Dear Fordham...

A Byte at the Apple: Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era from Education Gadfly on Vimeo.

Just a thought, but when the screenshot that begins the video shows two people sleeping and one person who looks bored as hell, it doesn't exactly draw you in to the material.

Merry Christmas, your friend,

--Ryan--

p.s.: You've actually done this video in a fairly brilliant way, with the still shots superimposed over some of the audio. The whole thing loads with beautiful efficiency even on my slower-than-typical connection; kudos to your tech department for a job well done.

Read more here, if any.

Where the Economics of Education Really Falls Apart....

....is in the ASCD Catalog.

In their most recent Education Update they trumpet the great sessions that went on at this year's ASCD Annual Conference in New Orleans. Looks like a neat event, would love to go someday if they ever get close to the left coast. I see a little blurb in the flyer about audio recordings of sessions from the conference and I think to myself, "Neat! I'd not mind having those for summer listening pleasure, what since I'm a professional and all!" and merrily make my way over to the website to download them, a la podcasts.

The catch: if you want a package of podcasts, you're going to have to shell out $150 first. Screw that.

I guess that's about what I should have expected, though, since the ASCD video series are almost all priced in the mid three-figure range, putting them out of the reach of most. Even single videos of 15 minutes can cost $89.

I guess when you're the biggest name in town you can get away with that, but golly Ned those prices seem out of line.

Read more here, if any.

Speaking of video....

....the Fordham Foundation just recently got their own YouTube Channel.

Mike Petrilli on Margaret Spellings? Good!
Mike Petrilli channels Al Shanker while a man twice his size looms in the background? Not so good!
A swipe at Ed in '08 with an old, bald man saying "I am the future"? Frickin' bizarre.

They're still the best education podcast around, though.

Update: I hit the page refresh button and get this message:

This is a private video. If you have been sent this video, please make sure you accept the sender's friend request.

Apparently, the Ed in '08 dagger was intended to be in-house only. Tee-hee!

Read more here, if any.

Something That I Wish More Think Tanks Would Do

Surfing around I came across the web page for the Leadership Limbo report that Fordham published a couple of months ago; I had looked at it then, but today I noticed that they've added links to Google video of the roll-out event they had for the report. This is a bright idea that I wish more of the players on the scene would grab onto (I'm looking at you, Education Sector and American Enterprise Institute), because if it's on Google or YouTube I can download it to watch later at my convenience and I know it's going to get to my computer, but when you host it as a stream-only video on your website sometimes the stream doesn't work (AEI is especially bad at this) and I don't always want to be at my computer for that long.

Read more here, if any.