-consuming endeavor. Even more difficult is the transfer of that learning to new contexts. The developers of online courses mostly focus on learning, that is, scoring on quizzes. The quality of quizzes is definitely a factor in learning but again, assessment itself is a difficult task.

Do online videos on real-world situations help people learn and transfer that learning to new situations? May be, may be not. It depends on a number of factors. But the perception that technology solves all learning problems is a myth. And learners pay the price.

President Barack Obama’s Inauguration Address