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ERRORS BY AIR traffic controllers in the vicinity of airports as well as incidents in which there was an unauthorised plane, vehicle, or person on a runway have increased sharply, a US government watchdog said in a report released today.
Mistakes by controllers working at radar facilities that handle approaches and departures within about 48km of an airport that cause planes to fly too close together nearly doubled over three years ending in March, the US Government Accountability Office report said.
Separately, runway incursions at airports with control towers increased from 11 incidents per million takeoffs and landings in the 2004 federal budget year to 18 incidents per million takeoffs and landings in the 2010 federal budget year. Most large and medium-sized airports have control towers. Such “runway incursions,” as they are called, can involve anything that’s not supposed to be on a runway, from a stray baggage cart to a plane that makes a wrong turn while taxiing.
The Federal Aviation Administration attributed the increases in controller errors to better error reporting. FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt has also said previously that the agency is using new a plane-tracking system at approach control facilities better able to spot planes too close together. But the report said technologies aimed at improving automated reporting of incidents have not yet been fully implemented
Apart from the automated system, the FAA has also adopted a new error reporting policy that encourages controllers to disclose their mistakes by not punishing them for those errors.
“As a result of this culture change, the FAA expected to see an increase in reported operational errors. More information will help us find problems and take action before an accident happens, which will help us build an even safer aviation system,” the agency said in a statement.
The GAO report acknowledged that changes in reporting policies and procedures at FAA may be partly responsible for the increases.
“However, trends may also indicate an increase in the actual occurrence of incidents,” the report said.
The FAA statement doesn’t address the increases in runway incursions. The FAA has had a program to reduce runway incursions since at least 2007, and officials have claimed significant success.
The GAO report says that while FAA officials have met their goals for reducing runway incursions overall, the rate of incidents at airports with towers has increased.
“The increase in runway safety incidents raises significant concerns,” said House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica, R-Fla. He said his committee would host a meeting with FAA officials and others on the issue.
Paul Rinaldi, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, noted that the GAO also credited FAA with taking steps to improve runway safety.
“We take this report very seriously,” Rinaldi said in a statement. “We are working every day to ensure Americans’ safety in the skies. This includes implementing procedural and technological changes to improve runway safety, collecting more data on safety incidents, finding ways to share usable safety information down to the local facility level and shifting toward risk-based analysis of airborne and surface aviation safety information.”
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Incredible! I’ve almost soiled my slacks in shock. A politician talks about technology and actually seems to possess a rudimentary understanding of it. Fidelma Healy-Eames and the rest take note.
Ruairi Quinn used this exact same speech when visiting my school three months back. As I read the article I was predicting what was coming next. The part about Gutenburg’s Printing Press was word for word the same!!! It might be a good speech but it does not contain the ideas of either Ciarán Cannon or Ruairi Quinn. Lets hope whatever public servant these ideas have come from has the power to implement them. As unfortunately I don’t hold out much hope in either TD seeing them through.
The idea may have come from a manufacturer. In America, they write the laws for the legislators. No small leap to write some speeches for a few of the boys.
Kevin, thanks for reading. I can assure you that this is all my own work. The piece was originally 1700 words long (brevity is not one of my skills) and I had to edit it down to 1200. Hugh then used his skilful scalpel to amputate a few more paras. I have spoken on this issue at a few conferences over the last year and this piece draws from those, augmented with some recent research. I first made the reference to Gutenberg back in January in this piece for the Journal.ie
http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/social-media-regulation-ciaran-cannon-745542-Jan2013/
I would never pawn off the work of others as my own.
Apologies for nearly causing an indecent!
Thks for positive comment, rare but welcome…..
So why pick such a provocative title? I don’t think the kids are using their smartphones to do computer science in the classroom.
I’m on board for using tech in schools, use it every day, what fascinates me is the way Ministers consult on every aspect of education with every expert available except teachers. We have profound and unanswered questions about Junior Cycle reform and implementation which, unless addressed, will see the chances of any of this happening suffer after the goodwill the Junior Minister lauds in this article has disappeared.
Have you read a paper called “The Structure of Technological Revolutions and the Gutenberg Myth” by Scott DN Cook – from the year 1995.
Your idea is not so original as you might think.
I am not suggesting it was conscious plaigerism – but this article has been often quoted and paraphrased by others of the past 2 decades.
I wonder who has been trained to deliver this 100 hours of coding. Not as if there was a massive amount of CPD put into current teachers hours to deliver this material.
I couldn’t agree more, whoever wrote this speech makes two points;
“From September 2014 Junior Cert students will be able to access a short 100 hour course in computer science and coding.” Check, and,
“by the end of 2014 every post-primary school in Ireland will have an industrial strength high speed broadband connection.”
Ok, so by this time next year Junior Cert students will be able to access this course and all their schools will have super-doper broadband, but who’s going to teach them this material, and on what devices are they going to study on, practice and learn on? Will they require specialized computer labs? Just last month Scoil Mhichil Naofa, Galmoy, Co Kilkenny won an international Microsoft award, the 36th in the world, for their use of technology in teaching. Even they hope to get better equipment now.
If these figures are accurate, and there’s no reason to doubt them, then 90% of jobs will require computer skills of some nature very soon. Other countries are starting to react to this but we’re still expecting our children to learn the majority of these skills outside the classroom as an extracurricular activity, we spend years talking about what we should do and how we should do it but do very little. Why? It can”t all be money and funding, we need to get the major companies involved, it’s in their interests, form a strategy and do something quickly.
Agree completely on your last point. I did make reference to collaboration in my last paragraph. Accenture in a recent report on skills shortages in Ireland pointed out that industry can no longer remain just a consumer of talent, it must also play a part in creating it.
The CPD will happen Nathan and there are already hundreds of teachers who have taught themselves the skills to deliver this course.
Teachers who teach themselves skills mean nothing. Without corses registered by the pdst or teaching council, it means nothing.
Hundreds of teachers going out of their way to upskill on their own dime and using their own time – you intend to use them to deliver cpd to the rest of the teachers in the entire country? Have you asked them yet? Did they agree?
Typical politician, taking the credit for other people’s hard work
I must have missed the bit where he explained why it’s a good idea to let kids use their phones in class. I don’t think they’re learning to write html on those things.
Agree absolutely. The writer contradicts his own point about children being passive users of technology. a smartphone is just a product that someone else produced. I agree that technology is the way, or part of the way, of the future but question whether the core skills and attributes needed in this area – creativity, innovation and maths skills – are best learned by interfacing with consumer products.
Eh, HTML isn’t programming! Computer studies and programming used to be taught in school in the 80s. Everyone I knew then understood what programming was, even if they didn’t like it. Something happened in the 90s, I think coinciding with the popularity of transition year and the ECDL, and suddenly pupils were taught to use applications instead of the fundamental principles of computer science.
As a computer studies teacher in the further education sector, I have, ironically, seen a decline in computer skills over the last ten years with school leavers despite the ubiquitousness of devices. Once they leave Facebook, they are severely limited in what they can do. Of course this is a generalisation but I have noticed it as a trend. It’s way past time that computer studies and programming were introduced to 2nd level.
“You will see the wonder on a child’s face when they write their first Scratch program, hit that little green flag, and suddenly realise that they are in control of the machine, or the excitement when they write a few lines of html and announce their presence on the World Wide Web.”
The children, dear minister, are not “in control of the machine”. As anyone with two eyes can see on any street in the city, the machines are controlling the children. The children are addicted to the machines. They suffer withdrawal if the machines are lost or inoperative. They are losing the ability to have face-to-face conversations, to find their way around in the real world without the machine. The machine only equips them to serve the machine, not to serve mankind. Their lives are being squandered on digital nonsense and meaningless, compulsive sms pings. They lose sleep, sunlight and their place in the real world owing to their compulsive habit.
And what is really, really sad is the enormous profit that is being made of this electronic bondage.
You could say the same thing about a model train set.
Phones should be left at home. Big difference between learning computer science and texting your mates all day.
Waffler I couldn’t agree more, texting and Facebook don’t teach anything maybe a bit of cyber bullying.
Learning basic programming would be a great idea but kids need computers not phones for this.
As a computer scientist, thank you for pointing this out:
“The teaching of computer science is not about learning how to use other people’s shrink wrapped software. If that is the pinnacle of our ambition then we are selling our children very short.”
I agree with you, Minister, that our education system is in need of overhaul. For example -
1. We need far more investment in education, not less.
2. Teachers need to be valued, not demoralised.
3. Every class in primary school needs a Teaching Assistant.
4. Every child with SEN needs INCREASED access to resource teaching support, not less.
5. Ministers must stop expecting schools and teachers to solve all of society’s ills. It is impossible.
6. The curriculum is too wide and so decisions must be made about what we want our children to be taught.
7. Proper broadband and wifi must be provided to every school (sorry, second level. If you get the service primary got, you’ll have Internet access only sometimes).
8. Proper equipment must be provided regularly to schools and replaced regularly.
9. Politicians need to provide infrastructure, equipment, CPD, supports, a curriculum BEFORE writing kite flying speeches.
10. Politicians need to STOP taken teachers for granted (example – presumption that teachers who unskilled at their own expense will now up skill everyone else).
Ciarán,
When you publish the draft curriculum – think first, will it improve Pisa results?
Cannot afford Ruairí suffering from anymore “Pisa envy” [thank you ASTI fightback]
How will this interact with the Literacy and Numeracy policy that is ‘so successful’?
I want answers. Where and how will it fit into the schoolday? I want you to work out the timetable, don’t fob me off with comhtháthú/integration.. everything in primary is already integrated. Don’t bring the ncca into this either, they cannot possibly squeeze anymore into a sensibly timetabled day.
Wonderful rhetoric but completely pointless, and interestingly for a Minister of State for Training and Skills there is little detail as to the specifics whatsoever as to how the new JC short course and introducing computer science in primary school are going to work in Ireland in the real world in terms of who is actually qualified enough going to teach it to every student in the country, or is it going to be one of those CPD training courses I complete in two days and suddenly Im a qualified computer programmer? He talks about smart phones as if every school in the country has wifi and proper professional broadband that actually works (but apparently by the end of 2014 that will be fixed thank god), only the dept of education web filter is so strict that most teachers can’t access anything of value on it (for example I can’t even access the website of my own teachers support organization because it is “banned” by the web filter). And YES there are reasons why all phones, particularly smartphones are banned in schools. Firstly, not all students can afford the latest phone and they can be a source of isolation for those who can’t afford them, secondly (and I believe it was only yesterday I read on this very site) that smartphones are used both inside and outside of schools to infringe on the privacy of minors, and as a tool of bullying; thirdly there are an unnecessary distraction with snapchat/texting/skype/facebook chat/viber/tweeting etc.; fourthly in the real world students (and the rest of us) need to learn that googling an answer to a question doesn’t lead to any learning whatsoever – it’s like looking up the answer in the back of the math book – the point of what we do in schools is to teach students to learn, and not merely to teach them the most effective way of cheating; true learning isn’t about googling an answer, it’s not about the easiest way of getting from A to B, it’s about learning how to learning, and learning why to learn, and learning to love learning.
Well said. While I agree more tech teaching would be good, not everyone is going to be a programmer.
Our kids need to be learning how to be more creative, not learning the modern equivalent of stitching t-shirts in a sweat shop. This is an area the west can’t compete in because nobody is going to pay someone in Dublin or London to write code when they can get someone in Manila or Shanghai to do it for a fraction of the cost. We need our kids to develop skills which make them stand out from the crowd instead of turning them into robots with generic skills and no jobs to apply them to.
Programming is a creative task. Once the realisation that you can truly control the computer hits home, the mind instantly conjures up other problems that might be solvable by coding. You can then apply both logic and imagination to the problem to solve it. It’s a beautiful amalgamation of logical thinking and creativity. It’s like writing a short story with some maths equations interlaced, which join together to form something you can be proud of, but also something potentially useful to both yourself and others.
It’s not much use when 3 billion asians can undercut you though
I have to say as a 26 year old now floundering in the job market, I absolutely regret not having the foresight to study computer science officially (though I am competent at basic coding etc)
If this was taught in schools it would be absolutely vital.
1. Isn’t there a similar groupthink happening in Britain? Mention that tiny school children ought to be learning to write code?
2. Did Ruairí Quinn steal Ciarán’s work and deliver it in a speech?
3. Funding – take from SEN?
4. Funding – take from teacher pay?
5. Payment to teachers for “upskilling” [oh, yeah teachers not productive enough -R.Quinn]
6. Funding – up the pupil-teacher ratio [harder to learn code when all sharing 3 pupils to a computer]
7. Publish a draft curriculum and the actual teachers and experts in code will let you know how to fix it /debug it for you.
8. In your vision Ciarán, can children write with pencils/pens or is it all to be tapped out ?
I’d like to see a draft curriculum too. Also, even us techies sketch things out with pens on a daily basis.
And where is the money for all this going to come from? I would recommend ”Minister”, that you spend it on reducing class size and abolishing this antiquated multi class situation that many rural schools find themselves in. Then you might see literacy and numeracy results improve.
Ive always wondered did the pisa tests control for non irish students taken the test in english.
No students with a different first language were treated no differently. Those oft quoted PISA results were not as bad at all as RQ painted them. The drop was statistically insignificant (ERC) despite the inclusion of EAL, SEN and school completion students into second level schools. Moral of the PISA story: don’t believe the media or the Minister, read studies for yourself.
A dreadful vision.
Students rely more on digital media, thus fewer books are needed.
More reliance on technology could steer the course a teacher-less classroom, and eventually to an online education system. This would cut the pesky parents out of the loop. Learning could be controlled, history re-written, facts changed to support the current paradigm.
Above all, it could be the end of the dreaded “teachers unions”. The teachers demonstrating for more education money outside the Dail would be sent packing with tin cups and pencils to man the Liffey bridges, while the Dell, Samsung and Apple reps wine and dine our civil servants in the Education Ministry on the money that was once wasted on traditional education. It will be a gold-mine. You pay your “learning tax” and the DVDs will appear in your mail slot every week.
Like the lamb said to his cousins in the pasture, “Nobody who ever got on that truck ever came back to tell us where they take them.”
With the greatest of respect Seamus, your words could be amended somewhat and still be perfectly relevant back in Gutenberg’s time. Just substitute “infernal printing press” for “technology” or “digital nonsense” as you describe it. See Michelle’s reply, she knows where it’s going.
Condescension is most unbecoming of you, minister. If my words needed amending, I am quite capable.
Michelle agrees with you, which is no endorsement of her acumen in digital technology. I have lived through the “computer revolution in our schools” in America. Now they’re trying to manage Orwell.
I am no Luddite. You, sir, are a “fan” of technology. I made a career of it.
The boys from Apple and Dell come knocking on your door and present their agendas and you run it up the flagpole, right? Let’s build a data center in Carlow. We’ll outsource the NOC to Bangladesh. Capisce? Oh, and get rid of those teacher’s unions.
Seamus does not strike me as being anti technology, Minister. He is sounding a cautionary bell. He is right. Instead of dismissing people who have looked at this in a deeper way than you have, you should listen to them.
It’s a no brainer. I sympathise with those of a certain age who struggle to catch up with the technological revolution (as was the case with the industrial revolution), but we have to recognise that the technological revolution is totally here to stay – stone age people would be freaked out too to be transported to a busy street with so much noise, motor cars and pollution!
Middle-aged and young people now communicate differently – when I look round my workplace and see the piles and cabinets of documents, paper, reports, etc. I thank god for the technological revolution. Computers are a brilliant tool for active, engaged and interactive learning… you can engage easily with all the culture of the world (from art to literature) without expensive and heavy books – the weight of school bags is a national scandal…
But the main reason our schools must catch up with the digital revolution is that, despite the fact that we oldies find it such a culture shock (like previous parents perhaps with rock and roll), it is the way young people communicate and it is here to stay, and most importantly they will be much more engaged with their learning if it is online in a vibrant, interactive space – rather than sitting and listening to a teacher…
Let’s gracefully accept that the possibility that we may simply be modern-day luddites suffering from culture shock if we resist the unstoppable march of progress…
Ah, Michelle, there are many benefits to technology. There is no denying that. But the future of coding isn’t in Ireland, not in 20 years. It is in Asia. It is in Bangladesh. It is in India. China, VietNam, Burma. The technology companies are not going to pay a living wage to your child to write code when they can get a post-graduate student in Bangladesh to write the code for pennies an hour.
Ireland needs IT training. Ireland needs tech people. But at what price?
It’s a global marketplace for labour, Michelle. Ireland will have to compete against people who can live on 4 euro/week.
It’s a shame it isn’t a global marketplace for semi-detached homes, isn’t it?
There should be a computer programming/engineering based subject for the leaving. Why is it 2013 and this still hasn’t been implemented. Because the people who write the curriculum are technologically crippled?
‘Right now virtually every aspect of our lives is somehow connected to technology. Is it acceptable that our children end up being passive uninformed users of that technology without having a deeper understanding of how it works?’
This statement is typical of the drivel in the article as a whole. You can teach a person how a television works: but how will this improve that person’s understanding of themselves and their world (let alone their desire and capacity to change that world)? This fetishisation of ‘technology’ as if it is some independent, self sufficent entity and not an agent of particular social forces really belongs to the past
The notion that if every child learns code then the world will be transformed is so thick it beggars belief. I really despair when I read this kind of material coming from anybody with any say over education policy. If this is what passes for thinking in govt departments we haven’t a hope
What education could do with is producing people who can think for themselves and who can think critically (and not work around the clock as erstwhile employees of Mark Zucekerberg in ways that they would never work for their actual workplace employers). This may at least transform society for the better
Thanks to the Journal.ie for publishing some of my thoughts on a subject which fascinates me. Thanks also for your comments. I will try to reply as best I can.
For anyone who thinks that our classrooms are not in need of substantial change please watch this. It’s about 20 mins long but it should cause all of us to fundamentally reassess our understanding of what school is really about…
http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html
I like the fact that you’re thinking about this, but I have to say I’m skeptical about the proposals. Not everything in the “traditional education” is obsolete, and a lot of tech stuff is just a passing fad. Kids still need to learn the fundamentals. If tech can help with that, then I’m all for it, but it’s not a end in itself.
Couldn’t agree more. Tech is a tool.
Also, there’s the worry that they’ll sign some vendor lock-in deal that’ll tie everybody to Microsoft or Apple.
Check out the idea of the flipped classroom – in our current one-size fits all system, far too many children in Ireland are getting left behind or dropping out – Dept. of Ed consultations with children and young people find that school as it currently is delivered is by far the biggest source of stress in their lives. Using new thinking and technology allows students to access the information themselves online (not just mediated through the teacher), either to catch up if they are struggling, or to do more if they are under-challenged…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojiebVw8O0g
It also allows unmotivated students to fall further behind.
And you misspelled “Gutenberg” in your lead sentence, Dear Minister.
I’m afraid that’s not the fault of the Minister, but the sub. Shame on me! Changed now :)
Ah, there’s a few more as well. We have to keep you sharp, there Hugh!
Your article is about 3 years too late. 3 Years late in the ICT sector is about 10 years late… To bring yourself up to speed I suggest you read an Oireachtas report published on the issue of shortages of employees in the ICT sector in Ireland chaired by Senator Deirdre Clune. Your attempt to raise an issue which has been raised so many times over the last three years is still born, we’ve moved on…
Keith…
Eh… it’s very difficult to implement any sort of IT curriculum when close enough to zero funding is provided for IT devices. The previous government offered funding for data projectors and teacher PCs around two years ago. As far as I’m aware NO funding has been provided to schools to purchase proper devices for children’s use. The few schools that have managed to purchase laptop trollies/ equip PC rooms appear to have done so mainly out of local funding or fundraising. Providing projectors and one teacher PC does little more than promote IT consumption, rather than creation.
Zero funding is available to update and maintain IT hardware that has been purchased.
There is a vacuum in terms of proper policy or funding direction from the department. DES inspectors speak at all opportunities about ‘further integration of ICT’, but few would appear to know what this actually means.
There’s little point in berating teachers who don’t embrace IT when the DES has done so little itself.
Minster check out the raspberry pi a great little piece of kit!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
Ciarán,
Are you presenting the British curriculum as your draft curriculum?
Did you read it?
“Although there are no explicit references in the new curriculum to the use of 3D printers, the Guardian quotes a Whitehall source as saying, “Three-dimensional printers will become standard in our schools — a technology that is transforming manufacturing and the economy. Combined with the introduction of programming, it is a big step forward from Labour’s dumbed-down curriculum.”,
I cannot wait to get ours where I teach. Will you put me top of the list please.
Any curriculum that passed under Gove’s nose will need serious re-drafting, regardless of assurances from British politicians. Will you ever ask some teachers and ask lots of techies who know what they are talking about.
Ciarán – please think of the children
Hello Niamh,
Thanks for engaging.
I’m not presenting the British curriculum as the solution but at least it’s a beginning for one nation.
I believe we can do an even better job here in Ireland and I do so because I have met numerous trailblazing Irish teachers who are already creating a new and exciting learning environment in schools across our country, with little support from the state. They are using ICT to communicate with their pupils, to inspire their pupils, to create a new learning environment that should be the norm, rather than the exception.
I fully agree with your assertion that we need to collaborate, to explore these new ideas together. Without that collaboration, we cannot realise our collective ambition for our children.
Ciaran
have your say