Using social network analysis to find the impact of teacher turnover

This painting from a Washington D.C. tapas restaurant is not social network analysis, but social network analysis can help us unwind some mysteries about how the world is arranged.

Much has been made about the fact that America is coming up short when teaching children core concepts in STEM, or Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

How does America perform, exactly? In 2009, the country's students came in 23rd place in science the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). That's below Belgium and Hungary. The top three performers, from first to third, were China, Finland and Hong Kong (tested separately than the rest of China).

When the results came out, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan called it "an absolute wake-up call for America." The only country to land people on the moon was now in the middle of the pack for teaching children about science.

It made the news. Town hall meetings sprung up. Companies like Exxon Mobil developed marketing and outreach campaigns. And so the public became aware of the STEM crisis.

There's another crisis schools are faced with, and it's much less publicized: the turnover crisis. To some degree, these two problems are related.

On engaging the public on privacy, journalism, and drones.

Journalists might be familiar with the quote by US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who once wrote "Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants."

Journalists seeking to use unmanned aircraft would be wise not to just apply that concept of uncovering the truth about others, but also to make the public aware of how they intend to use "drones."

While the response journalists get from the public might be unexpected, the answer is not to become defensive or rely on ad-hominem arguments. Whatever your station in journalism, you are as much a servant to the public as any of the officials you interview.

The following is copied from the post I wrote for sUASNews.com.

Seven more reasons why journalists should learn to fly unmanned aircraft

Felix Gillette at Bloomberg Businessweek has come up with a list of seven reasons why journalists, and not just "cubs reporters," should be learning to use unmanned aircraft systems -- usually called "drones" in the media.

Here's seven more reasons why journalists should consider UAS.

1) They give all news outlets and journalists the freedom to cover important events from the sky.

Traffic snarls? Done. Spot news? Got it. Weather reports? Sure thing. Aerial view of Nasa’s latest space telescope at South By Southwest? Absolutely.

These are all events that could be covered before by large, expensive news helicopters. Of course, only stations in the largest of markets could afford such a luxury. But thanks to inexpensive, small unmanned aircraft, that is no longer the case.

Ted Pretty, a meteorologist for a Fox station in Las Vegas, was one of our first members at DroneJournalism.org. While his station couldn't buy a helicopter, it did have the wherewithal and foresight to send him to an online UAV school. He's now experimenting with a multirotor system, and uploaded some of the results on YouTube.