Education is only as Good as the Musician in the Village

Many years ago, back in the Middle Ages, the quality of music in any village was only as good as the one or two musicians, who lived there.  This continued on for hundreds of years, until the advent of the radio and records.  These two technological inventions brought a higher quality of music, people had not heard before.  In a short period the quality of music for people in the “villages” went from local to national, and in some cases to world quality music. And to this day the music industry continues to rely on technological improvements for advancing music.  But how is education like the evolution of the music industry?

In today’s schools, the education is only as good as the “musician in the village”.  Today,

a student has one teacher for each of his or her subjects.  In the case of K-6 or elementary education, students will have one teacher for the entire school year.  Teachers throughout the United States have a vast range of training, years of education, years of teaching and motivation.  Parents and communities alike have pointed out these differences, either through lawsuits or protests.  Academics have researched disparity in education and have found support for this argument.  Like music, in the 1920’s, education has an opportunity to improve inside every classroom in the United States though the use of technology.  Now, teachers, regardless of background, quality of teaching, years of experience or motivation, can introduce videos of world-class instructors teaching the subject or concept to students.  Today, some teachers have “flipped” their classrooms where the student watches the lesson at home and then on the next day, they do the follow up “homework” inside the class.  This works well for two obvious reasons.  When students are doing the work, and have questions, they can ask their teacher, not their parent. And the quality of instruction is always at world-class standards.  When students receive instruction at this level, first, it is easier to understand, and they are more likely to be successful when completing his or her work. If a student needs re-teaching, they can simply back up the video, free of judgment from peers or their teacher. Second, the quality of education can increase over a short time period, thus producing “quick wins” and reinforcing these changes are effective for both the teacher and student.

If we look at education and the individual teacher as the one “musician in the village” back in the Middle Ages, whereby the quality of education ranges from poor to great, then this will help us to understand why there is need for immediate improvement.  And if we can take from the music industry’s use of technology to help bring a higher quality to all families throughout the United State and then apply it to education, we can predict that the quality of education will greatly improve in a short period of time.

This is what E-Gifted is all about, finding world-class instruction and offering it to teachers and students through workshops, training, and classes for students. E-Gifted teachers are trained in gifted teaching strategies and curriculum design. E-Gifted classes can be streamed live to any classroom. E-Gifted is excited to be a part of the learning revolution. 

Safety Online

One of E-gifted's biggest concerns is the safety of our students on the internet during our classes and outside of the classroom.  We understand the internet can be a very scary place, but also can allow good, smart kids to connect with other good, smart kids.  Before starting E-gifted in January 2013, we wanted to make sure Adobe Connect was safe.  The founders already had three years of experience using the technology while teaching graduate students with The University of Southern California. 

We knew that Adobe Connect is similar to a tunnel. Once you click the URL linking you to our digital classroom, you are transported to our safe and secure classroom. Students enter a guest name and the instructor approves the student to come into the room.  We hope you understand, as parents, that we need to take a little more time to approve each person requesting to join our discussion as a matter of safety. At E-gifted we are constantly reworking our safety procedures and updating our Safety Plan.

Adobe Connect for eLearning enables E-gifted to quickly deploy and manage online courses and curricula. It provides complete curriculum management capabilities, including the ability to incorporate live meetings, virtual classrooms, external events, and self-paced courses into a single curriculum. With Adobe Connect E-gifted can measure, and track the students’ progress.

An E-gifted digital classroom

But parents may asked, “How safe are my kids taking classes on the Internet?”  According to Adobe, “All communications between Adobe Connect servers and client systems are protected using SSL encryption. This enables more secure delivery of data, voice, and video between Adobe Connect applications and end users." 

Adobe’s clients, beside E-gifted, are University of Southern California, (three graduate schools), University of Michigan, various school districts, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Justice system, United Way, World-Wide, and various health agencies, as it is HIPPA compliant. The founders agreed that if this many credible agencies are using the same technology, it must be incredibly safe. When we interviewed an Adobe Connect representative, he informed us that the U.S. Justice system often uses adobe connect to conduct trials. They will interview witnesses or have remote trials. We were impressed with this fact.

I have been using Adobe Connect with my students for over four years and have never experienced a breach of security.

Another question parents may have, “What content is used in class and how is it appropriate for my student?”  All classes are designed by credentialed, certified teachers with master degrees in curriculum writing.  We value the experiences and expertise of all our instructors.  Teachers build courses using Common Core Standards, approved by over 45 states in the U.S. and using current research.

Not only are we concerned about student safety during our online classes, we are also concerned about our students when they are not with us. E-gifted plans on hosting a few free webinars in the spring about internet safety for parents and one session for students. We want to talk to students directly about why they should be careful of what they post and how they interact on the internet.  Until then, we have compiled Five Internet Safety Tips for parents to consider:

Five Internet Safety Tips

1. Monitor Your Child.  Just like you would monitor your child when playing with friends or watching television, it is important to keep a watchful eye on what your student is doing.

2. Keep up with the Trends.  We have a few parents concerned about Facebook and how their child is interacting with friends on Facebook.  If your child uses facebook, you should be careful, however, the apps and services that are currently trending are: Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, Kik Messenger, and Ask.fm.  If you are not familiar with these apps or services, please research them further.  E-gifted definitely discourages students to participate in the ask.fm site, due to recent bullying incidents and one tragic incident that resulted in a teen suicide. This service and app, allows students to ask questions and people can anonymously answer these questions.

3. Cover Your Web-camera with Tape.  When you are not using your web-camera, you should get in the habit of covering it with tape. You will not have this problem with E-gifted or Adobe Connect, but if you use the internet and a virus is downloaded people can turn on your web-camera without you knowing. E-gifted is a huge fan of Apple computers and one of the reasons we love them so much is that they never get viruses. We are not saying they are immune, but it seems to be a safer selection when it comes to the personal computer. The cases of web-cameras turning on are few and far between, but it might be wise to start this practice in your house-hold.

4. Talk About The Ramifications of Posts. In this day and age, nothing is really "deleted" from the internet.  Talk to your child or teen about how some posts can do a lot of damage to their reputation, their integrity, and other people. E-gifted recommends going through actual examples of pictures, links, articles, and comments they can post, as well as looking at the types of things your children should not post.  

5. Place Limitations on Who They are Following. We have noticed that children are getting followed by strangers and often times, they will just follow the person back. We have seen this with Pinterest, Twitter, and Google Plus.  Go through who your child is following on the internet.  You might want to make a set of rules concerning types of organizations and people they can follow on the internet.  They say you become most like the five people you hang around. E-gifted would like to refine this and say, "You are most like the five people you interact with most on the internet." There are so many positive, inspiring organizations and people to follow on the internet. Guide your student in finding these inspiring sources!

If you are interested in our Free Webinars about Safety, make sure you get our newsletters. You can go to www.egifted.org and sign up at the bottom of our website.

If you have any questions regarding online security, please email E-gifted with your questions at egifted8@gmail.com