Educational Technology and the Adult Learner Week 7 – Pulling things together

This is the last ‘blogging prompt’ blog post for the course as the course wraps up immediately after the last class next week. I like to think of these posts as prompts rather than questions or content as they are meant to start thinking down a particular line rather than control what people are going to think. There is some tendency, always, for people who are being assessed by someone else to think they are supposed to agree with that person. The goal with this course has been to provide opportunities for people to take a given line of thinking and map it up against their own experience, be that the work that they do in an official teaching role, as a professional, as a parent or as a friend.

This last prompt is meant to pull together all the things that we’ve talked about and talk about the identity, at least partially, of this mysterious ‘adult learner’ and what that person might care about whether you use educational technology with them or not.

Conversations
Learning contracts – This addresses the power structure of a course. The design of a course should provide enough structure to help build a context for learning. It shouldn’t, in my view, simply lock down the content so that what constitutes ‘learning’ is measured in how much we can prove that content has been transferred from the instructor to the learner. The technologies provide a whole new way of accessing information which frees us from relying on a static set of books or the contents of my head as resources. The learning contract is meant to broader the possibilities. This measures, hopefully, the amount you’ve worked, not ‘what you’ve learned.’ It’s my job as an instructor to make sure you’re learning.

Cheating as learning – If we think of the ‘content’ of a course as the thing we are engaging in the learning contract for, then ‘taking’ that content from someone else is cheating. If we say that we aren’t concerned about the specifics of the content you are picking up, then taking information from others becomes sharing. In this sense cheating and sharing are actually the same activity, just with a different power structure surrounding it.

Keeping track of digital stuff – One of the side effects of giving people freedom to create their own content is the taking the textbook based, pre-defined content out of the course. One of the challenges that this presents is that you can’t just ‘look back at the textbook’ to see where you are. You can’t simply follow the assignments or the syllabus to remember what is going on. When you add the vastness of the internet to this, one of the prime literacies required for learning using technology is the ability to keep track and organize your work. If the facilitator is not controlling it… you need to.

Evaluating technology – I don’t think it makes sense to talk about technologies until everyone has a passing comfort with them. With three weeks of using our class based educational technologies (blogging, twitter and googledocs) under our belt, the search for new technologies starts to make more sense. The use of nodes of trust, and the ubiquitous online top ten list (or top 100) makes that process even easier. At the end of the day, though, we are still just going to the internet and trying stuff out.

Collaboration – And there are too many things to try out. Too many lessons to learn and in to many ways. Collaboration in a classroom provides more scope for learning, and, I think, a more rounded view of what a person is learning. If we can share how 20 people (or 2000) see given topic or idea (be they technological or not) we get to see it from many perspectives. That broad scope, I think, makes for the best kind of teaching.

Responsibility – The key glue to all of this is where the impetus to learn stems from. If we allow for all this freedom and control, it can’t be driven by the ambitions of one educator. We are only in a classroom for a few hours, and learning in any context is a lifetime event. A classroom that creates a scenario where people are only interested in learning when they are told to learn and what they’ve been told to learn encourages passivity. A classroom that supports student responsibility as a core principle is one that encourages active, ongoing, life-long learning.

Final Thoughts
Throughout this course we have all reflected on educational technology and our own feelings about it on our blogs. The next step, I think, is in synthesizing the ideas of ourselves and others and starting to make early judgements about how our own learners will respond to educational technology. If you think about the different people in our class, and the journeys that they have been on, different answers to that question will present themselves.

I don’t believe in ‘learning styles’, but in people. People have complex lives, they have eye surgery, and deaths in the family, and anniversaries, and the prom and a hundred other things going on. (Not to mention a beer at the beach). If you put 20 people into a classroom the web of complexity gets wider, add in access to almost every bit of knowledge ever produced on the internet and its a wonder we make it out of class at all.

Given all this complexity, what have we learned? How would you use educational technology with the adult learner?

Goosing the Gander

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is granting No Child Left Behind waivers to states that adopt Duncan’s favored reforms, notes Rick Hess. If Romney wins, what sort of waivers would sauce the gander?

First, Romney ought to announce that waivers from NCLB will require real options for parents in all persistently low-performing schools. Since Democrats are right to point out that there aren’t enough seats for all the affected kids to escape to, Romney ought to insist that states adopt the “parent trigger” in order to give parents the option to radically remake their children’s school. Given that the parent trigger has been championed by Democratic school reform activists, but angers traditional Democratic allies in school districts, it’d be a neat piece of political jujitsu.

If states can’t provide alternatives for kids in failing schools, Romney could require a voucher option, Hess suggests.

In addition, waiver-seeking states could be required “to emulate Wisconsin and Indiana and restrict the scope of collective bargaining to wages and wage-related benefits, so that it no longer encompasses policies that can impede school improvement.”

Romney could require waiver states “to undergo an independent audit of their health care and retirement obligations and to adopt a plan that establishes a sustainable financial model.”

Finally, he ought to insist that states demonstrate that they’re spending federal funds wisely. This requires meaningful cost accounting, including calculating ROI (return on investment) at the school and district levels.

Yes, it would be federal overreach, Hess writes. But if the Democrats can do it, the Republicans can too.

How Many Classes Should you REALLY Take Freshman Year?

Coming from an English major, my opinion may vastly differ from those of Science and Math majors, but I feel like I had a pretty good grip on my freshman year, which has made me confident enough in myself to give you kiddos some advice. Well… let’s call them “college-educated guesses.”

At my university, the recommend amount of units (keep in mind, babies, that one class is USUALLY three units… unless it’s a dance class or something) for a freshman is 12-15. That’s four or five classes, for those of you keeping score at home. Now, my first semester, I got away with four classes. Actually, most people I know did. But for some reason, that doesn’t seem to fly second semester. When I say that, I mean with your peers. Having four classes second semester was almost a cop-out.

Image credit: flickr

The real answer to this question, like nearly ever other college question, is basically: it depends. If you have a horribly difficult major and all of your classes are equivalent to junior and senior level, TAKE FOUR. I don’t care what anyone says, you deserve it (if only they knew…) If you know you can handle more classes (maybe you have a inter mural basketball class for one unit thrown in there) then take more. Keep in mind that you school may have a “cap” on how many classes you’re allowed to take. At Chapman, if you take three or fewer classes, you’re considered a “part-time student.” To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what that entails, but if you get flack for taking four classes, imagine how much you’ll get for going to school “part-time” (if you aren’t, in fact, a part-time student, of course!) There may also be a limit to how many classes you can take. As a freshman, I often heard rumors about eight being the limit, but many also said it was six. Find out from a professor or a student advisor–it’s not always best to take your floor mates’ advice for EVERYTHING.

Now, I really don’t think I gave you all any more information than you already knew. I’m sorry about that. When it comes to classes, everything is relative to the kid taking them. Hopefully by now, you know your limit and what you can and can’t do. Save “pushing yourself” for next semester–maybe even next year. Getting into the “swing of things” in college is essential. I promise that you’ll be sorry if you bite off more than you can chew. That reminds me, I need to do a post on the Freshman Fifteen…

Self Paced Ebook

For every self-paced e-learning course out there in the workplace, there are at least ten consumer video tutorials online (I made that figure up - but there are clearly lots more). You hardly ever see e-learning used as a medium of choice outside work but you’re beginning to see a much greater interest in video at work. What am I saying? That video has really arrived and we should take it seriously as a self-study medium.

But I’m not completely stupid. I know that e-learning and video are very different media and, as a result, work in different circumstances. Most e-learning is aimed at imparting knowledge or, to a lesser degree, cognitive skills. On the other hand, while video can be used to put across more general principles as well as to deliver presentations, discussions and documentaries, it’s at its best when it’s showing you how to do something. And not surprisingly, that’s what most of those YouTube videos do.

Clearly a video used alone cannot check understanding and doesn't track progress, so it’s not the ideal compliance tool. But it is more engaging, more versatile and less impersonal. It can be used to trigger interaction, both individual and group - and can be blended with more reflective materials such as web articles, blogs and PDFs.

So I reckon we’ll see an even greater use of video in the workplace. Learners like it (why is not always true of e-learning) and it’s much easier to produce than it ever was (though not trivial - I’ll be returning to that soon). While there are some niches where e-learning is irreplaceable, I won’t be unhappy to see other media come alongside. After all, I started my interest in media and technology with corporate video many moons ago and so for me it’s just another turn of the circle. 

Courses are dead. Just foolin’

Several people have asked me not to denigrate formal learning in the workplace, the 10 of the 70:20:10 model. Indeed. Formal learning has its place. It’s apt for bringing people up to speed in a new discipline or topic. Formal learning accelerates exposure to the landscape, the rules of thumb, the frameworks and specialized vocabulary, and a lot of other things that would be laborious to learn from experience.

Standing around the water cooler is not the best way to learn algebra.

Furthermore, it’s a fast-changing world. We’re all novices at some things so even senior people shouldn’t write off attending the occasional workshop.

Reconsider Your Neutral Brainstorming Assumptions

I’m continuing to read and love Jonah Leherer‘s book, “Imagine: How Creativity Works.” His discussion of research on “brainstorming” versus discussions that involve debate and critique are particularly insightful. In the past, I just assumed “the right way” to generate ideas in class or in another group was to follow “traditional” rules of brainstorming, where all ideas are accepted neutrally and not criticized. Now I’m reconsidering that assumption. Leherer writes:

…when all new ideas are equally useful, as in a brainstorming session—we stay within ourselves. There is no incentive to think about someone else’s thoughts or embrace unfamiliar possibilities. And so the problem remains impossible. The absence of criticism has kept us all in the same place.

He supports this idea with citations from research articles as well as lots of stories, including several from Pixar. I’m rethinking my own use of traditional “brainstorming rules” as a result.

AM News: Romney, Bush, & Spellings Make Convention News

Romney Disagrees With Himself  Huffington Post: One of the more awkward moments of Mitt Romney's speech Thursday night at the Republican National Convention came during the newly minted presidential candidate's question-and-answer session with the audience.

Bush appeals for new dedication to equal education, wants Obama to stop ... MiamiHerald: Bush appeals for new dedication to equal education, wants Obama to stop blaming his brother. TAMPA _ Former Florida governor Jeb Bush used his prime time spotlight at the Republican National Convention Thursday to pass a symbolic torch to his party's ...

Spellings Slams Waivers, Race to the Top PK12:  Spellings and I chatted after a panel on education policy sponsored by Bloomberg and AT&T. Those appearing with Spellings included: Jeb Bush, who is clearly the K-12 Mascot of the Republican National Convention in Tampa; Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State and the new voice of the school choice movement; and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, who also trashed the waivers, calling them a "substitution of Obama standards" for NCLB. 

Stand for Children makes its endorsements EdNewsCO: The education advocacy group Stand for Children has endorsed a split ticket of six Democrats and five Republicans in 2012 races for seats in the Colorado legislature.

Norwalk, Ct., Schools Avert Budget Crisis NPR:  Like many cities, Norwalk has been repeatedly forced to cut its school budget. But this year, a $10 million shortfall forced a demand for even steeper cuts and big concessions from the teachers union. As the new school year begins, wounds are still deep after the frustrating budget battle.

Parents: School asked to change deaf son’s name sign Today: Hunter Spanjer’s parents say officials at his Nebraska school asked them to change the sign for Hunter’s name, saying it looked too “gun-like,” but the school is denying they ever made the request. NBC’s Ron Allen reports and the Spanjer family talks about what the principal told them. 

Update: Failed Effort To Limit Student Achievement Use

After much-last minute scrambling, CA Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes (pictured) decided to withdraw AB 5, the controversial bill to overhaul how public school teachers are evaluated in California (and set limits on the use of student achievement data required under the Stull Act and mandated in a recent court case, Doe v. Deasy). Fuentes issued a statement Thursday evening, reading in part: “I could not in good conscious [sic] allow the proposed amendments to be voted on without a full public hearing… I believe this issue is too important to be decided at the last minute and in the dark of night.” You can read the full statement here.

LA Weekly had named AB 5 to its list of 10 Stupidest California Bills That Legislators Are Trying to Slam Through at Final Hour. The LA Times describe the outcome as “a blow for the powerful California Teachers Assn.” (Lawmaker withdraws teacher evaluation bill). EdSource reports that towards the very end word got out that Governor Brown didn’t want the bill to pass  (Fuentes withdraws teacher eval bill; says he ran out of time). The CTA posted word that LAUSD board member Steve Zimmer sent a letter endorsing the Fuentes proposal  (L.A. School Board Member: Approve AB 5). 

"Who else would title it?": Scripting Students to Death

While it may seem to be little more than semantics to argue about whether teachers are the most important factor in student learning or teachers are the most important in-school factor in student learning, there is now little room to debate that how teachers are being mandated to treat students is inexcusable.

The rise of "no excuses" assumptions and practices are creating charter and public schools that provide for "other people's children" a culture of shame, but we often fail to recognize as well that the last thirty years of accountability have created schooling as an endless series of scripts for children to follow.

Consider this scenario shared with me just yesterday by email from a teacher in an urban charter school:
Favorite student story of the day:
I assigned their first writing project today -- a personal literacy narrative because we just finished reading the narrative of Frederick Douglass (our class mantra is “literacy is liberating”). On my rubric/guidelines I wrote,  "Don't forget to give your narrative a unique title -- this is the first thing a reader will see!"
This is the conversation that followed:

An honors student: You mean we have to title the paper ourselves?

Me (with a snarky tone): Yes. who else would title it?

All students in unison: The teacher!

Me: Are you serious?

All students: Yes

Me (took a deep breath): If I catch anyone titling their paper "My Literacy Narrative," you will lose points, and I will make you wear a name tag that says, "Hi, my name is boring."

Multiple students began frantically erasing the top of their papers.

Apparently, every paper their freshman year was titled for them. [emphasis added]
 This mindlessness is what the accountability era has wrought.

If the teacher is the most important factor (or in-school factor) in a student's learning, then the scripted classroom bent on test-prep is guaranteed to produce only one thing: Mindlessly obedient and incapable young people.

That may benefit our two major political parties filled with Clowns and offering us endless Circuses, that may benefit Corporate America seeking a cheap and inter-changeable workforce, but that doesn't serve our hopes of Democracy and Equity...

Don’t Forget Ed

I think that education should be among our candidates top priorities. But our problem is not education nearly as much as it is educating so many children who live in poverty.

When you compare the scores of American children from higher socio-economic backgrounds with nations that do not suffer the levels of poverty that are tolerated in the U.S., then we actually do quite well! For instance, schools in the U.S. with fewer than 10% of their students living in or near poverty scored 551 on the PISA math test, second only to Shanghai, China.

So, at the same time that I think public education in the U.S. should be a top priority, the problems of education won’t be solved by government mandates or privatization.

The welfare of all the “people” in the United States is the top concern.

The Secret To Happiness

The American Dream tells us we are free to pursue happiness, but doesn’t give us instructions.  Even life-changing events such as winning the lottery have been shown (Brickman 1978) to only increase happiness in the short-term.

The secret to long term happiness is a concept that seems too sacred to be studied and dissected. However, many researchers devote themselves to this topic, and this paper by Sheldon and Lyubomirsky presents a nice theory about sustainable happiness.

This elusive goal is difficult, and may be impossible. Many past studies have shown that each person has a base level of happiness which they can only deviate from temporarily. Even more unfortunate, is that this base level of happiness is 50-80% inherited.

The researchers in this paper divided events that increase your well-being into: activity changes (intentional acts such as exercising) and circumstantial changes (such as being assigned a great roommate). They performed 3 studies on psychology students who had recently experienced an increase in well-being. These studies showed that sustainable happiness was only possible through activity changes. Intentional changes resulted in a bigger boost in happiness and more varied experiences.

After a period of time, those who experienced the increase in well-being because of an activity change retained their increase more than those who experienced the increase because of a circumstantial change. The ones who became happier by chance became accustomed to the change and were no longer affected by it.

There is no shortcut — effort and hard work are the best route to happiness.

The Atlas of True Names

One of the maps available from The Atlas of True Names

Take a look at the map I posted above.   Notice something strange?   This map is from The Atlas of True Names.

This site…..The Atlas of True Names…..is a truly unique resource.   The website states its purpose is to reveal the etymological roots, or original meanings, of the familiar terms on today’s maps of the World, Europe, the British Isles and the United States……The ‘True Names’ of 3000 cities, countries, rivers, oceans and mountain ranges are displayed on these four fascinating maps, each of which includes a comprehensive index of derivations.

You can read more about the site from The New York Times or fromSpiegel Online.   Apparently these maps have been around since 2008, but I’m just now seeing them.   Yes, I know that’s hard to believe, but somehow I overlooked them.

You can order the maps here.

So, instead of me telling you how I would use them in the classroom……..what would you do?

Some fabulous teacher blogs

I would just like to give a plug to the best teacher blog awards for 2011. This is an awesome awareness raising exercise bring new blogs to the attention of teachers and stakeholders everywhere. This is just one category. There are 18 categories in 2011 and the nominations in each of the categories is well worth a look. It is run by Edublogs (since 2004) and aims to promote and demonstrate the educational value of social media, and the archives "create a fabulous resourcefor educators to use for ideas on how social media is used in different contexts, with a range of different learners.... Voting is open until 11:59 PM US Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, December the 13th – and the winners will be announced at the Edublog Awards ceremony on the 14th at 7pm EST."

Having been an on-and-off blogger myself for many years (and even a nominee one year) I know how much time and effort goes into these great blogs. And having been a reader of some of these nominated blogs also for years, I know just how much I have learnt from them. Do yourself a favour - go on over and have a read.

I was happy to see the category of best twitter hashtag and even more happy to see  #pencilchat as a nominee. This hastag has inspired a number of blog posts and a newspaper article. There were even lesson ideas that came out of the shared experience on twitter over several hours.

Some interesting tools found on the journey

Scrible : allows you to mark up web pages in your browser and manage and collaborate on them online. Having set up an account - free- I started using it. You can highlight, color, bold, underline text, add sticky notes, categorise your annotations (this is a great idea, especially in collaborations) and export them, save and share, organise and search your findings from the internet. I found it easy to use (with a bookmarklet similar to diigo's and I have thought that I will try this alongside Diigo for a different set of tags. It's in public beta and worth a look.

Simple CC Flickr search : By Dan Coulter. It really is a simple search. This tool searches Flickr’s database of CC licensed images and alongside the photo you choose it gives you either an embed code for easy attribution or an image stamp that puts the attribution directly on the photo.What a great tool to teach students about Creative Commons licensing and copyright 

Jinni : A taste engine for film. As the creators say: We look at film through the lens of what makes you love or hate anything you watch. With a Taste Engine, you don't search by what you're looking for, you search by what you like. And recommendations are based on analyzing your preferences, not statistics." I wish there was one for books. Maybe there is and you can let me know in the comments.

Curatr : A great concept. First the idea of a curator of content who "define(s) the topic, add(s) the first content and create(s) the levels and gateways required to play the game. Second the focus on social gaming and encouraging learners to create and share their learning journeys. I love it. It uses the metaphor of a museum as "places of learning, bringing together a wide-range of learning objects to tell stories and create experiences that both fascinate and educate".  This is definitely a tool that has great potential and I am following it up and exploring further.

Learnfizz is a new curation tool that enables you to find and organise the myriad of free learning resources on the web, to help you and your colleagues learn whatever you need to. It too uses a metaphor of building an academy around your favourite topic. It is still in private beta, but you can apply to be one of the first to try it out. I first heard about it on twitter in the context of the recentOnline Educa Berlin Conference and this blog post does a good recap of the way it was presented.

Flickr + Freesound = FlickrSounds

by Nickym007
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

kitten19.wav

What you’re seeing (and possibly hearing) above is the result of some rather clever code & mashup work done byJohn Johnston, an amazingly creative ICT Development Officer (which is U.K. speak for “educational technology nerd who likes to create nifty tools for others”). I’ve been finding it difficult to get back into the groove of things after last week’s rather anticlimactic end to the school year (we had lots of layoffs and the mood was grim). I thought I’d try a few simple tools found over on the ds106 assignment repository to just play around and see what I could find that I haven’t tackled before, and wham! Here I find this amazingly little tool that John cooked up calledFlickrSounds!

The concept of FlickrSounds is rather simple; enter in a search term, let’s say “cat” from the example above. John’s little magical tool scours two popular sites for an image and a sound that match that term. Once it’s found media tagged with your search term, it delivers a Creative Commons lisenced image from Flickr, and an equally Creative Commons lisenced sound from the Free Sound project (a fantastic site that I highly encourage you to go visit and use for all of your audio needs….just as soon as you’re done reading this post!).

While I was a bit skeptical of how I might actually create something of interest beyond the early elementary set of learners (look, a cat, and you can hear it meow!), what my search returned greatly astonished, entertained, and excited me! While I expected the Flickr search to return an image of a cat, I got a picture of a Catterpillar brand excavator instead!

I was estatic! What a fantastic way to not only violate the expectations of learners, but also help them explore the world of language, meaning, homophones, and more! The connotation of the word “cat”, while most universally accepted to mean a small furry pet, has other definitions in certain circles (construction and excavation work obviously). What a fun way to help students grasp the idea that our cultural and personal experiences with language help shape our view of the world through the mental images we bring up when we hear words. This is more easily identified when working with homophones (deer/dear, meet/meat, etc.), but the juxtaposition of the imagery and sound with the FlickrSound tool is astonishingly more eye opening!

As proof, I give you 4 more searches I submitted using the same term, “cat“. You’ll find what you expected, some cats and soft cat-like noises, but you’ll also find the electronic sound that “Nyan Cat” makes as it flies through the air leaving a rainbow trail (don’t ask, just go watch, it’s a Japanese thing). You’ll also find some “cat” beats from snares, and while I didn’t include it, there are plenty more images of construction equipment. I’m half surprised I didn’t find some “hepcat” jazz musician via the random Flickr search.

UNESCO awards 2012 literacy prizes

Literacy programmes in Bhutan, Indonesia, Colombia and Rwanda have wonUNESCO’s literacy prizes for 2012. The winners will receive $20,000 each, as well as a diploma and a medal when UNESCO celebrates World Literacy Day on September 6. The awards are part of the organization’s commitment to support effective literacy policies and programmes around the world.

There is very varied progress towards the Education for All Goal on literacy in the four countries where the prize winning  programmes are based. In Bhutan, only just over half (53%) of youth and adults are literate – a number that is projected to increase to 64% by 2015. Rwanda has 71% literacy, while Indonesia and Colombia both have 93% literacy.

Literacy leads to better lives. It empowers people to become active in their societies and to learn more. By contrast, illiteracy is a poverty trap that hinders development of both individuals and countries. In our upcoming 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report on youth, skills and work, we will examine how having poor literacy skills often means being less employable. It is also a large barrier to learning more job-specific skills. The report will be launched on October 16.

Nearly 900 Districts Set to Compete for New Race to Top

With $400 million up for grabs, 893 school districts or groups of districts have told the U.S. Department of Education that they plan to compete in the latest Race to the Top competition, which is designed to spur improvements at the local level.

This includes nearly 200 large districts that are eligible for the top awards of between $30 million and $40 million. Another 433 small districts plan to compete for $10 million to $20 million, the smallest awards. The rest are somewhere in between.

The nearly 900 districts made yesterday's deadline of letting the department know that they want to compete. Filing a "notice of intent to apply" wasn't mandatory, but more of a courtesy so the department can plan things such as how many peer reviewers will be needed to judge the competition. It's important to note that just because a district filed such a notice doesn't mean it has to apply; in fact, the final list of applicants is usually quite a bit shorter.

Applications are due Oct. 30 for this contest, which asks districts to devise personalized learning plans to tailor teaching and learning to the individual needs of students. Between 15 and 25 awards are expected, which means competition will be very, very stiff.

The list of "intents to apply" includes 80 districts from California and 64 from Texas, two large states that have not benefited much (if at all) from previous Race to the Top contests.

Planning to apply are usual suspects including New York City, Chicago (which Education Secretary Arne Duncan used to lead), and Los Angeles. Among big districts not on this list are Miami-Dade in Florida and Atlanta.

Also planning to apply is the District of Columbia, which won a $75 million state grant during the 2010 Race to the Top. Being both a district and a "state" means D.C. could really cash in from Race the Top. Hawaii, which is still in a bit of trouble over its 2010 Race to the Top grant, is not applying even though it also enjoys the status of being both a state and a district. (The Aloha State has a single, state-run school district.)

Districts from 48 states (plus D.C.) are planning to compete, with no district in Wyoming or North Dakota expressing an interest as of now. The large number of small districts applying, however, is likely to mean a fair number of applications representing rural districts, which is something the Education Department had made a priority. In fact, the contest rules indicate that rural applications will be scored against other rural applicants, leveling the playing field a bit.

Do you see anything interesting on this long list of districts that are set to apply?