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iPads are common, and some teachers
allow students to use their
smartphones in class.
BY CECILE LEBLANC
Sun Staff Reporter
The students sat in groups of two and three in
Katie Butterfield’s fifth-grade class at Killip El-
ementary School, working diligently on an iPad.
By the level of their interest you
might expect to see a game on the
screen, but actually the students
were working on math problems.
Their task was to work on a divi-
sion problem using patterns of
10, show how they completed the
problem and explain their process.
They completed each step, written and voice
recording, on the iPad. Their work was then
shared on what they call the “jumbotron,” the
interactive whiteboard, in front of the class.
Welcome to technology in the classroom. In-
creasingly, schools around Flagstaff are adopt-
ing technology, beyond computers, in the class-
room. Teachers use interactive whiteboards and
iPads in their lessons. Instead of having them
taken away, students in secondary schools can
sometimes use their smartphones for research
in class.
Mike Vogler teaches at Coconino High
School and uses many technical tools in his
classes.
“There is something to be said about pencil and
paper and books,” Vogler said. “But our world
is being increasingly defined by this technol-
ogy. How do we teach students to use it ethi-
cally, responsibly and ... to improve community?
They don’t know and adults don’t always know,
either.”
Wireless and interactive: FUSD goes high-tech
BY CHRISTOPHER LEONE
Sun Staff Reporter
Little America Hotel & Resorts is proposing to
take its 537-acre Flagstaff parcel and develop it
into the largest master-planned community in
the city.
The parcel extends
south behind the exist-
ing hotel and comprises
more than 7 percent of
the 7,000 undeveloped
acres still left within the city limits, according to
city and county data obtained by the developer.
“Projects this size are not something that we
see all the time,” said Jim Cronk in the city’s
planning and development services section.
“It’s going to be a very important project to the
city.”
The proposal includes more than 1,400
residential units, 400,000 square feet of com-
mercial space, an 18-hole golf course and a new
200-room hotel, located alongside the golf
course on the banks of the Rio de Flag. The hotel
would be in addition to the 247-room Little
America Hotel, built in 1972.
The developer’s plan also pro-
poses a number of off-site and
on-site improvements, includ-
ing extending the FUTS trails
and making improvements along
Butler Avenue, Herold Ranch
Road and even as far away as J.W.
Powell Boulevard. The master
plan is available on the city website under the
section Comprehensive Planning.
The entire project is estimated to take 12 years
to complete after the regional plan and city zon-
ing ordinances have been amended. The amend-
ment process itself could take from three to five
years, Cronk said.
The two biggest community concerns that
Little America is likely to face are water and af-
fordable housing.
WATER SECURITY UNCERTAIN
“We have concerns about another golf course
because of the water issue,” said Marilyn Weiss-
man, President of Friends of Flagstaff’s Future.
“Our belief is that in the future we will all be
drinking reclaimed water.”
Flagstaff’s water security is uncertain, Weiss-
man contends, and future needs may dictate that
reclaimed water be made suitable for drinking.
At this time, it would be “reckless” to commit
reclaimed water for recreational use, Weissman
added.
Weissman, however, did praise Little Ameri-
ca’s efforts to involve the community and groups
like Friends of Flagstaff’s Future in their plan-
ning.
“They have bent over backward to allow the
Not so little
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LITTLE AMERICA has posted this conceptual plan for its Flagstaff project on its website.
Red=Commercial; Purple=Resort; Green=Parks; Mottled Green=Golf Course; Mottled Brown=Open
Space; Aqua=Floodway; Light Blue=Floodplain; Yellow=Low Density Residential; Tan=Medium Den-
sity Residential; Brown=High Density Residential; Blue=Ponds; Dashed Black Lines=Existing Trails;
Dashed Red Lines=Proposed Trails. (Top photo by Josh Biggs/Arizona Daily Sun)
PRINT EXCLUSIVE
Little America has plans for 1,400 new
homes, a commercial complex, a golf course
and a second hotel on its Flagstaff property.
community to be involved,” she said.
Moreover, the hoteliers intend to
design the golf course so it also acts as a
biofilter, collecting and filtering storm-
water before it’s released into the Rio de
Flag.
“The developers stated interest in
enhancing the riparian ecosystem of
the Rio de Flag that runs through the
property” was encouraging, said John
Grahame, spokesman for Friends of the
Rio de Flag, in an email.
As of Friday, however, the city had
yet to post the water analysis for the
project, Exhibit C, on its website
under the Comprehensive Planning
section.
MULTIFAMILY HOUSING PROPOSED
Fred Reese, general manager at Little
America, is upbeat about the proposed
development.
See LITTLE, A10
INSIDE • A7
2013-14
Schools
Directory
INSIDE • A10
Hundreds of
new apartment
units on draw-
ing boards
BY JUSTIN POPE
AP Education Writer
SCOTTSDALE — Hundreds
of investment bankers, venture
capitalists and geeky tech en-
trepreneurs gathered near the
pool of the Phoenician, a luxury
resort outside Phoenix. The oc-
casion? A high-profile gathering
of education innovators, and
as guests sipped cocktails, the
mood was upbeat.
Major innovations — forged by
the struggles of the Great Reces-
sion and fostered by technology
— are coming to higher education.
Investment dollars are flood-
ing in — a record-smashing 168
venture capital deals in the U.S.
alone last year, according to the
springtime conference’s host,
GSV Advisors. The computing
power of “the cloud” and “big
data” are unleashing new soft-
ware. Public officials, desperate
to cut costs and measure results,
are open to change.
And everyone, it seems, is talk-
ing about MOOCs, the “Massive
Open Online Courses” offered by
elite universities and enrolling
millions worldwide.
Higher ed innovation blooms
See INNOVATION, A10See HIGH-TECH, A6
The Navajo Nation is
scheduled to have
individual parcels totaling
686,000 acres repurchased
and consolidated by the
feds and given back
to the tribe.
BY ROB HOTAKAINEN
McClatchy Washington Bureau (MCT)
WASHINGTON — After bun-
gling the management of Indian
lands for generations, the fed-
eral government wants to make
amends by spending nearly $2 bil-
lion to buy 10 million acres of land
for 150 tribes across the nation.
That’s roughly twice the size
of Massachusetts and would
mark the largest expansion of
the U.S. government’s land trust
for tribes, which now covers 46
million acres.
To make the plan work, the
government wants to find willing
sellers to buy back reservation
land it first gave to individual
tribal members in 1887, often in
tracts of 80 to 160 acres.
“We can improve Indian
Country if people will go along
with this program and sell their
interests back to their tribes,”
Kevin Washburn, the head of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs, said in
an interview.
It won’t be easy. With the land
changing hands over the decades,
many parcels now have hundreds
or thousands of owners.
Land on Navajo Nation totaling
685,900 acres is scheduled to be
repurchased at an estimated cost
of $102 million.
Congress signed off on the
land buy in 2010 to settle a
lawsuit. The government had
pledged to keep track of all roy-
alties generated from the land
for such things as grazing or log-
ging, but that money never went
back to benefit tribal members as
promised.
Now, with so many owners
involved, tribes complain that
it’s nearly impossible to get the
permission needed to develop or
lease the land.
Indian
land
buyback
looms
See BUYBACK, A10
2211
A10 — Sunday, Aug. 4, 2013 From the Front Page Arizona Daily Sun — azdailysun.com
As with so many innovations
— from the light bulb to the
Internet — the technology is
emerging mostly in the United
States, fueled by American
capital. But as with those past
innovations, the impact will be
global. In this case, it may prove
even more consequential in de-
veloping countries, where mass
higher education is new and
the changes could be built into
emerging systems.
One source of this spring-like
moment is the wintry depths of
the financial crisis that struck
five years ago, pushing higher
education as never before to be-
come more efficient. Another is
simply the arrival of a generation
demanding that higher educa-
tion, at long last, embrace the
technologies that have already
transformed other sectors of the
economy.
“The consumer, after five years
on a tablet and five years on an
iPhone, is just sick of being told,
‘you can’t do that,’” said Bran-
don Dobell, a partner at William
Blair & Co., an investment bank
and research firm based in Chi-
cago. “I can do everything else
on my phone, my tablet, why
can’t I learn as well?”
But while technology is at the
center of this wave of innova-
tion, many argue it is merely
the pathway to something even
bigger.
Cracks are opening in the
traditional, age-old structures
of higher education. Terms like
“credit hour” and even the defi-
nition of what it means to be a
college are in flux.
Higher education is becoming
“unbundled.” Individual classes
and degrees are losing their con-
nections to single institutions,
in much the same way iTunes
has unbundled songs from
whole albums, and the Internet
is unbundling television shows
and networks from bulky cable
packages.
Technology isn’t just changing
traditional higher education. It’s
helping break it down across two
broad dimensions: distance and
time.
But that doesn’t necessarily
mean, as some contend, the tra-
ditional university is dead.
———
At his desk at a telecom com-
pany in Lagos, Nigeria, Ugo-
chukwu Nehemiah used to take
his full one-hour lunch break.
Now, he devours his meal,
then watches his downloaded
MOOCs. He’s already finished
courses in business, energy and
sustainability, and disruptive in-
novation, taught by institutions
like the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and the Univer-
sity of Maryland.
Nehemiah needs a master’s
to advance at work, but cannot
afford the United Kingdom pro-
gram where he’s been admitted.
The MOOC learning doesn’t
translate into a widely recog-
nized credential. But the teach-
ing is free, not available locally,
and helps him even without a
credential.
“It’s a form of self-develop-
ment,” said Nehemiah, a father
of two. “The way I would speak
when I have meetings to attend,”
he added, “would be much dif-
ferent than the way I had spoken
if I had not taken this course.”
When nonprofit edX offered
its first MOOC in “Circuits and
Electronics” in 2012, 154,000
students from more than 160
countries signed up (though
only 8,000 lasted to the final).
Now edX has more than a mil-
lion unique users in about 60
courses. For-profit rival Cours-
era has exploded with 4.1million
students, 406 courses and 83
partner institutions.
From radio to television to
the Internet, technology has
always promised to revolution-
ize higher education. So far, it’s
enabled good teachers to lecture
to thousands of even millions of
students. But truly teach them,
with individualized interaction
and feedback?
It’s not clear the MOOCs can
do that, either, and only 10 per-
cent who sign up for a course
are completing it. But with
their more advanced interactiv-
ity, they are arguably the most
sophisticated effort yet to solve
the central the problem of col-
lege access and affordability:
the difficulty of “scaling up”
learning.
“This is virgin territory in
terms of having tens or hundreds
of thousands of people engaged
in the same educational experi-
ence simultaneously in a way you
can capture what you’re doing,”
said Kevin Carey, director of the
Education Policy Program at
the New America Foundation.
“We’ve never had that. The as-
sumption is we’ll learn lots of
things and that will lead to better
classes the future.”
The MOOCs are just one part
of this new landscape.
Sal Khan, a charismatic former
hedge-fund adviser, discovered
his knack for explaining things
while tutoring his young cousins
in algebra in 2004. In 2006, he
uploaded his first YouTube video
and two years later founded
Khan Academy.
Today, Mountain View, Calif.-
based Khan has 6 million unique
users a month from 216 coun-
tries, who watch the 4,000-plus
videos available on Khan Acade-
my’s website. These are not full
courses, but connected series of
free, bite-sized lessons — about
10 minutes each — taught by
Khan and others in everything
from math to art history.
Khan talks excitedly not just
of shaking up education across
distance, but time. He says stu-
dents can learn what they need,
when they need it, without hav-
ing to take and pay for an entire
course.
“Whether we’re talking basic
literacy or quantum physics,
it’s the ability to cater to one
person’s needs,” Khan said.
———
Some at cutting-edge tra-
ditional universities are also
rethinking notions of academic
time.
One morning last spring, not
far from the innovation confer-
ence, at Arizona State Universi-
ty, a handful of students worked
through problems in a develop-
mental math course that looks
little like the traditional model.
There’s no lecturer; software
takes students through the ma-
terial at their own speed, adjust-
ing to their errors. An instructor
is available to answer questions
— a model that’s proven cheaper
and more effective than the tra-
ditional class.
Yet what matters most is
what isn’t here: Most students
have mastered the material and
moved on to other classes.
“We’ve organized higher edu-
cation into this factory model
where we bring a group of stu-
dents in post-high school and
march them through more or
less in lockstep,” said Richard
Demillo, director of the Center
for 21st Century Universities at
the Georgia Institute of Technol-
ogy. “People that don’t conform
are rejected from the factory and
people that make it through are
stamped with a degree.”
ASU has broken up the tra-
ditional model of two-semes-
ters-per-year into six parts.
Some classes have accelerated
versions that run essentially at
double-speed: six or 7.5 weeks.
So students who quickly finish a
flexible-time class don’t have to
wait before starting a new one.
They can move more quickly and
cheaply toward their degree.
“We began to say, ‘What are all
these sacred cows about time?”’
said ASU President Michael
Crow, who has transformed ASU
into a laboratory of innovation.
“What we’re looking for is in-
tensification by freeing up the
clock.”
INNOVATION
from Page A1
Yet even though the government
doesn’t expect to make its first purchase
offer until the end of the year, critics
already predict the worst. They fear too
many tribes will be overlooked in the
buying spree and that many private land-
owners will get bullied into sales.
When tribal leaders met with govern-
ment officials in Seattle, Chief James
Allan of Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Tribe
complained that 45 percent of the money
will go to just seven tribes.
“We’re all going to be fighting for
scraps,” he said.
The plan calls for the U.S. Department
of Interior, which oversees the Bureau
of Indian Affairs, to buy back more than
92,000 parcels from private landowners.
The effort, expected to last until 2022,
will begin with pilot projects in Washing-
ton state, Montana and South Dakota.
All of this will complicate the job fac-
ing the BIA’s Washburn, President Barack
Obama’s point man on selling the plan.
“This program will be successful on the
ground only to the extent that tribal lead-
ers themselves get behind it and evan-
gelize for it,” said Washburn, a member
of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma.
“There’s always a trust issue, and the
track record hasn’t been very good.”
But he defended the targeting of the
program, saying, “It seems sensible to us
to go where the problem is most severe
and where people are suffering the great-
est from the problem.”
Tribal officials say it’s difficult for them
to get permission from multiple owners
when they propose using land for eco-
nomic development or anything else.
“We are in an oil boom. … This is
definitely slowing down progress for
us,” Stoney Anketell, a councilman with
the Fort Peck Tribes in Montana, said
at the Seattle gathering. He said that if
tribes can make more revenue off their
land, they’ll need less federal assistance.
“That’s the hope,” he said.
Ron Allen, chairman of the Jamestown
S’Klallam Tribe in Washington state,
called the buyback program “a great
opportunity,” both for individuals who
want to sell their land and for tribes that
will be allowed to acquire more prop-
erty.
“It is a real win-win opportunity,” he
said.
Most of the $1.9 billion will buy land
in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain
regions. The biggest expenditure is ex-
pected on the Pine Ridge reservation in
South Dakota, where the government
estimates it will cost $126 million to buy
back nearly 1.2 million acres.
Washburn said the program will be en-
tirely voluntary.
“If we don’t have a willing seller,” he
said, “we can’t purchase the property.”
But critics are skeptical, saying that
federal law will still allow tribes to ul-
timately force unwilling minority land-
owners to sell once they’ve acquired
51 percent ownership of any individual
parcel.
To prepare for the massive effort, the
Interior Department, which controls 20
percent of all land in the U.S., is busy
adding both employees and offices. The
settlement allows the department to
spend 15 percent of the $1.9 billion, or
up to $285 million, on administrative
costs.
So far, Washburn said, only 10 of the
100 employees who will run the program
have been hired. But the department has
created a new Buy-Back Oversight Board,
chaired by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
And plans are in the works for three new
land “acquisition centers,” in Billings,
Mont., Aberdeen, S.D., and Albuquerque,
N.M.
“It’s very important for us to get it
right,” Washburn said.
BUYBACK
from Page A1
“As a GM I’m excited about
this amazing project,” Reese
said. “It’s going to create jobs”
not only for the hospitality and
tourism industry, but for the
local community as well, Reese
added.
The developer estimates that
the project, when finished, will
have added 500 permanent jobs
to the Flagstaff community. And
with new jobs in industries like
hospitality and tourism comes
the need for workforce housing.
Workforce, or affordable,
housing, has taken a more
prominent position in City
Council discussions as the
housing market has started to
recover.
In June the City Council
decided to move forward with
the 2009 energy code in lieu of
the 2012 energy code, which re-
quired a higher energy efficiency
standard, partly because several
Council members felt that keep-
ing home prices as low as pos-
sible outweighed requiring more
energy efficient homes.
Home prices in the metro-
politan region are the second
highest in the state, according to
the Flagstaff Chamber of Com-
merce.
The hoteliers say they are
hoping to meet 70 percent of the
city of Flagstaff’s needs for mul-
tifamily housing through 2050.
Based on a land summary
chart provided by the city, 184
acres of multifamily housing
are needed by 2050. The Little
America Neighborhood would
devote 129 acres to multifamily
housing.
Although, no measurements
of affordability were presented
in the master plan, it did note
that stakeholders were con-
cerned about affordable hous-
ing, and moderately priced
housing.
Chris Leone can be reached at
cleone@azdailysun.com or 556-2253.
PROJECT PARTICULARS:
— Project name: The Little America
Neighborhood
— 537 acres
— 1,415 residential units, single and
multifamily
— 400,000 square feet of commercial
space
— 18-hole golf course
— 200 room hotel with 40,000 square
feet of conference space
— 500 new jobs (est.)
— Timeframe: 3-5 years to plan, 12 years
to build
LITTLE
from Page A1
The real estate construction market ap-
pears to be picking up speed in Flagstaff.
Applications on file with the city show
at least 600 new apartment units on the
drawing boards in the coming year. Below
are some projects going through the ap-
proval process with the city of Flagstaff:
APARTMENT COMPLEX ON
WEST ROUTE 66
1. Property owner: Landmark Proper-
ties, Inc.
2. 822 West Route 66, adjacent to Saga
Motel & O’Reilly Auto Parts.
3. Proposed Use: 4- to 5-story, 212-unit
student housing with 613 beds, 10,000 sf
commercial space to include parking garage.
4. Status: No building permit issued.
A Zoning Map Amendment for portion
of property along Blackbird Roost is
required. A Conditional Use Permit for
entire property is also required.
5.Timeframe: Zoning Map Amendment &
Conditional Use Permit by Oct/Nov 2013.
TRAILSIDE APARTMENTS
1. Property Owner: Chason Companies.
2. 600 W. University Heights Drive
North, NW corner of Beulah Blvd. and
University Heights Drive North.
3. Proposed use: 2- to 3-story, 111-unit
apartment complex.
4. Status: No building permit issued.
Zoning Map Amendment and Minor Re-
gional Plan Amendment.
5. Timeframe: Anticipate amendment
approval by Sept./Oct. 2013.
MOUNTAIN TRAIL APARTMENTS
1. Property Owner: Chason Companies.
2. 927 W. Forest Meadows St., SW cor-
ner Forest Meadows and Highland Mesa.
3. Proposed use: 2- to 3-story, 160-unit
apartment complex.
4. Status: No building permit issued.
Only Conditional Use Permit needed.
5. Timeframe: Anticipate amendment
approval by Oct./Nov. 2013.
THE VILLAGE AT ASPEN PLACE
(SAWMILL MIXED USE)
1. Property Owner: Flagstaff Aspen
Place, L.L.C. (RED Development).
2. Developer: Land Development Strat-
egies.
3. 601 E. Picaddilly Drive, near South
Butler and Lone Tree Road.
4. Proposed use: 3- to 5-story, mixed
use development with 222 dwelling units,
33,000-square-foot commercial space
that includes parking garage.
5. Status: No building permit issued.
Approved Master Plan and Development
Agreement must be amended to allow
increased density.
6. Timeframe: Anticipate going before
P&Z Sept. 2013.
FMC GUARDIAN AMBULANCE
& OFFICE BUILDING
1. Property Owner: FMC.
2. 1901 N. Gemini Drive.
3. Proposed use: office, Phase One is
2-story ambulance building with 16,000
square feet. Phase Two is 2-story office
building with 50,000 square feet.
4. Status: Only conceptual diagrams
presented.
5. Timeframe: Ambulance building re-
quires public hearing on Aug. 14.
Flagstaff apartment complex construction on the rise
BY JUSTIN POPE
AP Education Writer
Esther Duflo, one of the two superstar
MIT economists teaching my Massive
Open Online Course on global poverty,
is a fast-talking French woman with
whom I could barely keep up — espe-
cially when the topic was math.
Her co-teacher Abhijit Banerjee spoke
so painfully slowly it was all I could do
to keep from checking Facebook as he
paused between thoughts during his
lectures.
Never fear. One of the least techno-
logically sophisticated innovations of
these free new courses offered by elite
universities is also one of the most use-
ful: You can slow down the lectures to
.75 times actual speed, listen in actual
time, or speed them up by a factor of
1.25 or 1.5.
To think how much more I would have
understood, and less time I would have
wasted, if my in-person college experi-
ence 20 years ago had offered a similar
feature.
Alas, while new and thrilling to me,
such bells and whistles are hardly the
key innovation of these attention-get-
ting MOOCs. The real question is, Are
their enthusiasts right that they can
truly transform higher education?
After months of writing regularly about
MOOCs, I decided to become one of the
millions who’ve signed up for these
free online courses and — far more
exclusively — one of the approximately
10 percent who finish.
About 39,600 signed up for “The
Challenges of Global Poverty” and I was
among 4,600 who finished. I passed, if
not exactly with flying colors, and was
emailed a PDF of the “certificate of mas-
tery” to prove it — my very own quasi-
credential from MIT. The experience was
enlightening, both on the subject matter
and the potential for MOOCs gener-
ally. I learned more than I expected, and
worked harder than I expected. I took a
course for free from two leading experts
in a field that’s of great personal interest
— a remarkable opportunity. For millions
around the world who lack access to
quality teaching, the MOOC-backers are
right: This is a revolution.
Yet I also got a better handle on pre-
cisely what MOOCs can’t do, and what
would be missing from a college educa-
tion comprised of them entirely.
The first thing I learned is why so few
who start MOOCs finish them: They’re
hard. When a class is free and doesn’t
generally produce a credential it takes
real self-discipline (or a promise to your
editor to write about the experience) to
make yourself keep up. These MOOCs
simulate a full course at a top-tier
university, which means a minimum
of 2-3 hours per week of lectures, plus
quizzes, homework and reading. Most
difficult of all, you have to keep up for
12 to 15 weeks, which is a lot harder for
people like me, with a toddler at home
and a day job, than it was when I was a
full-time college student.
Technologically, the experience was
fairly simple and elegant. An online
“dashboard” gives you access to videos,
quizzes and other resources. You quick-
ly fall into a routine: a video lecture seg-
ment by one of the professors (filmed in
MIT’s on-campus version of the course),
typically lasting 5 to 15 minutes, fol-
lowed by exercises to make sure you got
the key points, plus a longer homework
assignment after each week.
Is it better to be in the room with a
lecturer? Probably, in the same way the
multi-sensory personal experience of a
play can be more powerful than a film.
But in-person lectures also have disad-
vantages. The research is pretty clear
that students tune out after a while. The
5-15 minute intervals make it easier to
stay focused. Neurologically, answering
a few questions about every 15 minutes
and then at the end of a week is a pretty
effective way to make things stick. And
being able to hit pause or rewind, or
speed things up, is a nice bonus.
But while MOOCs can speed up and
slow down classroom time a bit, courses
like this don’t fundamentally alter it. As
in traditional classes, MOOCs generally
operate on a cohort model — the group
starts together, and generally advances
at the same speed, regardless of ability.
Unlike some online courses, which offer
self-paced options, MOOCs generally
stick to this model. I found this frus-
trating, as did others in the class. One
week I had a work trip and couldn’t
complete the assignments, so took a
couple zeroes. But there was no option
to work ahead one week, or catch up
after. If the point is to have convenient
access to the material, why the tightly
constrained schedule?
This speaks to a big dilemma for the
MOOCs, which will become more ap-
parent as they try to enter the world of
credit-bearing classes. Many of the po-
tential economies-of-scale advantages
of MOOCs would derive from students
working at their own pace — either fast-
er or slower than the average. Yet it’s
hard to run courses (and protect against
cheating) without holding everyone to
the same-week-to-week schedule.
Yet the bigger the class, the more
students who are either bored or over-
whelmed. That was apparent in the
student comments; a professional devel-
opment worker, who clearly understood
many of the issues in the class from pro-
fessional experience, was overwhelmed
by the math. But economics graduate
students found the math insultingly bor-
ing (I survived it, but was more sympa-
thetic to the development worker).
The ABCs of MOOCs: What it’s like to enroll
1010

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Wireless and interactive: FUSD goes high-tech

  • 1. iPads are common, and some teachers allow students to use their smartphones in class. BY CECILE LEBLANC Sun Staff Reporter The students sat in groups of two and three in Katie Butterfield’s fifth-grade class at Killip El- ementary School, working diligently on an iPad. By the level of their interest you might expect to see a game on the screen, but actually the students were working on math problems. Their task was to work on a divi- sion problem using patterns of 10, show how they completed the problem and explain their process. They completed each step, written and voice recording, on the iPad. Their work was then shared on what they call the “jumbotron,” the interactive whiteboard, in front of the class. Welcome to technology in the classroom. In- creasingly, schools around Flagstaff are adopt- ing technology, beyond computers, in the class- room. Teachers use interactive whiteboards and iPads in their lessons. Instead of having them taken away, students in secondary schools can sometimes use their smartphones for research in class. Mike Vogler teaches at Coconino High School and uses many technical tools in his classes. “There is something to be said about pencil and paper and books,” Vogler said. “But our world is being increasingly defined by this technol- ogy. How do we teach students to use it ethi- cally, responsibly and ... to improve community? They don’t know and adults don’t always know, either.” Wireless and interactive: FUSD goes high-tech BY CHRISTOPHER LEONE Sun Staff Reporter Little America Hotel & Resorts is proposing to take its 537-acre Flagstaff parcel and develop it into the largest master-planned community in the city. The parcel extends south behind the exist- ing hotel and comprises more than 7 percent of the 7,000 undeveloped acres still left within the city limits, according to city and county data obtained by the developer. “Projects this size are not something that we see all the time,” said Jim Cronk in the city’s planning and development services section. “It’s going to be a very important project to the city.” The proposal includes more than 1,400 residential units, 400,000 square feet of com- mercial space, an 18-hole golf course and a new 200-room hotel, located alongside the golf course on the banks of the Rio de Flag. The hotel would be in addition to the 247-room Little America Hotel, built in 1972. The developer’s plan also pro- poses a number of off-site and on-site improvements, includ- ing extending the FUTS trails and making improvements along Butler Avenue, Herold Ranch Road and even as far away as J.W. Powell Boulevard. The master plan is available on the city website under the section Comprehensive Planning. The entire project is estimated to take 12 years to complete after the regional plan and city zon- ing ordinances have been amended. The amend- ment process itself could take from three to five years, Cronk said. The two biggest community concerns that Little America is likely to face are water and af- fordable housing. WATER SECURITY UNCERTAIN “We have concerns about another golf course because of the water issue,” said Marilyn Weiss- man, President of Friends of Flagstaff’s Future. “Our belief is that in the future we will all be drinking reclaimed water.” Flagstaff’s water security is uncertain, Weiss- man contends, and future needs may dictate that reclaimed water be made suitable for drinking. At this time, it would be “reckless” to commit reclaimed water for recreational use, Weissman added. Weissman, however, did praise Little Ameri- ca’s efforts to involve the community and groups like Friends of Flagstaff’s Future in their plan- ning. “They have bent over backward to allow the Not so little anymore Serving Flagsta f f and nor t her n A r izona si n c e 1883 Sunday, Aug. 4, 2013 azdailysun.com $1.50 Mixing It Up New York runner wins men’s 10K Sports • A11 High: 82 Low: 54 5-day forecast — A16 34 pages in 4 sections, Volume 67, No. 320 Almanac......................A16 Classifieds....................D1 Lottery..........................A2 Movies..........................B7 Nation.......................... A8 Obituaries.....................A2 Opinion........................ A4 Running......................A12 World........................... A9 Classified ads: 556-2298 Home delivery: 779-4189 Newsroom: 556-2241Inside Playwright Power Debut of brief play series Arts & Living • B1 COUPONS INSIDE Savings up to $245 LITTLE AMERICA has posted this conceptual plan for its Flagstaff project on its website. Red=Commercial; Purple=Resort; Green=Parks; Mottled Green=Golf Course; Mottled Brown=Open Space; Aqua=Floodway; Light Blue=Floodplain; Yellow=Low Density Residential; Tan=Medium Den- sity Residential; Brown=High Density Residential; Blue=Ponds; Dashed Black Lines=Existing Trails; Dashed Red Lines=Proposed Trails. (Top photo by Josh Biggs/Arizona Daily Sun) PRINT EXCLUSIVE Little America has plans for 1,400 new homes, a commercial complex, a golf course and a second hotel on its Flagstaff property. community to be involved,” she said. Moreover, the hoteliers intend to design the golf course so it also acts as a biofilter, collecting and filtering storm- water before it’s released into the Rio de Flag. “The developers stated interest in enhancing the riparian ecosystem of the Rio de Flag that runs through the property” was encouraging, said John Grahame, spokesman for Friends of the Rio de Flag, in an email. As of Friday, however, the city had yet to post the water analysis for the project, Exhibit C, on its website under the Comprehensive Planning section. MULTIFAMILY HOUSING PROPOSED Fred Reese, general manager at Little America, is upbeat about the proposed development. See LITTLE, A10 INSIDE • A7 2013-14 Schools Directory INSIDE • A10 Hundreds of new apartment units on draw- ing boards BY JUSTIN POPE AP Education Writer SCOTTSDALE — Hundreds of investment bankers, venture capitalists and geeky tech en- trepreneurs gathered near the pool of the Phoenician, a luxury resort outside Phoenix. The oc- casion? A high-profile gathering of education innovators, and as guests sipped cocktails, the mood was upbeat. Major innovations — forged by the struggles of the Great Reces- sion and fostered by technology — are coming to higher education. Investment dollars are flood- ing in — a record-smashing 168 venture capital deals in the U.S. alone last year, according to the springtime conference’s host, GSV Advisors. The computing power of “the cloud” and “big data” are unleashing new soft- ware. Public officials, desperate to cut costs and measure results, are open to change. And everyone, it seems, is talk- ing about MOOCs, the “Massive Open Online Courses” offered by elite universities and enrolling millions worldwide. Higher ed innovation blooms See INNOVATION, A10See HIGH-TECH, A6 The Navajo Nation is scheduled to have individual parcels totaling 686,000 acres repurchased and consolidated by the feds and given back to the tribe. BY ROB HOTAKAINEN McClatchy Washington Bureau (MCT) WASHINGTON — After bun- gling the management of Indian lands for generations, the fed- eral government wants to make amends by spending nearly $2 bil- lion to buy 10 million acres of land for 150 tribes across the nation. That’s roughly twice the size of Massachusetts and would mark the largest expansion of the U.S. government’s land trust for tribes, which now covers 46 million acres. To make the plan work, the government wants to find willing sellers to buy back reservation land it first gave to individual tribal members in 1887, often in tracts of 80 to 160 acres. “We can improve Indian Country if people will go along with this program and sell their interests back to their tribes,” Kevin Washburn, the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said in an interview. It won’t be easy. With the land changing hands over the decades, many parcels now have hundreds or thousands of owners. Land on Navajo Nation totaling 685,900 acres is scheduled to be repurchased at an estimated cost of $102 million. Congress signed off on the land buy in 2010 to settle a lawsuit. The government had pledged to keep track of all roy- alties generated from the land for such things as grazing or log- ging, but that money never went back to benefit tribal members as promised. Now, with so many owners involved, tribes complain that it’s nearly impossible to get the permission needed to develop or lease the land. Indian land buyback looms See BUYBACK, A10 2211
  • 2. A10 — Sunday, Aug. 4, 2013 From the Front Page Arizona Daily Sun — azdailysun.com As with so many innovations — from the light bulb to the Internet — the technology is emerging mostly in the United States, fueled by American capital. But as with those past innovations, the impact will be global. In this case, it may prove even more consequential in de- veloping countries, where mass higher education is new and the changes could be built into emerging systems. One source of this spring-like moment is the wintry depths of the financial crisis that struck five years ago, pushing higher education as never before to be- come more efficient. Another is simply the arrival of a generation demanding that higher educa- tion, at long last, embrace the technologies that have already transformed other sectors of the economy. “The consumer, after five years on a tablet and five years on an iPhone, is just sick of being told, ‘you can’t do that,’” said Bran- don Dobell, a partner at William Blair & Co., an investment bank and research firm based in Chi- cago. “I can do everything else on my phone, my tablet, why can’t I learn as well?” But while technology is at the center of this wave of innova- tion, many argue it is merely the pathway to something even bigger. Cracks are opening in the traditional, age-old structures of higher education. Terms like “credit hour” and even the defi- nition of what it means to be a college are in flux. Higher education is becoming “unbundled.” Individual classes and degrees are losing their con- nections to single institutions, in much the same way iTunes has unbundled songs from whole albums, and the Internet is unbundling television shows and networks from bulky cable packages. Technology isn’t just changing traditional higher education. It’s helping break it down across two broad dimensions: distance and time. But that doesn’t necessarily mean, as some contend, the tra- ditional university is dead. ——— At his desk at a telecom com- pany in Lagos, Nigeria, Ugo- chukwu Nehemiah used to take his full one-hour lunch break. Now, he devours his meal, then watches his downloaded MOOCs. He’s already finished courses in business, energy and sustainability, and disruptive in- novation, taught by institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Univer- sity of Maryland. Nehemiah needs a master’s to advance at work, but cannot afford the United Kingdom pro- gram where he’s been admitted. The MOOC learning doesn’t translate into a widely recog- nized credential. But the teach- ing is free, not available locally, and helps him even without a credential. “It’s a form of self-develop- ment,” said Nehemiah, a father of two. “The way I would speak when I have meetings to attend,” he added, “would be much dif- ferent than the way I had spoken if I had not taken this course.” When nonprofit edX offered its first MOOC in “Circuits and Electronics” in 2012, 154,000 students from more than 160 countries signed up (though only 8,000 lasted to the final). Now edX has more than a mil- lion unique users in about 60 courses. For-profit rival Cours- era has exploded with 4.1million students, 406 courses and 83 partner institutions. From radio to television to the Internet, technology has always promised to revolution- ize higher education. So far, it’s enabled good teachers to lecture to thousands of even millions of students. But truly teach them, with individualized interaction and feedback? It’s not clear the MOOCs can do that, either, and only 10 per- cent who sign up for a course are completing it. But with their more advanced interactiv- ity, they are arguably the most sophisticated effort yet to solve the central the problem of col- lege access and affordability: the difficulty of “scaling up” learning. “This is virgin territory in terms of having tens or hundreds of thousands of people engaged in the same educational experi- ence simultaneously in a way you can capture what you’re doing,” said Kevin Carey, director of the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation. “We’ve never had that. The as- sumption is we’ll learn lots of things and that will lead to better classes the future.” The MOOCs are just one part of this new landscape. Sal Khan, a charismatic former hedge-fund adviser, discovered his knack for explaining things while tutoring his young cousins in algebra in 2004. In 2006, he uploaded his first YouTube video and two years later founded Khan Academy. Today, Mountain View, Calif.- based Khan has 6 million unique users a month from 216 coun- tries, who watch the 4,000-plus videos available on Khan Acade- my’s website. These are not full courses, but connected series of free, bite-sized lessons — about 10 minutes each — taught by Khan and others in everything from math to art history. Khan talks excitedly not just of shaking up education across distance, but time. He says stu- dents can learn what they need, when they need it, without hav- ing to take and pay for an entire course. “Whether we’re talking basic literacy or quantum physics, it’s the ability to cater to one person’s needs,” Khan said. ——— Some at cutting-edge tra- ditional universities are also rethinking notions of academic time. One morning last spring, not far from the innovation confer- ence, at Arizona State Universi- ty, a handful of students worked through problems in a develop- mental math course that looks little like the traditional model. There’s no lecturer; software takes students through the ma- terial at their own speed, adjust- ing to their errors. An instructor is available to answer questions — a model that’s proven cheaper and more effective than the tra- ditional class. Yet what matters most is what isn’t here: Most students have mastered the material and moved on to other classes. “We’ve organized higher edu- cation into this factory model where we bring a group of stu- dents in post-high school and march them through more or less in lockstep,” said Richard Demillo, director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at the Georgia Institute of Technol- ogy. “People that don’t conform are rejected from the factory and people that make it through are stamped with a degree.” ASU has broken up the tra- ditional model of two-semes- ters-per-year into six parts. Some classes have accelerated versions that run essentially at double-speed: six or 7.5 weeks. So students who quickly finish a flexible-time class don’t have to wait before starting a new one. They can move more quickly and cheaply toward their degree. “We began to say, ‘What are all these sacred cows about time?”’ said ASU President Michael Crow, who has transformed ASU into a laboratory of innovation. “What we’re looking for is in- tensification by freeing up the clock.” INNOVATION from Page A1 Yet even though the government doesn’t expect to make its first purchase offer until the end of the year, critics already predict the worst. They fear too many tribes will be overlooked in the buying spree and that many private land- owners will get bullied into sales. When tribal leaders met with govern- ment officials in Seattle, Chief James Allan of Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Tribe complained that 45 percent of the money will go to just seven tribes. “We’re all going to be fighting for scraps,” he said. The plan calls for the U.S. Department of Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to buy back more than 92,000 parcels from private landowners. The effort, expected to last until 2022, will begin with pilot projects in Washing- ton state, Montana and South Dakota. All of this will complicate the job fac- ing the BIA’s Washburn, President Barack Obama’s point man on selling the plan. “This program will be successful on the ground only to the extent that tribal lead- ers themselves get behind it and evan- gelize for it,” said Washburn, a member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma. “There’s always a trust issue, and the track record hasn’t been very good.” But he defended the targeting of the program, saying, “It seems sensible to us to go where the problem is most severe and where people are suffering the great- est from the problem.” Tribal officials say it’s difficult for them to get permission from multiple owners when they propose using land for eco- nomic development or anything else. “We are in an oil boom. … This is definitely slowing down progress for us,” Stoney Anketell, a councilman with the Fort Peck Tribes in Montana, said at the Seattle gathering. He said that if tribes can make more revenue off their land, they’ll need less federal assistance. “That’s the hope,” he said. Ron Allen, chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in Washington state, called the buyback program “a great opportunity,” both for individuals who want to sell their land and for tribes that will be allowed to acquire more prop- erty. “It is a real win-win opportunity,” he said. Most of the $1.9 billion will buy land in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions. The biggest expenditure is ex- pected on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, where the government estimates it will cost $126 million to buy back nearly 1.2 million acres. Washburn said the program will be en- tirely voluntary. “If we don’t have a willing seller,” he said, “we can’t purchase the property.” But critics are skeptical, saying that federal law will still allow tribes to ul- timately force unwilling minority land- owners to sell once they’ve acquired 51 percent ownership of any individual parcel. To prepare for the massive effort, the Interior Department, which controls 20 percent of all land in the U.S., is busy adding both employees and offices. The settlement allows the department to spend 15 percent of the $1.9 billion, or up to $285 million, on administrative costs. So far, Washburn said, only 10 of the 100 employees who will run the program have been hired. But the department has created a new Buy-Back Oversight Board, chaired by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. And plans are in the works for three new land “acquisition centers,” in Billings, Mont., Aberdeen, S.D., and Albuquerque, N.M. “It’s very important for us to get it right,” Washburn said. BUYBACK from Page A1 “As a GM I’m excited about this amazing project,” Reese said. “It’s going to create jobs” not only for the hospitality and tourism industry, but for the local community as well, Reese added. The developer estimates that the project, when finished, will have added 500 permanent jobs to the Flagstaff community. And with new jobs in industries like hospitality and tourism comes the need for workforce housing. Workforce, or affordable, housing, has taken a more prominent position in City Council discussions as the housing market has started to recover. In June the City Council decided to move forward with the 2009 energy code in lieu of the 2012 energy code, which re- quired a higher energy efficiency standard, partly because several Council members felt that keep- ing home prices as low as pos- sible outweighed requiring more energy efficient homes. Home prices in the metro- politan region are the second highest in the state, according to the Flagstaff Chamber of Com- merce. The hoteliers say they are hoping to meet 70 percent of the city of Flagstaff’s needs for mul- tifamily housing through 2050. Based on a land summary chart provided by the city, 184 acres of multifamily housing are needed by 2050. The Little America Neighborhood would devote 129 acres to multifamily housing. Although, no measurements of affordability were presented in the master plan, it did note that stakeholders were con- cerned about affordable hous- ing, and moderately priced housing. Chris Leone can be reached at cleone@azdailysun.com or 556-2253. PROJECT PARTICULARS: — Project name: The Little America Neighborhood — 537 acres — 1,415 residential units, single and multifamily — 400,000 square feet of commercial space — 18-hole golf course — 200 room hotel with 40,000 square feet of conference space — 500 new jobs (est.) — Timeframe: 3-5 years to plan, 12 years to build LITTLE from Page A1 The real estate construction market ap- pears to be picking up speed in Flagstaff. Applications on file with the city show at least 600 new apartment units on the drawing boards in the coming year. Below are some projects going through the ap- proval process with the city of Flagstaff: APARTMENT COMPLEX ON WEST ROUTE 66 1. Property owner: Landmark Proper- ties, Inc. 2. 822 West Route 66, adjacent to Saga Motel & O’Reilly Auto Parts. 3. Proposed Use: 4- to 5-story, 212-unit student housing with 613 beds, 10,000 sf commercial space to include parking garage. 4. Status: No building permit issued. A Zoning Map Amendment for portion of property along Blackbird Roost is required. A Conditional Use Permit for entire property is also required. 5.Timeframe: Zoning Map Amendment & Conditional Use Permit by Oct/Nov 2013. TRAILSIDE APARTMENTS 1. Property Owner: Chason Companies. 2. 600 W. University Heights Drive North, NW corner of Beulah Blvd. and University Heights Drive North. 3. Proposed use: 2- to 3-story, 111-unit apartment complex. 4. Status: No building permit issued. Zoning Map Amendment and Minor Re- gional Plan Amendment. 5. Timeframe: Anticipate amendment approval by Sept./Oct. 2013. MOUNTAIN TRAIL APARTMENTS 1. Property Owner: Chason Companies. 2. 927 W. Forest Meadows St., SW cor- ner Forest Meadows and Highland Mesa. 3. Proposed use: 2- to 3-story, 160-unit apartment complex. 4. Status: No building permit issued. Only Conditional Use Permit needed. 5. Timeframe: Anticipate amendment approval by Oct./Nov. 2013. THE VILLAGE AT ASPEN PLACE (SAWMILL MIXED USE) 1. Property Owner: Flagstaff Aspen Place, L.L.C. (RED Development). 2. Developer: Land Development Strat- egies. 3. 601 E. Picaddilly Drive, near South Butler and Lone Tree Road. 4. Proposed use: 3- to 5-story, mixed use development with 222 dwelling units, 33,000-square-foot commercial space that includes parking garage. 5. Status: No building permit issued. Approved Master Plan and Development Agreement must be amended to allow increased density. 6. Timeframe: Anticipate going before P&Z Sept. 2013. FMC GUARDIAN AMBULANCE & OFFICE BUILDING 1. Property Owner: FMC. 2. 1901 N. Gemini Drive. 3. Proposed use: office, Phase One is 2-story ambulance building with 16,000 square feet. Phase Two is 2-story office building with 50,000 square feet. 4. Status: Only conceptual diagrams presented. 5. Timeframe: Ambulance building re- quires public hearing on Aug. 14. Flagstaff apartment complex construction on the rise BY JUSTIN POPE AP Education Writer Esther Duflo, one of the two superstar MIT economists teaching my Massive Open Online Course on global poverty, is a fast-talking French woman with whom I could barely keep up — espe- cially when the topic was math. Her co-teacher Abhijit Banerjee spoke so painfully slowly it was all I could do to keep from checking Facebook as he paused between thoughts during his lectures. Never fear. One of the least techno- logically sophisticated innovations of these free new courses offered by elite universities is also one of the most use- ful: You can slow down the lectures to .75 times actual speed, listen in actual time, or speed them up by a factor of 1.25 or 1.5. To think how much more I would have understood, and less time I would have wasted, if my in-person college experi- ence 20 years ago had offered a similar feature. Alas, while new and thrilling to me, such bells and whistles are hardly the key innovation of these attention-get- ting MOOCs. The real question is, Are their enthusiasts right that they can truly transform higher education? After months of writing regularly about MOOCs, I decided to become one of the millions who’ve signed up for these free online courses and — far more exclusively — one of the approximately 10 percent who finish. About 39,600 signed up for “The Challenges of Global Poverty” and I was among 4,600 who finished. I passed, if not exactly with flying colors, and was emailed a PDF of the “certificate of mas- tery” to prove it — my very own quasi- credential from MIT. The experience was enlightening, both on the subject matter and the potential for MOOCs gener- ally. I learned more than I expected, and worked harder than I expected. I took a course for free from two leading experts in a field that’s of great personal interest — a remarkable opportunity. For millions around the world who lack access to quality teaching, the MOOC-backers are right: This is a revolution. Yet I also got a better handle on pre- cisely what MOOCs can’t do, and what would be missing from a college educa- tion comprised of them entirely. The first thing I learned is why so few who start MOOCs finish them: They’re hard. When a class is free and doesn’t generally produce a credential it takes real self-discipline (or a promise to your editor to write about the experience) to make yourself keep up. These MOOCs simulate a full course at a top-tier university, which means a minimum of 2-3 hours per week of lectures, plus quizzes, homework and reading. Most difficult of all, you have to keep up for 12 to 15 weeks, which is a lot harder for people like me, with a toddler at home and a day job, than it was when I was a full-time college student. Technologically, the experience was fairly simple and elegant. An online “dashboard” gives you access to videos, quizzes and other resources. You quick- ly fall into a routine: a video lecture seg- ment by one of the professors (filmed in MIT’s on-campus version of the course), typically lasting 5 to 15 minutes, fol- lowed by exercises to make sure you got the key points, plus a longer homework assignment after each week. Is it better to be in the room with a lecturer? Probably, in the same way the multi-sensory personal experience of a play can be more powerful than a film. But in-person lectures also have disad- vantages. The research is pretty clear that students tune out after a while. The 5-15 minute intervals make it easier to stay focused. Neurologically, answering a few questions about every 15 minutes and then at the end of a week is a pretty effective way to make things stick. And being able to hit pause or rewind, or speed things up, is a nice bonus. But while MOOCs can speed up and slow down classroom time a bit, courses like this don’t fundamentally alter it. As in traditional classes, MOOCs generally operate on a cohort model — the group starts together, and generally advances at the same speed, regardless of ability. Unlike some online courses, which offer self-paced options, MOOCs generally stick to this model. I found this frus- trating, as did others in the class. One week I had a work trip and couldn’t complete the assignments, so took a couple zeroes. But there was no option to work ahead one week, or catch up after. If the point is to have convenient access to the material, why the tightly constrained schedule? This speaks to a big dilemma for the MOOCs, which will become more ap- parent as they try to enter the world of credit-bearing classes. Many of the po- tential economies-of-scale advantages of MOOCs would derive from students working at their own pace — either fast- er or slower than the average. Yet it’s hard to run courses (and protect against cheating) without holding everyone to the same-week-to-week schedule. Yet the bigger the class, the more students who are either bored or over- whelmed. That was apparent in the student comments; a professional devel- opment worker, who clearly understood many of the issues in the class from pro- fessional experience, was overwhelmed by the math. But economics graduate students found the math insultingly bor- ing (I survived it, but was more sympa- thetic to the development worker). The ABCs of MOOCs: What it’s like to enroll 1010