Thursday, October 01, 2020


Is It Time for a “490 B.C. Project”?

High Schoolers Need to Know Our Classical Heritage

When Americans knew classical history, they could reach beyond partisan differences by drawing on the shared roots of our civilization. American students once learned, for example, about the Greek victory at Marathon in 490 B.C. This kept Greece from being swallowed up by the Persian Empire and ushered in the Golden Age of Athenian democracy which, for all its shortcomings, was a pathbreaking achievement. Democratic Athens, counterbalanced by Sparta’s tripartite system, led to broad-based polities and ultimately the Roman Republic. From there we trace a clear line to Magna Carta and the Renaissance republics, to the Enlightenment, and ultimately to the American Founding in the years around 1776.

Without classical knowledge, Americans are likely to misconstrue the achievements of 1776—not to mention other significant historical moments (as evidenced in recent inconclusive contentions over the events of 1619). Unfortunately, contemporary school curricula leave students with major gaps in their knowledge of classical history and the humanities more broadly.

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Why ‘micro’ courses are catching on

When Michael Elwan’s commute disappeared when Covid-19 prompted him to work-from-home in March, he decided to invest his freed-up time in a 10-week “micro-masters” in leadership at the University of Queensland (UQ). The contracts manager at the not-for-profit Uniting WA was already completing a Masters in Social Work but wanted to focus on leadership for more immediate career progression plans.

Despite the entire course being online, he was “amazed” by the networking opportunities he had with fellow students from all over the world.

“The course taught me how to lead teams from different backgrounds in turbulent times, which was especially relevant,” he says.

Elwan isn’t alone.

UQ’s leadership course saw a jump of almost 300 per cent in enrolments this year compared to the first half of last year. A total of 40,000 people have enrolled in the university’s top three micro-masters courses in 2020.

It comes as hundreds of thousands of Australians stare into one of the grimmest consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic: higher unemployment and underemployment, and greater anxiety about job security.

Like in previous recessions, demand for higher education and skills training is tipped to rise – in part because there aren’t many well-paying alternatives, but also due to necessity in a more competitive and changing jobs market.

However, not everyone has the financial means or appetite to tackle an entire degree. And with many industries undergoing profound upheavals, it’s difficult to know whether the skills learnt will be relevant by the time they are acquired.

Micro-credentials, by contrast, offer a short, sharp and cost-effective opportunity for learning. Course length varies from a couple of hours to several months and anything from email etiquette to data analytics can be learned.

“Micro-credentials offer a way to rapidly refresh your professional profile. It could help you scale some kind of career hurdle, get a pay rise, change jobs or move into an adjacent area,” says Dr Robert Kay, Executive Director of Incept Labs.

In April, Education Minister Dan Tehan announced that the government would subsidise six-month micro-credentials in nursing, teaching, health, information technology, with fifty-four universities responded by creating micro-credential courses. The government is now creating a nationally consistent digital platform to compare micro-credential course outcomes and credit point value, among other things.

This is important, because a current lack of standardisation means that outcomes and even quality can vary, says Kay.

“Ultimately, the value of a micro-credential is determined by who recognises it and for what. The risks relate to their currency at present, because micro-credentials aren’t mapped to the Australian Qualifications Framework. It’s therefore difficult to find an equivalence with other forms of qualifications,” Kay says.

Nonetheless, many employers already recognise the value of micro-credentials as a form of professional development. For example, Westpac in 2018 rolled out The Business Institute, an internal “school” for business bankers developed in consultation with leading business schools that delivers educational content, access to world-class teachers and credits towards external qualifications.

Laura Tien, digital content and partnerships associate at co-working hub Workit, says micro-credentials can help differentiate businesses from competitors, “especially during tough times like now”. She recently completed a six-hour micro-credentials course in Google Analytics, using her newfound skills to help Workit leverage data to make better decisions on ad spending. She also has a digital badge to add to her Linkedin profile.

“It was really interactive – I had to click through the actual application before being able to move onto the next part, which helped me retain the information,” she says. “My university degree taught me theories of marketing, but it wasn’t useful in terms of technical skills, which are so important these days,” she says.

UQ Associate Professor Tim Kastelle, who runs the corporate innovation micro-masters course, believes that micro-credentials will be a disruptive force in Australia’s education system and much needed add-ons for professionals.

“The idea that an undergraduate degree gives you the skills you need for the rest of your career is obsolete – if it was ever really true. The nature of work is changing and there is an almost constant need to be learning new things: and shorter forms of learning can accommodate that,” he says.

“Someone might say to themselves, ‘I’ve just been promoted to team leader, so I’ll do a course on leading high performing teams.’ It’s about figuring out how to do a specific thing, rather than wanting to develop an integrated body of knowledge as you get from a degree.”

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Online Classes Raise Stakes In New Ransomware Attacks

A hacker published documents containing Social Security numbers, student grades and other private information stolen from a large publicschool district in Las Vegas after officials refused a ransom demanded in return for unlocking computer servers.

The illegal release late last week of sensitive information from the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, with about 320,000 students, demonstrates an escalation in tactics for hackers who have taken advantage of schools heavily reliant on online learning and technology to run op- erations during the coronavirus pandemic. The Wall Street Journal first reported that sensitive information had been released.

Hackers have attacked school districts and other institutions with sensitive information before the pandemic, typically blocking users’ access to their own computer systems unless a ransom is paid. In those instances, the so-called ransomware crippled the district’s operations but hackers didn’t usually expose damaging information about students or employees.

“A big difference between this school year and last school year is they didn’t steal data, and this year they do,” said Brett Callow, a threat analyst for cybersecurity company Emsisoft, who said he was able to easily access the Clark County data on a hacker website. “If there’s no payment, they publish that stolen data online, and that has happened to multiple districts.” Some districts have paid ransoms, with the Journal finding examples ranging from $25,000 to over $200,000, deciding that rebuilding servers is more costly and could delay learning for weeks. Consultants often advise districts that hackers generally have a good record of releasing control of the servers upon payment to entice others to pay in the future.

Many school districts are using online learning to educate students during the pandemic, with some not even offering in-person learning as an option. Some cyber experts say hackers sensing the desperation of districts to stay online have become more demanding in their tactics. “The value of doing this has gone up,” said Evan Kohlmann, chief innovation officer at cybersecurity firm Flashpoint.

“You have all remote employees, all remote students. How do you educate people entirely remotely if your whole system is down? The impact of these attacks has significantly increased.” Administrators at Clark County, the largest school district known to be hit with ransomware since the pandemic began, provided a statement to the Journal on Monday, saying they will be individually notifying affected individuals as the district’s investigations continues. The district “values openness and transparency and will keep parents, employees and the public informed as new, verified information becomes available,” the statement said.

The district previously referred the Journal to a notice the district posted on Sept. 9. The notice says that on Aug. 27, three days after school began online, certain files couldn’t be opened due to a virus later identified as ransomware.

Some private information may have been accessed, the notice says, and advises individuals to review account statements and monitor credit reports for suspicious activity. District officials on Aug. 27 noted no problems to online learning platforms, in a Facebook post confirming there had been a data security incident.

The notice said the district “notified law enforcement and began an investigation, which included working with thirdparty forensic investigators, to determine the full nature and scope of the incident and to secure the CCSD network.” The district said it was working to restore all systems to secure, full functionality.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn’t support paying a ransom, but says it understands that organizations faced with an inability to function will evaluate all options to protect employees and customers. The agency says paying a ransom emboldens hackers to target others.

On Sept. 14, the hacker sent Clark County a warning by releasing on its website a file of stolen district information that looked to be nonsensitive, said Mr. Callow. However, late last week, Mr. Callow said, the hacker loaded files of a more sensitive nature, including employee Social Security numbers, addresses and retirement paperwork.

Mr. Callow said he didn’t need a password to access the information. He said he found links to the stolen information on an area of the hacker’s site for “new clients,” as it calls the organizations it holds hostage.

Clark County didn’t respond to questions about the amount of ransom sought by the hacker. It couldn’t be determined whether the district has regained access to its systems.

Rebecca Garcia, Nevada Parent-Teacher Association president who has three children in Clark County schools, said Monday after the Journal reported the data breach that some of her members are concerned they have yet to hear from the school district on the release of information.

“At this point moving forward, we need transparency, and we need to know what’s going to be done to address it, from a data security standpoint,” she said.

School districts don’t always disclose ransomware attacks or payments, usually done in bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, and the disclosure requirements vary by state. Some administrators say they just want to move on after being thrust into an unfamiliar world of shadowy criminals.

Some experts say hackers have become more demanding in their tactics.

Ransom amounts are often negotiated. In Texas, the 10,000-student Sheldon Independent School District in Houston paid $206,931 in bitcoin from its reserve fund after being hacked in March, from an initial ransom amount of about $350,000, district officials said. The district said the attack rendered it inoperable and even threatened a paycheck distribution. Cyber insurance coverage paid for other costs related to the attack, such as a forensic review of the servers, according to the district.

“Oftentimes people wonder why we paid it,” said Sheldon Superintendent King R. Davis. “It was very important to us to keep moving forward.” Coveware, a ransom negotiating firm, reported an increase in average ransom payments for all industries, up 60% to $178,254, in its second quarter ended in June. The firm says hackers had about a 99% rate of delivering a decryption tool to the hostage companies or organizations once the ransom was paid.

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Pandemic Steals Another Tradition: Remote Learning Means No More Snow Days

For generations, snow days meant sleeping in, loafing in front of the TV with hot cocoa, and hours of sledding and snowball fights.

Now, they are likely to mean logging into a laptop for a Zoom lesson on long division.

As the weather cools and winter looms, many school leaders in snow-prone states are preparing teachers, parents and students to say goodbye to snow days. This month, New York City, the nation’s largest school system, canceled them for the year, citing the pandemic, which has forced districts everywhere to look for ways to make up lost days.

New York’s decision followed moves that other administrators have been making since March, when schools were forced to transition to online learning and officials realized they could do the same during hazardous weather.

“We said, ‘Wow, this could really be a solution for us for snow days in the future,’” said Robb Malay, a school superintendent who oversees seven districts in southern New Hampshire, where a new policy will replace snow days with virtual learning.

For many teachers, the end of the snow day looks inevitable, said Denis Anglim, 31, who teaches high school English and history in Philadelphia.

“For the sake of continuity of the curriculum, it’s a good thing,” he said. “But not in terms of hanging on to the nostalgia of waking up at 5 a.m. and looking at the ticker at the bottom of the television to see if your school will be closed.”

And the nostalgia remains strong for some. Snow days growing up were like a “pause on real life and a chance to let kids be kids,” said Lauren Higgins, the mother of a 5-year-old boy and 3- year-old girl in Hingham, Mass.

“I can imagine a situation where kids no longer cross their fingers watching the weather late at night,” she said. “And it’s a bummer.”

Trading Snow for Summer

The question of whether to shut down school has always been a thorny one for community leaders, who are often criticized for either canceling class too rashly or for not taking a forecast seriously enough. So well before the virus forced schools to shut down, many administrators had been looking for alternatives to snow days.

In 2018, Mike Redmond, the superintendent of Shakopee Public Schools in Minnesota, said his district started “connected learning days” that allowed for virtual instruction when the weather forced closures.

The decision to do away with snow days followed particularly grueling winters when the district had to cancel classes eight to 10 times a year, he said.

Taking away snow days seemed like a better solution than tacking on days at the end of the school year, which meant forcing students into hot classrooms and disrupting summer plans, Mr. Redmond said.

For rural districts, cutting out snow days also had an economic incentive, he said. In Minnesota, parents often count on their children helping out on family farms when school lets out for the summer, he said.

‘Every Day Is a Snow Day’

Jen Kalember, 48, a sales executive, recalled the frustration she felt every time her daughter’s classes in Bethlehem, Pa., were canceled. School closures created stressful conversations with her former boss, who believed everyone should be in the office, even on snow days.

“He was like, ‘You don’t live far from the office. You can make it in,’” she said. “Well, what am I supposed to do with my daughter? Leave her at home?” Ms. Kalember, who now lives in Ellicott City,

Md., said the pandemic had forced many employers to embrace working from home, perhaps permanently. It stands to reason that schools should follow suit, she said.

“A working parent’s worst nightmare is a snow day, and now every day is a snow day,” Ms. Kalember said. “I think tradition made people forget what they could do with technology. Now we’ve changed from what we do in a work environment and a school environment irreparably.”

Jessica Tang, the president of the Boston Teachers Union in Massachusetts, said that any changes to teachers’ working conditions would have to be negotiated. But she agreed that the pandemic had shown that virtual learning could be a practical solution to a variety of problems.

“It would be a huge mistake if we tried to just go back to what we were doing before,” she said.

Still, Ms. Tang said, there are unintended consequences to canceling snow days that administrators must consider, like the continuing challenge of making sure every student has access to a computer and internet.

And online teaching could be extremely stressful for faculty members with older parents whose home health aide could not come to work because of a storm, Ms. Tang said.

Mourning a ‘Birthright’

Ms. Kalember’s daughter, Ava Kalember, a high school senior, said she felt like the last of a generation to experience the unexpected treat of snow days.

“I do understand the other perspective of parents: ‘If they have assignments, they will be kept busy and won’t bother me,’” she said. “But you have to consider whether that will outweigh the fun memories that kids have of snow days.”

Those days were also a respite from the stress of schoolwork, Ms. Kalember, 17, said.

Mr. Redmond, the superintendent in Minnesota, said that after he did away with snow days, it was parents, not teachers, who mourned the loss.

“My kid might never have a snow day” was a common refrain, he said.

The district responded by scheduling one designated snow day. Teachers would have the time to readjust the curriculum and children would have a break, even if it was not as spontaneous as the kind their parents enjoyed.

Mr. Redmond said: “In Minnesota, it’s like a birthright you should have a snow day.”

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