EdSurge Podcast: Recent Episodes
EdSurge Podcast
A weekly podcast about the future of learning. Join host Jeff Young and other EdSurge reporters as they sit down with educators, innovators and scholars for frank and in-depth conversations.
As industries evolve and the skills gap widens, the question remains: How can we better connect education to employment? In this episode of The Idea Spark, host Carl Hooker welcomes Jennifer Wilkerson, VP of Innovations and Advancements at NCCER (National Center for Construction Education and Research), and Andy Dunaway, Product Manager, Career Connected Learning at Pearson. Together, they explore how credentialing, industry alignment, and strong partnerships help students move from the classroom to meaningful careers. Using construction as a lens, this conversation highlights scalable strategies for building career-ready pathways across CTE programs and beyond.This week's episode of The Idea Spark is brought to you by Pearson, NCCER, and the EdSurge Solutions Studio team.
Carl Hooker brings us a live podcast from the ISTE+ASCD conference in San Antonio, Texas. He connects with conference attendees, friends old and new, asking each to share a problem they're working to solve in their corner of the education world — or, as Carl puts it: “Tell me your idea spark."In this episode, Carl sits down with Heather Brantley, Events and Community Specialist at Curipod. Listen to find out how Curipod replaces an expected AI bot with a human!This episode of The Idea Spark is brought to you by EdSurge Solutions Studio.
Carl Hooker brings us a live podcast from the ISTE+ASCD conference in San Antonio, Texas. He connects with conference attendees, friends old and new, asking each to share a problem they're working to solve in their corner of the education world — or, as Carl puts it: “Tell me your idea spark."Carl sits down with Lexi Daly, Learning Innovation Coordinator and Reading Teacher at Trinity Episcopal School in New Orleans. Find out how this self-proclaimed non-coder creates her own mini-games using AI.This episode of The Idea Spark is brought to you by EdSurge Solutions Studio.
Carl Hooker brings us a live podcast from the ISTE+ASCD conference in San Antonio, Texas. He connects with conference attendees, friends old and new, asking each to share a problem they're working to solve in their corner of the education world — or, as Carl puts it: “Tell me your idea spark."Carl sits down with Victoria Andrews. She’s Partner, Professional Learning at Getting Smart. In this role, Victoria is focusing on closing the gap in AI media literacy.This episode of The Idea Spark is brought to you by EdSurge Solutions Studio.
Carl Hooker brings us a live podcast from the ISTE+ASCD conference in San Antonio, Texas. He connects with conference attendees, friends old and new, asking each to share a problem they're working to solve in their corner of the education world — or, as Carl puts it: “Tell me your idea spark."Carl sits down with Leonardo Ortiz Villacorta (aka Leo). Leo is a leader in communications, global social impact, and public affairs at Pokemon.This episode of The Idea Spark is brought to you by EdSurge Solutions Studio.
Carl Hooker brings us a live podcast from the ISTE+ASCD conference in San Antonio, Texas. He connects with conference attendees, friends old and new, asking each to share a problem they're working to solve in their corner of the education world — or, as Carl puts it: “Tell me your idea spark."Carl sits down with Bria Jones. Her title is Customer Success, Wakelet & bulb, and in this role she is focusing on the curation space for both educators and learners. Find out how Bria defines an “unexpected idea spark.” This episode of The Idea Spark is brought to you by EdSurge Solutions Studio.
Carl Hooker brings us a live podcast from the ISTE+ASCD conference in San Antonio, Texas. He connects with conference attendees, friends old and new, asking each to share a problem they're working to solve in their corner of the education world — or, as Carl puts it: “Tell me your idea spark."In this episode, Carl sits down with Jerod Wright, a teacher and former coach who now teaches business and technology in the Frenship Independent School District in Lubbock, Texas. This episode of The Idea Spark is brought to you by EdSurge Solutions Studio.
Carl Hooker brings us a live podcast from the ISTE+ASCD conference in San Antonio, Texas. He connects with conference attendees, friends old and new, asking each to share a problem they're working to solve in their corner of the education world — or, as Carl puts it: “Tell me your idea spark."In this episode, Carl sits down with Peggy Hammond. She teaches technical theater at the Alabama School of Fine Arts.This episode of The Idea Spark is brought to you by EdSurge Solutions Studio.
Carl Hooker brings us a live podcast from the ISTE+ASCD conference in San Antonio, Texas. He connects with conference attendees, friends old and new, asking each to share a problem they're working to solve in their corner of the education world — or, as Carl puts it: “Tell me your idea spark."In this episode, Carl sits down with Barbara Bray, an author, speaker, podcaster, coach, story weaver, and difference-maker who is passionate about transforming teaching and learning. This episode of The Idea Spark is brought to you by EdSurge Solutions Studio.
Carl Hooker brings us a live podcast from the ISTE+ASCD conference in San Antonio, Texas. He connects with conference attendees — friends old and new — asking each to share a problem they're working to solve in their corner of the education world. In other words: "What is your idea spark?"In this episode, Carl sits down with Erika Sandstrӧm (aka Green Screen Gal), a Digital Learning Coach and Digital Media Teacher specializing in Green Screen and Video Production.This episode of The Idea Spark is brought to you by EdSurge Solutions Studio.
Carl Hooker brings us a live podcast from the ISTE+ASCD conference in San Antonio, Texas. He connects with conference attendees — friends old and new — asking each to share a problem they're working to solve in their corner of the education world. In other words: "What is your idea spark?"In this episode, Carl speaks with Crystal Yang, a college student and entrepreneur, CEO + founder of Audemy Games.This episode of The Idea Spark is brought to you by EdSurge Solutions Studio.
Carl Hooker brings us a live podcast from the ISTE+ASCD conference in San Antonio, Texas. He connects with conference attendees — friends old and new — asking each to share a problem they're working to solve in their corner of the education world. In other words: "What is your idea spark?"In this episode, Carl speaks withTony Vincent, an educator, speaker, and independent consultant.This episode of The Idea Spark is brought to you by EdSurge Solutions Studio.
Carl sits down with Laura Weiss, senior director of commercial strategy and growth initiatives at Pearson, to explore how dual enrollment and early career pathways are helping students move more efficiently and affordably toward their professional goals. Discussion focuses on high-quality, virtual asynchronous courses that support a wide range of learners, and how these models are reshaping the journey from high school to career.This week’s episode of The Idea Spark is brought to you by Pearson and the Solutions Studio team.
Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs are evolving, becoming more deeply integrated into mainstream high school curricula. Alongside this transition is an expanded perspective on career exploration, and a stronger emphasis on student agency and well-being.In this first episode of a new series, The Idea Spark podcast, host Carl Hooker speaks with Elyse Monahan, a former CTE educator and current National Product Sales Specialist at Pearson. They discuss the transformation of CTE, and how these programs are adapting to provide students a more well-rounded, future-ready education.
When the only school in Donora, Pennsylvania, closed a few years ago, it hit the town’s residents hard. Now the building may be the town’s best hope, as a community college considers setting up in the former school. A University of Pittsburgh professor spent three years documenting life in this fading town for an unusual podcast series that ran late last year. Education was a key theme.On this week's EdSurge Podcast, we talk to the professor about her takeaways for the role of education in the many forgotten small towns around the U.S.
One long-time expert on preventing student cheating argues that understanding why students cheat is key to making adjustments in teaching to prevent cheating with AI. It's the argument of Tricia Bertram Gallant, a longtime expert in academic integrity who is director of the Academic Integrity Office at the University of California San Diego who co-wrote a new book, “The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI.See show notes at EdSurge.com: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2025-01-07-ai-has-changed-student-cheating-but-strategies-to-stop-it-remain-consistent
There’s a growing push to add AI literacy as a subject in schools and colleges. But what exactly is AI literacy, and can educators promote curiosity about the subject amid their own concerns, and in some cases fear, around ChatGPT and other generative AI? This episode originally ran in January 2024, and was the most-listened-to episode of the year.
We found the theme song for the EdSurge Podcast on a free music library years ago, after spending hours clicking around searching for the right sound. The music turns out to have an unusual origin story, as we learned when we tracked down the artist this week for a conversation about the intersection of music, creativity and teaching.
When students transfer from community colleges to four-year universities, there’s often culture shock. But those transfers are often more motivated and engaged in the classroom than students who arrive straight from high school, experts say. Hear firsthand from a student in his 30s who recently transferred from a two-year college to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
A new documentary project about Sacagawea, the young woman from the Shoshone tribe who helped guide the Lewis and Clark Expedition back in 1804, lets students chat with an animated chatbot of her. Some educators worry about how faithfully such chatbots can represent history, or whether they might keep students from digging into documents to form their own analysis.
Should kids wear smartwatches? Companies market the wearable devices to kids as young as 4 years old, while digital media experts and educators worry about potential downsides of what some see as an “electronic umbilical cord.” On the EdSurge Podcast this week, we talk with our reporter who spent months researching the issue, Emily Tate Sullivan, and hear her read the full story.
ChatGPT and other chatbots are modeled after how the human brain works. And one of the pioneers of the technology, Terrence Sejnowski, says that what AI has made clear is that we don’t really understand what it means for the human brain to “understand” something.
Many school districts and states have enacted new restrictions on smartphones in classrooms during instructional time, in the name of increasing student engagement and counteracting the negative effects that social media has on youth mental health. We checked in with two teachers and an administrator to hear how the new rules are playing out.
College grads are facing a tough job market these days, with experts saying the college degree holds less of a premium in getting hired than in the past. And as it gets easier to apply to jobs online, applicants say they are getting ghosted by employers or applying to hundreds of jobs with little return. How can colleges respond?
When the web was new back in the late 1990s, Robert Ubell was among those pushing for its adoption to help students who couldn’t get to a campus — over the objections of professors who thought it would always be sub-par. The online learning pioneer says the history of online’s growth offers lessons for those trying teaching innovations today.
Over the past few months, a group of educators has been designing and testing a system that uses ChatGPT to serve as an assistant to instructors as they build courses for students. One key point of the series of design workshops is to learn how educators can make the most effective uses of AI, and where it’s less helpful.
As pandemic relief funds run out — which helped many students connect to the internet to keep up with their studies — there’s a danger that the “homework gap” could suddenly widen, argues Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, in a new book.
The high cost of college is changing how high schoolers think about whether or not to go. A new book, “Rethinking College,” argues for changing the narrative around higher education to be more welcoming to gap years, apprenticeships and other alternatives to college at a time where a degree is so expensive that students worry about its value.
A student who was just a few classes shy of graduating from Morehouse College was excited to try its new online program designed for students trying to finish their degrees. It turned out to be a more challenging process than he expected. Here’s how he helped to improve the program for himself and future students.
A professor has been running an unusual experiment looking for signs of racial and gender bias in AI chatbots. And he has an idea for developing new guardrails that can check against such bias and remove it before it is shown to users.
Two instructors made AI chatbot versions of themselves to help teach their classes, and they say class discussion improved as a result. But some teaching experts worry about the long-term implications of bringing in robot teaching assistants.
It’s still popular to prize students who have “grit,” who overcome tough odds to succeed. A book by Alissa Quart called “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream,” looks at why this narrative is so hard to shake — and proposes more community-minded alternatives that could improve equity. This episode first ran in 2022, as the final installment of our Bootstraps series on who gets the best opportunities in American education.For more on the series, see: https://www.edsurge.com/research/guides/bootstraps-a-podcast-series
The Rhodes Scholarship was designed to forge a network of people who would go on to rule the world. So who gets this opportunity? And how is the oldest and best-known graduate scholarship dealing with the legacy of its founder, who used ruthless and racist practices to build the diamond empire that funded the effort? This originally ran in 2022, as part of our Bootstraps series on who gets what educational opportunities in America.Find show notes here:https://www.edsurge.com/news/2022-03-02-power-prestige-and-the-world-s-most-famous-scholarship
The SAT can feel very different to different students. While it can give any college applicant stress, some low-income and minority students see it as evidence that selective colleges don't want them. Can the rise of test-optional policies lead to a new, more equitable era of college admissions? | Guest reporter: Eric Hoover, of The Chronicle of Higher Education | This originally ran in late 2021 as part of our Bootstraps podcast series.
Our current grading system can be a way for kids to prove themselves and win college scholarships, or admission to selective colleges. It can also be a barrier, in sometimes surprising ways. What might a world without letter grades and GPAs look like? This first ran in 2021.
Sometime early in elementary school, kids are put on one of two paths: regular or gifted. Where did this idea come from? The answer goes back more than a 100 years, to a once-famous scholar named Lewis Terman. And it turns out his legacy, and the future of gifted programs, are still very much under debate. This first ran in 2021.
What a debate about the admissions process at one of the best public high schools in the country says about who should get what in education. This first ran in 2021. Find out more on this episode and the rest of the series at: https://www.edsurge.com/research/guides/bootstraps-a-podcast-series
What the odd and surprising history of 'pulling yourself up by your bootstraps' says about educational equity. This is the first episode in our Bootstraps podcast series on merit, myths and education. This first ran in 2021.
As momentum grows to limit smartphone use in schools, some educators say that the education system can do even more to counter the negative health effects of social media. One award-winning teacher has changed his lessons and the way he teaches to try to help students learn to better focus — even reserving class time for quiet reading away from distraction of phones.
As more students question the value of college, more high schools are bringing college options into their walls. In the latest installment of our Doubting College series, we visit a high school where students can earn a two-year degree without leaving the building, and where students can also get a jump on other career options that don’t require higher education.
Should AI chatbots be used as tutors? Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, has become one of the most vocal proponents of the idea, and he and his son are featured in a recent demo of ChatGPT’s latest version. But some teaching experts say tutoring should be reserved for humans who can motivate and understand the students they work with. For this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we talked with Khan to hear more about his vision of AI tutors and the arguments from his recent book.
Professors are finding that they can’t just go back to teaching as they did before the pandemic and expect the same result. It takes more these days to hold student attention, and convince them to show up. This week we’re rebroadcasting this episode that was reported from the back of large lecture classes to see how teaching is changing. The episode recently won a national award from the American Society of Business Publication Editors.
One author who spent years researching what brain science says about adolescent learners says their behavior shouldn’t be seen as “deviant” or “immature,” but as a “time of possibility.” And this researcher, Ellen Galinsky, has strong feelings about how to address phones and social media in schools.
Today’s high school students are asking more skeptical questions about whether to go to college, or when to go. For this week’s podcast, we visited a career fair at one public high school to ask about the changing ways that high school counselors and education leaders are presenting those choices, and what these students think about their options.
Some educators are trying a different approach to guarding against AI cheating — a “linguistic fingerprinting” technique that borrows a page from the playbook of criminal investigations.
Felecia Russell was born in Jamaica but moved to Los Angeles as a kid. It wasn’t until she started to apply for college that she learned that she was undocumented, which she worried could derail her dreams. She tells her story in a new book, “Amplifying Black Undocumented Student Voices in Higher Education,” which she hopes will help “diversify the narrative” about immigration and education.
When a professor’s research showed that standard methods of teaching problem-solving weren’t working, he set out to figure out what led to more student thinking. His resulting approach is spreading through classrooms, helped by teachers sharing examples on social media. This is a reissue of an episode that first ran in November.
Two years ago the metaverse was getting all the buzz in education circles (and hardly anyone was talking about AI). We checked back in with two educators at the forefront of building a virtual realm for education to see where they see things going now that the hype has faded.
The biggest reason to use VR in education is to tap into a student’s emotional response through immersive experiences, argues Maya Georgieva, director of The New School’s Innovation Center and a leading voice about where VR is headed. Hear her insights in this new interview. Find more details and show notes at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-04-05-how-vr-can-be-an-empathy-machine-for-education
There’s a growing movement to drop letter grades in favor of new systems that focus on mastery of material rather than chasing points. But opponents worry about losing rigor. A new book hopes to start a national conversation about the issue.More details and show notes at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-04-02-is-it-time-for-a-national-conversation-about-eliminating-letter-grades
Social studies has been ‘deprioritized’ for decades, in favor of STEM fields, according to some educators. Could AI essay grading help improve the quality of civics and social studies education in schools?
There are key junctures in education that are especially important for helping students feel they belong in school or college. And new research points to better ways to strengthen student-teacher relationships and a sense of belonging, argues Greg Walton, a psychology professor at Stanford University.See show notes and partial transcript at EdSurge: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-03-19-what-new-research-says-about-fostering-a-sense-of-belonging-in-classrooms
There’s growing skepticism of higher education, complete with popular memes on social media that “college is a scam.” Experts in policy and marketing have some suggestions on how to counter that narrative.
A longtime educator worries that the raging culture wars in education create toxic environments that hurt academic learning. He’s started a podcast that brings together people with deeply different views on issues that are most dividing school communities these days and uses depolarizing techniques to try to model repairing such breaches.
Could virtual reality be the key to teaching indigenous ways of knowing to a broad population of students? Jared Ten Brink, a doctoral student in education, is trying to record and teach some key practices of his tribal elders using VR video.
In part two of our podcast series Doubting College, which explores the growing skepticism of higher ed, we talk to students and counselors at a public high school about how students are thinking through their choices after graduation.
A recent study ranked the top professions that are likely to be disrupted by ChatGPT and other new AI technologies, and most of them require college degrees. How does higher ed need to change what it teaches to respond?
Did the education theories that drive today’s schools and teaching practices get off track and do they need a reset — one that gets back to earlier days of oral storytelling? That was the argument of philosopher Kieran Egan, whose educational writings have recently gotten attention.
It can be harder than ever for teachers to manage their relationships with parents, even though digital tools make interactions more frequent. This week’s EdSurge podcast looks at why.
There’s a growing push to add AI literacy as a subject in schools and colleges. But what exactly is AI literacy, and can educators promote curiosity about the subject amid their own concerns, and in some cases fear, around ChatGPT and other generative AI?
Holding student attention may be harder than ever. Even if educators make students put away their smartphones, internet-connected devices have changed the way people relate to others and made it harder for people to be present, argues a Georgetown University professor.
Experts have described this as a 'golden age' of discovery in the area of learning science, with new insights emerging regularly on how humans learn. So what can educators, policymakers and any lifelong learner gain from these new insights? This is a rebroadcast of one of our most popular episodes of 2023.
What were the biggest surprises and trends in education in 2023? Hear from five EdSurge reporters as they give their highlights and analysis and also talk about what they’re digging into in the coming year.
“Why do some schools get better quickly, and others get stuck?” That question drove MIT professor of digital media Justin Reich to write a new book about what he’s learned as a teacher, edtech consultant and professor about making small regular improvements. This episode originally ran this summer.
Paul LeBlanc grew Southern New Hampshire University to an online education powerhouse with more than 200,000 students. This month he announced that he’ll step down as president after the academic year, and he talks to EdSurge about online education, about how he responds to critics who worry that the university has borrowed too much from for-profit universities, and about why his next project involves rethinking teaching with AI.
When the libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel started a fellowship 13 years ago that pays young people $100,000 each to not go to college for two years, it made a splash and drew criticism. These days that sort of skepticism of college is far more mainstream. We dive into the history and impact of the program on the first episode of our new podcast series about changing public views of higher ed, called Doubting College.
Students these days are under constant watch with digital tools — whether it’s friends posting pictures on social media, or learning management systems sending parents alerts about missed assignments. And that can make it hard for students to learn to solve their own problems, argues Devorah Heitner, an author who advises schools on social media issues.
Schools of education are working harder at recruiting these days, in response to enrollment declines. Can more people — and more people from a variety of backgrounds — be convinced to join the teaching profession in this particularly trying time?
It’s important to nurture philosophical thinking in kids throughout school and college. So argues a philosophy professor who wrote a book that highlights the natural tendencies of kids to think like philosophers. When big, important questions arise, he says, parents and educators should treat kids like conversational equals. This is a rerun of an episode that first ran in June.
The rise of generative AI technology such as ChatGPT could rapidly reshape knowledge work in the next few years. A trio of education researchers recently sat down to map out what those changes could mean for education — and what steps should be taken to bring out the best of the tech while avoiding pitfalls.
When a professor’s research showed that standard methods of teaching problem-solving weren’t working, he set out to figure out what led to more student thinking. His resulting approach is spreading through classrooms, helped by teachers sharing examples on social media.
More educators are wondering whether the grading system hinders many students rather than helps them learn. For this week’s podcast, we’re rebroadcasting an episode from this summer diving into alternative methods of marking papers in ways that encourage students to continually revise their work rather than quibble over which letter grade they deserve.
It’s statistically harder to get into a selective college these days, and who gets in and why can feel like a mystery. So students are turning to TikTok and other social media platforms to fill the void, in what some admissions folks call a “toxic” trend. We talked to a TikToker and an admissions counselor on how to help.
Since winning the Nobel Prize for physics in 2001, Carl Wieman has devoted the bulk of his energies to trying to improve teaching. That has led him to promote active learning – and to look for better ways to evaluate teaching. Will they catch on?
Students these days are terrible at sorting facts from misinformation online and on social media. But they can improve with just a few simple strategies, argues information literacy researcher Mike Caulfield. And he says those skills are even more important with the emergence of ChatGPT.
Can educators continue to teach troubling but worthwhile texts in this time of polarization and culture wars? And how can instructors make classrooms a welcoming place for debate as schools and colleges grow more diverse? This week’s EdSurge Podcast dives into the thorny issue of encouraging viewpoint diversity in classrooms.
What if Rodin’s famous sculpture of the thinking man sitting holding his chin gives us the wrong idea about how people think? A growing body of research suggests that thinking is influenced not just by what’s inside our skull, but by cues from our body movements, by our surroundings, and by other people we’re interacting with. And that has implications for educators.
Could cutting-edge virtual reality tech help to spread classical education models and alternatives to traditional public schools? That’s what one proponent is hoping, and she’s started a new online charter school delivered largely through VR headsets to try it.
A mockumentary web series made by undergraduates makes some timely observations about college admissions, and about student life after the pandemic — when students sometimes struggle to make social connections after high school experiences spent on lockdown.
The pandemic has sparked more-nuanced conversations about kids and tech, getting away from simple questions of how much screen time to allow. Now, one researcher argues, it’s time to provide better guidance on how to match tech to what children need, and can reasonably handle, at each stage of their development.
EdSurge recently took a microphone to a university campus and asked several students to share their group project horror stories. Every student we talked to had one. Then we ran them by a teaching expert to get his advice on how to avoid such scenarios.
For more than a decade, the nonprofit behind the popular storytelling podcast The Moth has run workshops in schools to help students share impactful stories from their lives. Now the group started a spin-off podcast, Grown, highlighting those student stories. Here’s what they’re learning, and why they say storytelling needs to be taught in schools.
A new documentary follows an educator and activist pushing to require schools to offer reading instruction that has been proven effective, calling it a matter of civil rights. But the main subject in the film started out reluctant to participate. Here’s why, and what he hopes comes of the film. This is an encore broadcast of an EdSurge Podcast that ran earlier this year.
A professor of urban education dug into the history of school reform in Philadelphia, and came away with questions of what motivates large-scale efforts to change schooling.
The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the consideration of race in college admissions has sparked a strong push to also end the consideration of enrollment legacy in admissions. Here’s what’s behind the push and a look at other ways colleges are trying to encourage diversity in light of the new ruling.
Scholars have taken to podcasting, interviewing each other about ideas and sharing their favorite areas of knowledge. Even when audiences are small, this new way of spreading information to a broader public is challenging traditional notions of what counts as research, and who gets to be an authority.
As colleges think about diversity on their campuses, they need to consider issues of class as well as race. Because especially among Black students at selective colleges, there are many types of experiences, argues University of Pennsylvania professor Camille Charles.
A group of researchers developed a tool that uses AI to test and improve digital course materials. On this week’s EdSurge Podcast, two of those researchers talk about how their project won first place in a $1 million education XPrize competition, and what it says about how to best use AI in education.
A Drexel University professor has been researching how to make children’s media more inclusive. And lately he’s been putting his ideas into practice as a creative producer of a new animated show on PBS for 3- to 6-year-olds.
“Why do some schools get better quickly, and others get stuck?” That question drove MIT professor of digital media Justin Reich to write a new book about what he’s learned as a teacher, edtech consultant and professor about making small regular improvements.
When their school implemented a new policy requiring students to lock their phones in pouches during the school day, the students had some concerns. This week on the EdSurge Podcast, we share an episode of the student-produced Miseducation podcast that looks at the pros and cons of this unusual new approach to managing smartphone use at schools.
Since the pandemic, more professors are reporting they’re having trouble connecting with their students. That’s according to Bonni Stachowiak, dean of teaching and learning at Vanguard University of Southern California and host of the weekly podcast Teaching in Higher Ed. She shares other trends she’s seeing in teaching, and ways instructors are overcoming them.
It’s important to nurture philosophical thinking in kids throughout school and college. So argues a philosophy professor who wrote a book that highlights the natural tendencies of kids to think like philosophers. When big, important questions arise, he says, parents and educators should treat kids like conversational equals.
Professors are finding that they can’t just go back to teaching as they did before the pandemic and expect the same result. It takes more these days to hold student attention, and convince them to show up. Check out part two of our series reported from the back of large lecture classes to see how teaching is changing.
For decades, proponents of open access scholarship have worked to make the research in scholarly journals freely readable to all. Will this moment of AI chatbots accelerate the effort?
In 2015, a video went viral showing a white school resource officer violently flipping over a Black student in her desk and dragging her across the room before arresting her. It sparked a lawsuit against a vague South Carolina law that brings the criminal justice system into schools for minor offenses, and a nationwide discussion about systemic racism in school policing.
A growing number of educators are wondering whether the grading system is hindering students rather than helping them learn. A new book explores alternative methods of marking papers in ways that encourage students to continually revise their work rather than quibble over which letter grade they deserve.
Sometime early in elementary school, kids are put on one of two paths: regular or gifted. Where did this idea come from? The answer goes back more than a 100 years, to a once-famous scholar named Lewis Terman. And it turns out his legacy, and the future of gifted programs, are still very much under debate.
These days teachers need some basic training in a number of fields, including mental health and social work, to be effective in the classroom, argues Stephanie Malia Krauss, author of a new book about the importance of teaching holistically in this time of pandemic and social unrest.
With every new generation of students there’s an effort to understand what’s different about them, and what motivates them as they enter society and the workforce. For Gen Z, a key factor is their skills in organizing on social media and interest in working across traditional partisan divides on issues like gun control, environmental protection and racial justice, argues Timothy Law Snyder, president of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, who calls them the “solidarity generation.”
Two longtime professors hoped the pandemic would reset the small liberal arts colleges where they taught. So they wrote a book-length manifesto laying out a vision for making the colleges more accessible — and true engines of social mobility. Three years into the pandemic, they reflect on how that’s going.
A new documentary follows an educator and activist pushing to require schools to offer reading instruction that has been proven effective, calling it a matter of civil rights. But the main character in the film started out reluctant to participate. Here’s why, and what he hopes comes of the film.
EdSurge visited large lecture classes to get a sense of what college feels like now that COVID is more under control after years of pandemic disruptions. Students and professors say that years of remote instruction—often referred to as ‘Zoom University’—has left many students more likely to get distracted by their devices, or to place less value on class, thinking they can get whatever is happening in classrooms on their own.
Even before ChatGPT was released, AI experts were exploring how to detect language written by this new kind of bot. On this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we talk with one of those experts, and others who are seeking to build guardrails to help educators successfully adapt to the latest AI technology.
Experts have described this as a 'golden age' of discovery in the area of learning science, with new insights emerging regularly on how humans learn. So what can educators, policymakers and any lifelong learner gain from these new insights?
A free-tuition online institution called University of the People has grown into a mega-college. Its founder and president says other colleges can learn from the model to drastically cut their costs.
Active-shooter drills are now common at schools and colleges. But the sometimes-intense simulations can be traumatic for some children, and some parents are asking to let their students opt out of the experiences.
Human brains are wired to think in ways that often lead to biased decisions or incorrect assumptions. A Yale University psychology professor has gathered highlights of what research says about the most common human thinking errors into a popular class at the university that she recently turned into a book.
The acclaimed author has a passion for working with students, but it’s one she has trouble putting into words. Maybe, she allows, it’s “like a chess grandmaster might play chess with a really brilliant 12-year-old and come close to losing — the experience is somehow pleasant in itself.”
Romanticized depictions of teaching in popular culture fail to capture the way teaching actually works — and they create an unattainable model that stifles the impact of teachers and professors, argues Jessamyn Neuhaus, who teaches courses about popular culture runs the Center of Teaching Excellence at the SUNY Plattsburgh.
Getting and holding the attention of students is more difficult since the pandemic, according to many college instructors around the country. So they’re looking for inspiration from other sectors — including video game design and elementary school classrooms — to keep lectures interesting.
Many professors are expressing frustration and even “terror” over ChatGPT, the latest AI tool that students may be using to write their papers for them. That has academic honor committees scrambling to revise policies and provide resources to instructors.
Schools are finding better ways to teach recent immigrant and refugee students. A new book by a high school history and civics teacher collects innovative strategies, and argues that getting the issue right is crucial for building a strong democracy.
Professors are finding that they can’t just go back to teaching as they did before the pandemic and expect the same result. It takes more these days to hold student attention, and convince them to show up. Check out part two of our series reported from the back of large lecture classes to see how teaching is changing.
A new AI chatbot can spit out long-form answers to just about any question, in a way that sounds eerily human. Students are already figuring out they can use it to write their essays, and educators are pondering how to adapt.
Is a college degree necessary these days? One father and son exemplify a generational difference when it comes to that question. Both dropped out of college in their 20s. Now dad is back in an online program, trying to finish. The son recently stopped college and isn’t sure if he’ll ever return. Listen to their debate at the end of this reissued episode of our Second Acts series on returning adult college students.
EdSurge visited large lecture classes to get a sense of what college feels like now that COVID is more under control after years of pandemic disruptions. Students and professors say that years of remote instruction—often referred to as ‘Zoom University’—has left many students more likely to get distracted by their devices, or to place less value on class, thinking they can get whatever is happening in classrooms on their own.
These days many teachers are documenting their lives on podcasts, Instagram or other social media. It all adds up to a kind of virtual teacher’s lounge. But as EdSurge Voices of Change writing fellow Patrick Harris II found out, sharing raw details of your teaching life online can bring big challenges, as well as unusual opportunities.
What if you could travel 20 years into the future and visit a model high school of that time? That’s the premise of a book called “Running with Robots,” whose authors paint a hopeful future, though they say it will take effort and vision to avoid pitfalls around problems like privacy and algorithmic bias.
The SAT can feel very different to different students. While it can give any college applicant stress, some low-income and minority students see it as evidence that selective colleges don't want them. Can the rise of test-optional policies lead to a new, more equitable era of college admissions? This episode, part of our Bootstraps series on who gets what opportunities in education, first ran last December.
One of the most selective college scholarship programs in the U.S. could wind down in the next few years if it doesn’t raise a substantial sum to shore up its endowment. While many scholarships were founded and funded by billionaires or governments, this one was started by a first-generation college student living firmly in the middle class. Will she find a donor to help continue the work?
You may remember the announcement one year ago today of a new private university in Texas that hoped to better promote civil discourse and viewpoint diversity—to avoid what its leaders see as a “liberal bias” on most campuses that they say leads to groupthink rather than free and open inquiry. It turns out, this fledgling university, the University of Austin, has been quietly working on raising money and finding land for the campus—and testing out its unusual model.
What if you gathered a group of high school students in New York City, gave them fancy microphones and some training, and challenged them to make an investigative podcast about the issues they cared about the most?
That’s the premise of a nonprofit called The Bell, started in 2017 by two former teachers with a journalism background and a belief that one way to improve education is to elevate the voices of students.
People who happen to be good at school and college are often described as ‘smart,’ and our systems tend to reward them with cultural status and good jobs. But what if the key to expanding educational access comes down to rethinking our concept of smarts and who has them? We talk with Freddie deBoer, author of “The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice.”
There are many metaphors of edtech out there, and sometimes we might not even realize the metaphor is there. After all, ‘online lecture’ is a metaphor. EdSurge talked with a professor who just put out a book on how metaphors shape our views of education technology.
An evolutionary biologist who studies the physiology of aging has some surprising advice about brain health. And it has implications for schools and colleges—and anyone interested in learning.
What should the college career center look like in this moment of seismic shifts in the job market and the economy, and growing skepticism of whether going to college pays off? We talked with two professors who edited the new book “Mapping the Future of Undergraduate Career Education.”
Longtime professor Cathy Davidson is on a mission these days to promote the practice of active learning. And she says the stakes are higher than people might realize. It’s not just about test scores and whether people learn. She thinks there’s an ethical issue that sometimes gets lost in discussions about teaching.
There's a big difference between being nearly done with college and getting that diploma. In the finale of our Second Acts podcast series, we learn whether the three students we’ve been following finished their degrees, and what the distinction of college grad means to them at this point in their lives.
It’s back-to-school season, but not every teacher opted to return. This week, we listen in on a frank conversation between Jennifer Yoo-Brannon, an instructional coach in California, and Diana Bell, a veteran teacher of more than 18 years who recently decided to leave the profession.
Some big state universities have decided to get into online learning with a big splash, by buying an existing online college that already serves thousands of online students. What does it say about the future of online education, both at colleges and schools?
Millions of U.S. adults have attended some college but never finished a degree. What does it take to get them back in class? And once they’re back, how can colleges help them stay on track? In the second episode of our podcast series Second Acts, we hear the in-depth stories of three students who returned to finish a degree.
It’s easier than you might think to pay someone to write a term paper for you. A former homework-for-hire writer, Dave Tomar, shares the details of this booming industry in a new book, “The Complete Guide to Contract Cheating in Higher Education.” What does the popularity of these services say about our education system? And what can be done?
Taryn Southern is a pioneering YouTuber who these days experiments with how cutting edge tech might transform human expression. She’s recorded a pop album that she co-wrote with some AI code, for instance, and she’s created a digital clone of herself that she can use to make videos for her popular YouTube channel. Here's what she sees coming for education.
As an instructional coach, Jennifer Yoo-Brannon’s conversations with educators have gotten increasingly difficult this year. Rather than coping, she argues that her hope for every educator is to find a community of resistance when they need it. She says what education really needs is for teachers to flock together, affirm each other’s experiences and resist together.
Bad experiences and feelings of disengagement in middle and high school can haunt students even as they enter college. That, plus a number of other factors, explain why millions of students have left college without a degree. In the first episode of a new podcast series we’re calling Second Acts, we hear the in-depth stories of three students who walked away from post-secondary education.
What if schools and colleges ditched letter grades and GPAs? That’s the key question in this episode of our Bootstraps podcast series about who gets what opportunities in American education. It first ran last fall and was out most popular episode of the past year.
Three educators who were part of EdSurge's first Voices of Change Writing Fellowship share how personal, narrative essay writing can help learners and leaders reshape our world.
It’s worth taking a closer look at how the systems we live in -- including our education systems -- make us feel about ourselves and our connections with our fellow citizens. That's one key point in an award-winning philosophy paper by Waheed Hussain, and In today’s highly polarized environment, his framework for thinking about ethics in education seems more relevant and important than ever.
If you ask middle school and high school students these days the most important skills they’re learning, they’re likely to name something they picked up on their own, outside of normal school hours. That’s according to Julie Evans, CEO of the nonprofit Project Tomorrow, who has been studying what she calls "free agent learning" for years—both before and after the pandemic.
Talk of the metaverse is suddenly everywhere, but what does that mean for education? To help us sort through this emerging space, we talked with two guests who have seen more of this VR space than most in both K12 and at colleges. This conversation was recorded live at the ISTE Live conference in New Orleans.
What can today’s activists and educators fighting for equity in computer science and the tech industry learn from past civil-rights struggles in America? That was one question posed during the recent Black Tech Policy Week event hosted by the Black Tech Futures Research Institute. EdSurge was invited to moderate a session, which we're bringing you as this week's podcast episode.
Who gets to learn about computer science in school? Though more schools these days offer CS classes, they’re more common in well-resourced schools than those that serve underprivileged students. Hoping to spark discussions among kids about equity issues in the tech industry, two scholars studying the issue recently made the unusual decision to produce a graphic novel based on their research. For this week’s episode, we talked to the authors about the new book.
In the last few years, the landscape of media for youngsters has gone through a transformation. Now kids watch videos on tablets and on their parents phones, and there’s been an explosion of content on YouTube and other social media platforms aimed at little ones. One preschool-teacher-turned-kids-show-host worries about the forces shaping the industry these days, and he’s been talking to a range of kids-media experts to get their advice on a way forward.
Jackie Kim is on a quest to launch a career in acting and stunts, make it big in the movies—oh, and finish her college degree. She’s one of millions of adults who left higher ed before earning the credential they originally planned for. Now she is starring in her university’s spring production of a play packed with sword fights and monsters, learning how to balance risk and safety on stage and in life.
This week, we’re digging into this issue of teen sleep, and looking at the latest in the brain science and the policy debate over school start times. Our guest is Lisa Lewis, an education journalist turned advocate who is out with a new book, “The Sleep-Deprived Teen: Why Our Teenagers Are So Tired, and How Parents and Schools Can Help Them Thrive.”
A repeat of an episode from 2021, which recently won an Azbee Award: An online course at Concordia University is being taught by a legend of Canadian art -- well, by video lectures he recorded years ago. But a student in the course said he was surprised to find that even though the professor died in 2019, he's still listed as the teacher on the syllabus. What can we learn from this unusual moment in online teaching?
America is getting more and more diverse. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at the makeup of public-school teachers, who are overwhelmingly white. This week, we look at research into new approaches to attracting and retaining teachers of color.
It’s still popular to prize students who have “grit,” who overcome tough odds to succeed. A new book by Alissa Quart called “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream,” looks at why this narrative is so hard to shake—and proposes more community-minded alternatives that could improve equity. We dive into the book in this bonus episode of our Bootstraps podcast series.
A new effort is trying to bring a fresh approach to gifted education, and it doesn't take place in a school building. Instead, it works either as a project-based homeschool curriculum and support system, or as an unusual boarding school option that involves a kind of educational road trip. How does it fit into broader debates about the future of gifted programs?
One big theme in education innovation circles is that the professional world is changing faster than ever, and so schools and colleges have to change what and how they teach to meet those changing needs. For one college in St. Louis, that means experimenting with revamping its liberal-arts curriculum, and even changing its business model.
At a recent education event, two devoted educators debated the question: Is a university degree the worst investment a young person can make? The discussion turned on a bigger question: What exactly is higher education for?
Many classroom environments favor a certain kind of thinker, usually the students who are quick to recall a fact when the instructor asks a question. But that’s not the only type of mind, and it’s not even always the best kind of mind for learning, says Barbara Oakley, a professor of engineering at Oakland University who works at translating the latest brain research into practical advice for teachers and learners.
The cost of college keeps climbing, and these days colleges are considering all kinds of innovative alternatives to offer affordable options. But one liberal-arts college recently announced a radical new approach that does away with the idea of tuition altogether and instead counts on something else: gratitude.
The false choice between personal growth or a decent paycheck isn’t serving teenagers well. Young people want more than good livelihoods. They want good lives. On this podcast extra, we bring you the results of a year-long research projects into how to better design college-to-career pathways.
The 15-year old who won the Scripps National Spelling Bee last summer is no stranger to victory, having previously won three Guinness World Records for very non-academic feats. We sat down with Zaila Avant-garde to hear what's next -- and we challenged her to show off her spelling skills on the spot.
Burned out, tired, demoralized, at a breaking point. Spend time with educators these days in K-12 or higher ed and phrases such as these will come up often. For those in classrooms and for school leaders, the challenge is how to meet the many needs of educators during this time—social, emotional, intellectual and ethical.
What happens when a venture capitalist who funds edtech companies faces off with an edtech critic about what role AI should play in education? We found out, in this discussion between professor Neil Selwyn and venture-fund founder Ryan Craig.
The Rhodes Scholarship was designed to forge a network of people who would go on to rule the world. So who gets this opportunity? And how is the oldest and best-known graduate scholarship dealing with the legacy of its founder, who used ruthless and racist practices to build the diamond empire that funded the effort?
Philosopher and historian of technology Justin E. H. Smith has been diving into the past to see where our dreams about the internet have come from. And he has a warning for what he thinks is going wrong in how things have evolved in recent years — and what tech might be doing to us as learners and thinkers. Understanding that past, he argues, can help make a course correction.
Even though the metaverse is not really here yet, some educators are already trying to get ahead of the curve to help influence what kinds of education products and services emerge in this new, more-immersive internet.
There are universities aiming to do top-notch research and serve large numbers of students of color and low-income students. This goal—what some campus leaders call ‘inclusive excellence’—challenges common assumptions about prestige in education. And according to the authors of the book “Broke,” it’s hard to accomplish in a time of reduced state support for public colleges.
Clay Shirky has long been an influential voice on how technology is impacting society. These days the NYU professor has been weighing in on where higher ed is headed, with a newsletter called "The (Continual) Transformation of Higher Education."
A group of researchers at Harvard have a unique window into student well-being during the pandemic, following a group of a couple thousand families with young children in Massachusetts. They're seeing more behavior issues in kids during remote learning, and they have advice for educators on how to manage shifts back and forth between online and in-person teaching.
A polio outbreak in 1937 may have been the first time tech made emergency remote learning possible. There was no Internet, of course, so schools used the big medium of the day: radio. But did that leave any lasting impact on schooling? That's one question explored by education historian Larry Cuban in his new book, Confessions of a School Reformer.
An evolutionary biologist who studies the physiology of aging has some surprising advice about brain health. And it has implications for schools and colleges—and anyone interested in learning.
Last semester has been described as a kind of limbo—with fewer COVID health restrictions and more in-person classes and activities, but still under the cloud of a stubborn pandemic. We asked students on five campuses around the country to share moments that epitomized this unusual time on college campuses.
Sometime early in elementary school, kids are put on one of two paths: regular or gifted. Where did this idea come from? The answer goes back more than a 100 years, to a once-famous scholar named Lewis Terman. And it turns out his legacy, and the future of gifted programs, are still very much under debate.
Back in 2004 Google made a splash with a plan to scan nearly the entire book collections of some of the world's largest libraries. But soon it became clear the actual plan would turn out to be far more controversial than its organizers probably ever imagined.
Low morale of professors and college leaders is turning out to be one of the biggest issues in higher ed this year. We talked with a college leader who has been writing about educator burnout and demoralization for EdSurge, Kevin McClure, about how higher education can get out of its current funk.
The SAT can feel very different to different students. While it can give any college applicant stress, some low-income and minority students see it as evidence that selective colleges don't want them. Can the rise of test-optional policies lead to a new, more equitable era of college admissions? | Guest reporter: Eric Hoover, of The Chronicle of Higher Education
Khan Academy has grown from a grassroots phenomenon on YouTube to a non-profit with a mission to change education. Its big idea is to promote a notion of mastery learning, where students don't move on until they understand each step through a curriculum. We asked Sal Khan how that broader goal of making mastery learning mainstream is going, and what's next for Khan Academy.
Could the pandemic be a moment that competency-based education catches on more widely. It's an approach where colleges award degrees based on what students can show they know, rather than how long they've spent in a classroom. Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University, talks about his new book about the approach, called Students First: Equity, Access and Opportunity in Higher Education.
Scientists agree that climate change is real and extremely pressing. But many kids in the U.S. aren’t so sure—even ones who have experienced its effects firsthand. The problem may be what’s taught (or isn’t taught) in today’s schools. Climate author Katie Worth takes us through her new book “Miseducation,” and what successful schools are doing to combat misinformation.
Free online courses have become big business in recent years, offered by companies that work to upsell learners to paid products. But that's not how they started out. Stephen Downes, a pioneer of open online education, argues for eliminating things like free registration to get to free course materials, to better spread the ideas.
You’re probably hearing a lot about the crisis in early childhood education these days, as Congress is on the cusp the biggest policy change — and investment — in early childhood in decades. On today’s podcast, we want to step back and look at how we got here -- at what the situation means to educators at all levels and for parents, and at what the Biden Administration’s proposals could mean.
You may remember the hype about 10 years ago when a new approach to online teaching with technology was touted as a possible alternative to traditional college, called MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, led by startups like Coursera. These days you don’t hear much about them, but they never went away—in fact they’ve boomed since the pandemic. So much so that one professor thinks that higher ed should probably be nervous—or at least that colleges should try to learn something from these well-funded efforts.
We all make mistakes. But for educators, mistakes can be particularly challenging, since there’s a culture in education that prizes showing teachers at their best, and glossing over some of the biggest challenges. One educator has set out to change that, with a podcast that asks teachers to share their biggest mistake and how they've learned from it.
Our current grading system can be a way for kids to prove themselves and win college scholarships, or admission to selective colleges. It can also be a barrier, in sometimes surprising ways. What might a world without letter grades and GPAs look like?
Robots are having a moment—including the announcement last week of a new home robot by Amazon. What could that mean for education? We talked with Neil Selwyn, a research professor at Monash University in Australia and author of the provocative book "Should Robots Replace Teachers?"
Meet a U.S. educator who has been tutoring students in China for years from her basement closet, only to have a policy change cut her off from her students. On this week's episode, we dig into a drama playing out in the online tutoring market half a world away, and look at how it's having huge repercussions for many educators in the U.S.
It's hard to generalize about which is “better” for learning — online or in person. Because both clearly have their pros and cons, at least listening to students at one campus adjusting to life back to in-person classes.
EdSurge has spent the last month auctioning off our first NFT, a digital token on the blockchain, to learn what the process involves and the issues the technology raises. On this week's episode, we share what happened.
Big changes are coming to higher education, and those changes will be bigger and more disruptive than many college leaders and experts realize as online learning grows. That’s the view of longtime education leader Arthur Levine, in a new book called The Great Upheaval: Higher Education’s Past, Present, and Uncertain Future. And that means it's time to think differentLY about equity.
To fit all the billions of neurons in the human brain into our heads, they're organized so that brain regions are carefully mapped to things like vision and hearing. And understanding those maps can be a key to better understanding how the mind—and how learning—works, according to Rebecca Schwarzlose, a postdoctoral neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis, and author of the new book, "Brainscapes."
Online high schools were growing even before the pandemic struck, and some online schools were beginning to have a global reach. Now that the whole world has been forced to experiment more with online delivery, where does that leave the international market for online education at the K-12 level? And what about undergrad?
This week we're hearing stories from the “educational underground"—the experimental programs and “hidden credentials” people get that aren’t on the traditional straight line of college. It's a conversation with Peter Smith, who has advocated for new models of adult learning for more than 50 years, as a college president and later a U.S. Congressman.
There’s all this buzz about NFTs these days, with artists using the blockchain-based format to sell digital works that are getting snapped up by collectors for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some students and educators are experimenting with the tech too, and some say they could make a big splash.
Sometime early in elementary school, kids are put on one of two paths: regular or gifted. Where did this idea come from? The answer goes back more than a 100 years, to a once-famous scholar named Lewis Terman. And it turns out his legacy, and the future of gifted programs, are still very much under debate.
Freeman Hrabowski is a college president who has long fought for civil rights and racial justice. When he was 12 years old he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Birmingham, Alabama—and got arrested. His program to help students major and persist in STEM fields hsa been shown to work, and several colleges are trying to replicate it.
Learning science is always advancing, yielding new insights about how people gain and retain knowledge and skills. How can classroom teachers keep up—and even conduct their very own research to improve their instruction, day-by-day and week-by-week?
Little kids are curious about race and difference. So how are teachers preparing to help children develop positive social identities, encourage their self-expression and help them feel comfortable and safe? We talk with Dr. Calvin Moore, Jr., CEO of the Council for Professional Recognition, which administers the Child Development Associate National Credentialing Program, the most widely-used credential in early childhood education.
Just after the pandemic began, we reached out to one of the masters of making educational videos, John Green, for his advice and thoughts on education during this unprecedented time. And he talks about his podcast, The Anthropocene Reviewed, now a bestselling book by the same name.
Teachers around the country have been giving an unusual assignment to their students that goes like this: Think of someone who is in a bit of a financial pinch, make a video about why the person deserves a boost, and then hand-deliver the person a check for $1,000. The money comes from a philanthropic effort called VING, and on this week’s podcast we talk to its founder and hear one of these surprise student gifts in action.
We’re living in a world of big data, but also one where misinformation spreads like never before. On this week's podcast we talk with Tim Harford, author of The Data Detective, about his advice for how to better understand the numbers in our world.
People don’t talk much today about early teaching machines, some of which were made out of wood and brass. And that’s no accident, according to Audrey Watters, a longtime critical observer of edtech who is out with a new book called Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning. On this episode, we’re dusting off these old teaching machines from all the way back to the 1920s, to see what these low-tech devices can teach us about education today.
Only two percent of teachers in the U.S. are black men. Markus Flynn, executive director of the nonprofit Black Men Teach, is leading creative efforts to diversify the teaching workforce, and change the culture of schools.
Today, one in five college students is a parent. Yet few higher ed institutions track parenting status or have programs designed to serve students who have children. For this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we spoke with author Nicole Lynn Lewis about what teen parents need to thrive at college.
What a debate about the admissions process at one of the best public high schools in the country says about who should get what in education.
When the pandemic hit, the traditional final exam just didn't seem to fit the moment for one physics professor. So she decided on a community-service project instead, and says it has made a more lasting impact on students than any blue book would have. She's one of several educators replacing final exams with "epic finales." This is an encore of an episode that originally ran in July 2020.
On this week's episode, we look at how colleges talk about diversity—and about why they embrace it—and how that language ends up affecting students.
What is going on inside the brain as students sit in classrooms? That has always been something of a mystery. So what if you could strap on an EEG machine on students in a classroom setting and analyze brain waves during learning. Researchers are increasingly doing just that, and doing other research at the intersection of Mind, Brain and Education.
There's plenty of anxiety these days about what the internet and smartphones are doing to our brains, memories and attention spans. But what does learning science say about how technology is impacting the human memory, and about that plays out in teaching? EdSurge talked with Michelle M. Miller a psychology professor at Northern Arizona University and author of a forthcoming book, "Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology."
As a high school student, A.D. Carson dreamed of becoming a rapper. And he has, in a way he hopes will inspire others. After being a K-12 English teacher and now a professor, he created the first rap album to be published by a university press.
What the odd and surprising history of 'pulling yourself up by your bootstraps' says about educational equity. Introduction to our new Bootstraps podcast series on merit, myths and education.
Many colleges aren’t asking for SAT and ACT scores this year, and students often can't tour colleges to see what campus is like. A new podcast by a high school senior in New Jersey gives candid reflections on what the college application process is like during the pandemic.
So what do today’s students, whether in K12 or in college, need to know to be prepared for the world they’ll graduate into? That's the topic of a new book by Stephanie Krauss, called Making It: What Today’s Kids Need for Tomorrow’s World. EdSurge connected with Krauss to ask her about her book, and how it was shaped by her own educational journey.
When Norwich University started the spring semester with an outbreak of COVID-19 cases, the campus went on strict lockdown. The university's president, Mark Anarumo, decided to take the unusual step of moving into a dorm on campus, to get a better sense of the mental health effects of social isolation—and it led him to rethink the approach to future pandemic response.
In the 1960s and '70s, an experimental form of teaching made a big splash at colleges. It was called PSI, or the Personalized System of Instruction. And it's largely forgotten, says Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, author of a new book on the history of college teaching in America. Here's what today's colleges can learn from the fad.
What if the way we think about testing and how we measure students is broken? That’s the argument made by our guest today, Todd Rose, author of the bestselling "The End of Average," who has researched the history of grades and standardized tests, and argues for a new way to think about them.
What is the purpose of education? It's a question that William Shakespeare raises in his comedy "Love's Labour's Lost. And the playwright's own training—in rhetoric, craftsmanship and conversation—reveals the answer. That's the premise of a new book by Scott Newstok, an English professor at Rhodes College.
Over the past year the pandemic has dramatically altered college teaching, and one side-effect seems to be a rise in exam cheating. In some cases, students are using homework help sites, including Chegg, to get answers during exams. The company has taken steps to respond, but critics say more change is needed. And some say it’s professors who need to change their testing strategies.
In his Inaugural Address, Joe Biden spoke at length about unity, calling on Americans to “listen to one another, see one another, hear one another and show respect to one another.” But what would it really take to do that? Mylien Duong, a clinical psychologist and social-emotional learning research scientist, explains why listening and empathy are so complex and elusive.
An online course at Concordia University is being taught by a legend of Canadian art -- well, by video lectures he recorded years ago. But a student in the course said he was surprised to find that even though the professor died in 2019, he's still listed as the teacher on the syllabus. What can we learn from this unusual moment in online teaching?
With COVID-19 vaccinations rolling out across the country, there's hope that more schools in the U.S. will soon go back to in-person learning. But there is also a sense of added urgency. But new strains of the coronavirus are emerging, bring a new sense of concern. Asaf Bitton, a physician, public health researcher, and executive director of Ariadne Labs, talks about how soon he sees a chance for kids to have "just a regular boring school day" again.
Teachers are becoming stars these days on TikTok, that social media platform for sharing short videos. Some of them say the platform serves as a kind of virtual teaching lounge during COVID. But is it a good thing for the teaching profession that classroom instructors are part of a site known for dance crazes, jokes and other irreverent content?
Last semester was historic: the first full term under the shadow of COVID-19, and nobody really knew what to expect or how well various teaching adaptations would work. So what are some lessons from the fall semester? We talked with the professors and students who participated in our Pandemic Campus Diaries podcast series in the fall for their takeaways.
This week we talk with a history professor who thinks that not only can colleges do more to encourage civic education that could prevent future crises like the mob storming the U.S. Capitol last week, but that higher education is partly to blame for last week’s events.
On this episode we’re going to revisit some of the most memorable moments from our podcast in 2020 -- and some bonus material that we wanted to get on but just didn’t quite fit.
The disruptions in the job market caused by COVID-19 mean colleges and employers will need to rethink the relationship between the workplace and the classroom. That’s according to Michelle Weise, who makes the case in her new book, Long Life Learning.
Forgetting is a feature, not a bug. That's one of the surprising truths about how the brain works in the new book "Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn." We talk with the book's co-author, Sanjay Sarma, a professor and the vice president for open learning at MIT.
Some colleges were committed to doing as much in-person teaching and activities as possible this semester, even during this health crisis. While other colleges decided early on to focus attention online and pretty much shutter campus for now. For our series finale of the Pandemic Campus Diaries series, we ask: which decision was the right one for students and professors?
How can educators make their teaching more inclusive? For perspective and advice, we recently talked with José Vilson, co-founder and executive director of #EduColor, a nonprofit advocacy group dedicated to issues of race and social justice in education and author of “This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education."
This week's guest, John Warner, has just released a timely book with fresh arguments on how to frame this larger question of who should pay for higher education -- and even how we should think about college’s place in American life. The book is called “Sustainable. Resilient. Free.: The Future of Public Higher Education.”
Residencies are the new trend in teacher education. What are they teaching about race? Victoria Thiesen-Homer, a postdoctoral research fellow at Arizona State University’s School of Social Transformation, embedded herself in a no-excuses and a progressive residency school for her new book, “Learning to Connect: Relationships, Race, and Teacher Education."
This stressful and disrupted semester is leading professors to rethink how they teach, and helping students learn about themselves. But are there things that will stick even after the health emergency ends? Hear views from six campuses on the latest installment of our Pandemic Campus Diaries series.
Other than their parents and caregivers, children spend more time with their teachers and school staff than with almost any other adults. So when something is wrong or seems off, educators are often the first to notice. As a result, educators end up detecting a significant number of child-abuse cases each year. But with the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, these situations where trouble might be noticed have disappeared overnight. To get a sense of where this issue stands seven months into the pandemic, EdSurge connected with Bart Klika, chief research and strategy officer at Prevent Child Abuse America
Today is Election Day in the U.S. And for this installment of our Pandemic Campus Diaries series, we are focusing on how the election and social unrest have been playing out on campuses during this pandemic semester. Students seem to be voting this election season like never before. But some professors are struggling to hold productive discussions of political issues in this polarized time.
Students these days are distracted. Devices and social-media notifications constantly beckon, and in this time of COVID-19 and widespread remote instruction, the distractions have multiplied. So what are educators to do? EdSurge connected with James Lang, author of the new book "Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It."
This week we’re focusing on who is disappearing from higher education due to the pandemic, and what professors are doing to try to keep students going in these challenging times. It's kind of a mystery story because it's incredibly difficult to determine who is missing when the people involved don't even see each other in the real world, and everyone is so focused on their own socially isolated bubbles.
Research shows young citizens are motivated to vote. But they don’t always make it to the polls. Why not? To find out, we interviewed Sunshine Hillygus, political scientist and co-author of the new book “Making Young Voters.” She shares surprising insights about what kind of K-12 and higher education actually influences youth voting behavior. Hint: It’s not civics class.
What is studying like this semester when teaching is strained by safety measures like plexiglass barriers and masks in classrooms and online classes taught by so many professors who are new to the format and clearly struggling to figure out what works. Are students learning?
Scientists around the country have been teaming up with band educators to test what is and isn’t safe when it comes to music education, and what kind of protective gear or PPE works. We talk to a musician who has worked in so-called clean rooms to measure just what particles come out of various musical instruments.
Getting the balance between safety and openness right is a continuous challenge during the pandemic. And much has clearly been lost in terms of social interaction this fall. Can colleges find a way to stay open and offer meaningful extracurricular activities?
At this point the Zoom call has almost come to define learning and working in the age of COVID-19. A few months ago, people began realizing that all these video calls were making them tired—exhausted even—more so than a day of in-person class or all-day meetings. The phenomena even has a name: Zoom fatigue. And it’s backed by some pretty interesting brain science.
Classes are back in session at colleges around the country. Well something like college classes are happening. But in this fall semester like no other, with a pandemic reshaping so many facets of our lives, can colleges pull off effective teaching that’s also safe? And if they can, does it feel like college?
Howard Gardner has made a long and influential career exploring the mind and how to think about it. This month Gardner came out with a different kind of book, one where he looks inward. It’s a memoir called A Synthesizing Mind. He argues that we need to encourage more synthesizing thinkers in this challenging moment of polarization and pandemic.
We’re doing something different on the podcast this week, and throughout this semester. We’ve enlisted professors and students at 6 colleges, and we’ve asked them to share audio diaries of college life in this unprecedented time. On this first installment of the series: Why this is not just about inconveniences of plexiglass barriers in classrooms and masked teaching. The stakes for this semester are high, and so are tensions.
Large employers like Walmart and Chipotle are spending more time, money and effort investing in training programs to prepare workers for what they see as the jobs of the future—at least they were before COVID-19 hit. On this week’s podcast, we hear from Rachel Carlson, CEO and co-founder of Guild Education, a company working to set up these education programs.
First-year teachers already face many challenges. The job is unpredictable, and for newcomers, that can be intimidating. Over the summer, EdSurge interview teachers whose first years were interrupted by COVID-19 last spring. On today’s podcast, we hear from three of the teachers we spoke to about the highs, the lows and the lessons learned from their first year teaching—face-to-face and from a distance.
On this episode we look at what colleges can do to keep students on track even during the health and economic crisis of the global pandemic. We recorded this conversation live at the LearningMan virtual conference hosted by Arizona State University last month.
The college textbook publishing industry is offering colleges a new kind of deal: Order digital course materials in bulk at a discounted rate, then pass the savings on to students, who are automatically billed for subscriptions to online versions of their textbooks. These arrangements, often called “inclusive access” programs, tend to stir up controversy—and sometimes even lawsuits—when colleges adopt them. On this episode of the EdSurge Podcast, we examine why that is.
Jamaal Bowman started his career as an elementary school teacher. Then he became a high school guidance counselor and dean of students. After that, he founded his own public middle school in the Bronx and served as its principal for 10 years. In what has been called a stunning upset, the progressive Bowman defeated a 16-term incumbent in the U.S. House of Representatives. On the heels of his victory, Bowman spoke with EdSurge about the perspective he hopes to bring to Congress, what it will take to reopen schools safely and the role of educators in addressing systemic racism in America.
When the pandemic hit, the traditional final exam just didn't seem to fit the moment for one physics professor. So she decided on a community-service project instead, and says it has made a more lasting impact on students than any blue book would have. She's one of several educators replacing final exams with "epic finales." (One even involved trained chickens.)
Information literacy has long been hard to teach—let’s face it, the landscape of online platforms changes so fast these days. And during this COVID-19 pandemic, it can seem harder than ever to sort out reliable information from falsehood, rumor and conspiracy. This week we're talking to two experts working to help educators and others sharpen their info literacy and critical thinking skills.
A new book, The Merit Myth, argues that selective colleges have become places that block social mobility, and instead “fast-track the elite to ever higher status.” One of its authors, Anthony Carnevale, makes the case for why higher education needs to be more accessible.
Zipporah Osei is a first-generation college student who wants to fill in knowledge gaps about navigating colleges for others like her. So she started an email newsletter called First Gen. The project can help educators and school and college leaders get a clearer picture of what the college experience is like for those who have no family experience with higher education.
In the 1960s and '70s, an experimental form of teaching made a big splash at colleges. It was called PSI, or the Personalized System of Instruction. And it's largely forgotten, says Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, author of a new book on the history of college teaching in America. Here's what today's colleges can learn from the fad.
The coronavirus pandemic is the latest example of why math literacy is key to daily life, as people struggle to understand health statistics and attempts to "flatten the curve." Our guest this week, Conrad Wolfram, says that the education system has done a terrible job preparing us to live in a world where number crunching is more important than ever. He has a new book out this week called The Math Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age. In it, he proposed a new way for schools to think about math education, and what even needs to be taught and why.
Parenting is a tough job in the best of circumstances. And if you’re anything like me, it’s been even harder in the age of COVID-19, with the new role of helping students go through their online classes. Now that we’re more involved, are we doing it right? Are we too permissive or too helicoptering? In short, what does that ideal balance of parental involvement actually look like?
Micheal Wesch is a rare professor who is a celebrity on YouTube. He’s made education videos that have gotten more than 10 million views, and Wired magazine once gave him an award for his innovative viral videos. He is also an award-winning classroom teacher. But he hates being on camera, and was initially reluctant to teach online. These days he's sharing his tips to help other professors work to better connect with students remotely.
As this chaotic and unexpected semester comes to a close, we wanted to know how well this online teaching went, and what it felt like from the instructor point of view. Was it as good? Did the students seem to learn as much? So for this week's podcast, we talk with two college professors who debrief about how the partially remote semester went.
Should colleges be giving students a partial refund on tuition since their campuses were forced to shift teaching online for the COVID-19 pandemic? Students around the country say yes because they say that online is not as good as what they signed up for. But is college just like any other service, like dry cleaning or going to a restaurant? What are students paying for, and what are colleges really selling?
You've probably heard of the "10,000-hour rule" popularized by author Malcolm Gladwell, which says that it takes that much practice to gain mastery of a complex subject area. The professor who Gladwell cites as the basis of that rule, Anders Ericsson, says things are a bit more complicated than the popular author explained.
In this time of pandemic, when schools and colleges have shifted teaching online to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus, more and more teachers find themselves making videos for their students, and more students are turning to educational videos online. So for this week’s podcast, we decided to reach out to one of the masters of making educational videos, John Green, for his advice and thoughts on education during this unprecedented time.
Today we’re talking to two students facing financial challenges, as part of our series about how COVID-19 is impacting education. One is an undergrad struggling to balance his studies and a precarious financial situation at home, and the other is a grad student with six-figure debt with a surprisingly upbeat view of his situation.
There's a new global effort called Corona Diaries. This simple but elegant website invites visitors to record a short audio clip answering one of three prompts: How was your day? How has your life changed? Or What’s troubling you right now? Even though people could talk about any aspect of their lives during COVID-19, a large percentage of the clips come from either parents struggling to homeschool their kids while schools are closed, or educators trying to make sense of this time.
The largest library in the world is the U.S. Library of Congress, and each year it invites one teacher to serve as a Teacher in Residence. This year that's Jen Reidel, and she's been at the Library of Congress researching, writing and seeking out primary sources that K-12 teachers across the country could use in their classroom lessons. Here's what she's learned.
One house in Massachusetts is suddenly brimming with remote learning. With seven family members all trying to keep their studies going while their schools or colleges are closed, it's an accidental experiment about how different students are reacting to emergency remote instruction.
Today we’re looking at what K-12 schools could look like after social distancing is over and people reassess what they want from our school systems. To do that we talked with Simon Rodberg, who has been the principal of a charter school in DC, and is the author of a forthcoming book from ACSD called "What If I’m Wrong? and Other Key Questions for Decisive School Leadership."
Last fall, EdSurge wrote about a specialized preschool program in Ohio for kids who have experienced severe trauma. These are kids who depend on wraparound services such as meals, transportation and mental health services. So when the coronavirus hit and Ohio's governor closed schools, this program had to scramble to come up with a plan: How would they ensure their kids got fed? Would they have to stop counseling sessions? Would the TIP kids slip further behind?
With college campuses across the country shut-down due to COVID-19, teaching has suddenly moved online. For many students and instructors, this is the first time they've done online learning. So how is it going? We talked with students and professors to hear what their experiences look and feel like so far.
The new realities of the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to set in this week, as schools across the country have closed and shifted to online learning. This week on the podcast, EdSurge spoke with Christine Elgersma, a senior editor of social media and learning resources at the nonprofit Common Sense Media. As both a parent and a former teacher, Elgersma understands just how much is being asked of educators and families right now. She offers some actionable advice for teachers and parents looking to better support their children—and themselves.
We’ve been doing a lot of coverage this month of schools and colleges closing and shifting online to try to finish out their semesters amid this pandemic. And of course, libraries that are being forced to shut their doors are trying to shift online too. To get a sense of what the widespread closure of libraries could mean, and hear some creative ways libraries are reaching out digitally, I connected yesterday with Jessamyn West, an educational technologist who runs the librarian.net blog and is author of "Without a Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide."
Every day, a new batch of colleges announces that in-person classes are closed and teaching will shift online to try to halt the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19. So EdSurge asked our teaching advice columnist, Bonni Stachowiak, to offer a quick primer for teaching online. We also talk to her about a debate that has been going on among long-time online teaching experts about whether it’s a good or a bad thing for online learning that there’s this crisis forcing so many to try this mode of instruction.
Even though SXSWedu was cancelled, we pressed on with our planned session—recorded remotely rather than in person. We talk to researchers and students confronting how algorithms are being applied in educational settings.
On this bonus episode of the EdSurge Podcast we’re talking about the youngest victims of the opioid crisis. They’re preschoolers whose parents or caregivers misuse pain killers, or have moved on to addictions to heroin or other street drugs as a result. One expert called these kids “America’s lost children.” Of course educators haven’t given up on these kids. But teaching them brings unique challenges. EdSurge reporter Emily Tate talks about one program making a difference.
How can teachers keep any racial or cultural bias they might have out of their classrooms, and make sure every student feels equally valued? To tackle that big question, we talked to Justin Reich, the host of a new podcast about teaching that comes out of MIT. The podcast is called TeachLab, about the art and craft of teaching, and its first season is devoted to becoming a more equitable teacher.
Dave Eggers is best known for his best-selling books, including The Circle and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. But he's also an education advocate, having helped start a series of unusual writing centers around the country. For this week's podcast, we talked with Eggers about his thoughts on the growing use of technology in the classroom, and what he sees as a need for "refuge" from the digital.
In many classrooms these days, student discussion can grow so heated that passion threatens to overwhelm productive conversation. And in today’s highly polarized atmosphere, when a comment taken out of context can go viral on social media, the consequences of an out-of-control conversation can be severe. But there’s another option. This week on the podcast, we’re learning about “dialogue,” a type of mediated discussion that may help students and educators tackle touchy topics more productively.
Today we’re diving into this issue of screen time, with a guest who for years has tracked research about the impact of screen media on children and young people. She’s Lisa Guernsey, director of the Teaching, Learning, and Tech program at New America. She says she has a better way to think about regulating tech, including a model of how educators and librarians can become better mentors for students and parents.
There’s a budding field called the science of teaching and learning, where scholars are figuring out what works when it comes to educating students. But there’s a challenge -- of getting those findings to folks at the front of the classroom, you know, to make sure no one is reading their PowerPoints aloud, or using techniques that don’t connect with students. A new book focuses on how to move these “science of teaching” findings into actual teaching.
Not so long ago, students did most of their learning at school, and maybe while doing homework or during trips to the museum. Now, learning—like the internet—is everywhere thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and chromebooks. Julie Evans, the CEO of education nonprofit Project Tomorrow, spends a lot of time measuring how young people learn and interact with others. As it turns out, what students say they want from their school experience, or about learning in general, can be rather illuminating for those charged with teaching them.
In an usual study on student debt, NYU anthropologist Caitlin Zaloom sat down with more than 160 people—students and parents—and got them to open up their financial books and talk about the toll of paying for college. We talked with Zaloom about what surprised her most from her research, what she thinks should be done, and how she has changed her thinking about saving for college for her own young children.
A new book argues that hope is something that can be taught, and that it is the key to countering today's heightened polarization and cynicism. We sat down with the author, Sarah Stitzlein, a professor of education at the University of Cincinnati, to hear how her own attempts to teach hope have made an impact, and her advice on how to approach the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
A two-minute video made by students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison was meant to promote school spirit and campus unity during homecoming festivities a couple months ago. But some students had a very different reaction as they watched scene after scene of students working and playing around campus, where almost every one of the students shown was white. It's a telling example of issues going on around the country when it comes diversity on campuses—and the struggle to create a climate where diverse populations feel at home on campuses.
Parents are giving up custody of their kids to get need-based college financial aid. That was a headline in August in ProPublica Illinois, and it got people talking once again about the madness around college admissions. In comments on the ProPublica article and in other online forums, though, plenty of people chimed in expressing sympathy for these Chicago-area parents, calling their move a clever solution to an overwhelming challenge facing their children. To these commenters, the real problem is the high cost of college and what they see as unfair rules around how much parents are expected to contribute.
When people think of education, they often picture content knowledge in subjects like reading, writing or arithmetic. But there’s a growing interest in bigger questions—like whether schools, colleges or job-training programs teach the social and emotional skills people need to make it in today’s complex world. For our final podcast of the year, we get philosophical, looking at ideas of what a good life looks like.
If you were fortunate enough to have music education in school, what were those classes like? Musicians and music educators alike say that learning music is so much more than just playing an instrument, or learning about your favorite artists. It’s a window into other disciplines and life skills, and teaches you how to learn and get along.
It's well-known that podcasting is huge these days. But you might not realize how many educational podcasts are out there. By educational, we mean shows that promise to teach listeners some super-focused topic, like a specific period of history or an academic discipline. Today we’re digging into this growing subculture of educational podcasting, and look at how educators are using these podcasts in formal classes, in ways that make a unique contribution to their teaching.
These days working at a fast-food restaurant or other service-industry job often comes with a new benefit—a college education. Well, more employers, including big-names like Starbucks and McDonalds, are offering tuition-assistance to workers, or even letting them take courses for free. This is part two of our two-part series asking how well these education-as-a-benefit programs work? And who do they work for?
A growing number of fast-food restaurants have added free or heavily-subsidized college education options for their workers. But how well do these new benefits work in practice? And what kinds of people do they best serve? In the first of a two-part series, we look at how tech is changing low-wage work—and what one author sees as obstacles to these new education-as-a-benefit programs.
A few years ago, after more two decades in the classroom, Chrissy Romano-Arribito began to experience something that may sound familiar to a lot of teachers: burnout. Or not burnout, exactly, but demoralization. Experts like Bowdoin College education chair Doris Santoro, author of the book “Demoralized,” note that as systemic pressure, such as top-down initiatives or punitive evaluation systems, crowd out teacher autonomy, they feel they can no longer tap into what “makes their work morally good.”
College kids have a reputation for seeking out free food, and that's why any student organizer knows that ordering pizza is a good way to lure folks to a meeting. But for many students, hunger is a more serious problem. Many campus leaders are trying new ways to address the problem of 'food insecurity' on campus—which can impact professors as well as students.
Back in 2005, one of the biggest stories in tech was a push by a group of MIT professors to build a $100 laptop and give them to children in schools around the world. It was presented as a feel-good story that no one could object to. The story of how these laptops grew into a cultural phenomenon, what their educational impact was, and of what happened to them after they faded from public discussion, is the subject of a new book by Morgan Ames, an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley.
Computing experts love speed races, and there’s an ongoing battle to build the fastest computer on earth. Usually the overall trend follows what’s known as Moore’s Law, with the speed of the fastest computer doubling every 14 months or so. But last week saw the announcement of a new kind of speed record. A team of scientists from Google said they used a quantum computer to solve a problem in less than four minutes that would have taken a traditional supercomputer 10,000 years to complete. What could quantum computing mean for education?
In 1995, NASA astronaut Dr. Bernard Harris became the first African American to perform a spacewalk, and he has spent more than 18 days in space. Today, he's the CEO of NMSI, the National Math and Science Initiative, which runs programs designed to boost the number of STEM teachers. We talked with Dr. Harris about his mission to bring in culturally responsive teaching in STEM, and we asked what it's like to go to space (and what space food really tastes like.)
Researchers are making new discoveries these days about how people learn, and some of those findings are making their way onto campus, in the form of new teaching practices. That has Matthew Rascoff, associate vice provost for digital education and innovation at Duke University, excited about the possibility to make wide-scale improvements in how colleges teach.
What does it mean to be a good citizen? That question is complicated by today's digital environment, since today's kids—and adults too—live in both online and offline worlds. EdSurge sat down with one of the foremost experts on helping navigate these issues: Marialice Curran, founder and executive director of the Digital Citizenship Institute. Curran suggests some simple things anyone can do to be a better citizen, both on and offline.
Today we’re talking about teaching using popular culture, and we’re focusing on a quirky TV comedy called The Good Place. The show is led by Michael Schur, who previously wrote for The Office and Parks and Recreation. But there’s an unusual person in the writer’s room of The Good Place—an academic philosopher from Clemson University, professor Todd May—one of our guests today. But can a network sitcom accurately teach concepts like existentialism and the works of Plato and Kant? And how much should colleges use pop culture in their courses?
This week on the podcast we’re talking about news literacy, and the challenge of teaching students to navigate the relentless flow of information they get through social media and websites and YouTube and ... podcasts. Our guest, Peter Adams, has years of experience working with students like Luquin, first as a classroom teacher, then as a college instructor, and currently as senior vice president for education at the News Literacy Project.
What happens when a popular theory of market research used by fast-food restaurants (to do things like improve their milkshakes) is applied to the process of choosing a college? We talked to Michael Horn, co-author of a new book that does just that. But does it make sense to bring a theory from dollar-menu items to higher education?
For this week’s podcast, we’re looking at the role that African-American scholars and teachers have played in preserving the history of slavery and its aftermath, which in so many ways is still not widely known and appreciated. We talk with scholars who helped mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in what would become America.
Episode page: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-09-17-the-fight-to-preserve-and-teach-african-american-history
This week we’re talking about cybersecurity at schools—and how secure—or in some cases how vulnerable—the tech systems in school systems are. At the center of our story: Bill Demirkapi, who managed to bust into two key student information systems of his high school, then tried to tell the edtech companies to get them to fix their software—with mixed results.
Episode page: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-09-10-a-bored-student-hacked-his-school-s-systems-will-the-edtech-industry-pay-attention
What is your favorite satirical take on higher education? Maybe Jane Smiley’s "Moo." Or Don DeLillo’s "White Noise"? Or it could be Rodney Dangerfield’s "Back to School." Let’s face it, there almost endless works of fiction poking fun at academic life. As the summer ends and we head into the fall semester, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate this rich tradition of parody of academic life, and look at what these works say about the big challenges facing higher education today.
For this episode, we talk to three different writing professors with something to say about satire. One is the author of an acclaimed academic satire. Another did an unusual work of satire on Twitter to call attention to the plight of adjuncts. And the third has a suggestion for the academic satire that he wishes someone out there would write.
Episode page: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-09-03-satirical-takes-on-higher-ed-and-why-they-matter
Julie Schumacher's recommended works of campus satire:
Don DeLillo, "White Noise" David Lodge, Campus Trilogy Lan Samantha Chang, "All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost"
John Warner's recommended works of campus satire:
David Lodge, Campus Trilogy (his favorites are the first two, "Changing Places" and "Small World") Richard Russo, "Straight Man" Francine Prose, "Blue Angel"
What if teaching the scientific method in schools is giving students the wrong idea about how rigorous work is done by scientists? That’s the unusual hypothesis being made by John Rudolph, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “How We Teach Science: What's Changed, and Why It Matters.” We sat down with Rudolph to talk about the fascinating history of teaching the subject in the U.S., and why we’re still searching for the right approach.
Episode page: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-08-27-should-schools-teach-the-scientific-method-new-book-says-maybe-not
People have a tendency to treat technology and big data as neutral, sterile and immune to mortal failings. Yet the digital tools we use at schools, jobs and home don’t simply fall from the sky—humans produce them. And that means human biases can and do slip right into the algorithms. We talked with Ruha Benjamin, associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of new book “Race After Technology.” She points out that some people’s fantasies are other people’s nightmares.
When you hear the word “inventor,” you might think of household names like Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, or the Wright brothers. But today, there are plenty of young inventors whose names you’ve never heard of—not yet, anyway. These are middle and high school students who have developed solutions to major economic and social challenges, ranging from health care and transportation to agriculture and the environment. Leigh Estabrooks, invention education officer at the Lemelson-MIT program, thinks all students—no matter their GPAs or ZIP codes or learning challenges—can be inventors.
Parents are giving up custody of their kids to get need-based college financial aid. That was a headline last week in ProPublica Illinois, and it got people talking once again about the madness around college admissions. In comments on the ProPublica article and in other online forums, though, plenty of people chimed in expressing sympathy for these Chicago-area parents, calling their move a clever solution to an overwhelming challenge facing their children. To these commenters, the real problem is the high cost of college and what they see as unfair rules around how much parents are expected to contribute.
One of the most popular topics these days in education is mastery learning—the idea that the pace of a class should match what each student is ready to learn, as a way to ensure they’re really grasping material. But it can be hard to show educators what mastery learning looks like in practice. Cara Johnson has extensive experience both teaching and helping others using the approach. She talked with EdSurge about how she reaches parents and skeptical students—and shares her best tips for a successful mastery classroom.
What if you could map every book and article assigned in college courses around the world and see which authors are making the most impact? A project run out of Columbia University is working to do just that. It’s called the Open Syllabus Project, and this month its leaders released a new version of their tool that analyzes assignment lists from more than six million syllabi. But there could be unintended consequences.
Online tutoring is big business—especially for a growing number of companies that connect native English-speaking teachers with children in China for live video lessons. These services can work really well as second jobs teachers in the U.S., who can wake up early and get in a couple of hours of tutoring before going to their classroom jobs. But some teachers say they’ve wound up facing unexpected encounters, as they’ve witnessed parents engage in harsh physical discipline on screen that some describe as abusive. So what do you do when you’ve seen something like this? And what should the companies who run these tutoring services do? Read the full story at http://bit.ly/tutoringconcerns
For most of us, hearing something just once isn’t nearly enough to commit it to memory. But with today’s crowded curriculum, sometimes one explanation is all kids get. Ten years ago, Sal Khan set out to change that with his Khan Academy videos, which let kids replay lessons as many times as they want. EdSurge sat down with Khan to discuss his vision for reinventing schools, his recent focus on testing and what he thinks about the recent stumbles of AltSchool, a nearby network of tech-driven independent schools.
“Impact investing” is a term that has become increasingly trendy. And one of the largest higher-ed foundations—The Lumina Foundation—is getting in the game. John Duong, managing director of Lumina Impact Ventures, explains how venture capital supports its mission to drive better postsecondary outcomes, and why “impact-washing” (a spin on whitewashing) is increasingly becoming a concern.
This week’s podcast features an unlikely education leader. His name is Anthony Johnson, and the title of his book explains the unlikely part: it’s called High School Dropout to Teacher of the Year. Johnson’s story is about second chances and falling in love, the surprising parallels between his work as a correctional officer and his work as an educator and what it means to reinvent the system that failed him. Listen here.
Plenty of groups these days are trying to reinvent college. There are entrepreneurs and foundations rushing to try to offer higher education in new shapes, sizes, formats and price points. Meanwhile at colleges, researchers and innovators are diving into learning science and experimenting with new teaching methods as well. But those groups don’t always talk to each other, or even know about each other are working on. This week on the podcast we talk with Mitchell Stevens, a Stanford University sociology professor who wants to create more 'connective tissue' among these disparate groups.
In Louisiana, educators have to worry about privacy when it comes to technology. The state has perhaps the most restrictive data-privacy law in the country when it comes to education, where violators can be punished by up to six months in prison or $10,000 in fines. EdSurge sat down with Kim Nesmith, director of data governance, privacy, and edtech for the Louisiana Department of Education, to talk about the strictest student data privacy law in the country—and what it takes to help Louisiana educators face their fears and offer technology services to students and families in spite of that law (and with a healthy awareness of privacy).
“Someone should create a Center for Social Solutions, identify a handful of challenges and try to work on them over the next decade.” That directive guided professor, historian and author Earl Lewis to start just such a center at the University of Michigan. EdSurge sat down with Lewis to talk about how the center is using research to tackle some of the biggest challenges our world faces today.
At a time when more than 7 in 10 transgender students face bullying or harassment over their gender identity, some advocates are trying to buck the troubling trend and create more inclusive environments for students. Advocates Becca Mui and Vanessa Ford share their thoughts on gender-neutral bathrooms, tackling bullying and how every school can prioritize safety for all students.
"I no longer think there's a huge difference between for-profit and public higher education," Tweeted George Siemens, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and a longtime observer of tech in higher education. "Sit in enough faculty meetings, meet with enough leadership, and it becomes clear that it's all about money." The argument got some pushback from others who disagreed, so we reached out to Siemens and others in the conversation to hear them out.
It's hard for students, professors or even journalists to get a glimpse of just how much data colleges collect on students these days as they go about their coursework. That didn’t stop Bryan Short, who was a student at the University of British Columbia in 2016 when he got curious to know what information the learning management system at his university had collected on him and how it was being used. And what he found—that is, once he got a hold of it—left him feeling pretty uneasy.
Artificial intelligence is changing things—or, the people who are building the algorithms and technologies behind artificial intelligence are. And one of the challenges with bias in Artificial Intelligence tends to come down to who has access to these careers in the first place, and that's the area that Tess Posner, CEO of the nonprofit AI4All, is trying to address. EdSurge sat down with Posner, who told us about how her organization works with diverse youth to introduce them to AI fields and careers.
Bernard Bull has long been a champion of experimental higher ed models. And one of his biggest inspirations throughout his career has been a tiny college in Vermont called Goddard College. And one day Bull got offered a dream job as president of Goddard. But there was one catch. As he went through the interview process, he found out the famed college is broke, and in danger of closing. We asked Bull how he hopes to turn things around.
In the last few years, terms like “whole child” and “social-emotional learning” have become buzzwords. But behind the buzzwords are programs, often led and managed by schools, that take into account all the different things a child needs to be able to learn and grow, even if those things reach outside the traditional roles of a school. EdSurge sat down with Christina Cipriano, the director of research at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a research scientist at the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine.
Hollywood comedies like last year's Life of the Party portray adult students as fish out of water in higher education. But the reality is that these students are in the majority these days, often taking online programs or new offerings designed to serve them. We talk with Marie Cini, president of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, a group working to support programs for these so-called nontraditional students, the real-life versions of the character played by Melissa McCarthy in Life of the Party.
Teaching isn’t a simple one-way exchange. Often there are lessons to be learned from the very act of teaching, whether it’s an instructor finding new ways to reach—or not reach—students, to watching students grow before your eyes to discovering what makes collaborative learning so successful. Those are some of the examples educators shared with us on this week’s podcast.
There’s a boom in the number of grad degrees and certificates being awarded these days, especially as more colleges have moved to offer degrees online. And these degrees are now offered in different shapes and sizes, and in some cases at the faction of the price of in-person degrees. To help understand this shifting landscape, EdSurge sat down with Sean Gallagher, who has written a book on the future of university credentials, and runs a center at Northeastern University that tracks this area.
The college admissions scandal, which the FBI codenamed Varsity Blues, has raised questions about the fairness and validity of the admissions process as a whole, and specifically about whether the SAT is as secure as it should be. EdSurge sat down with Jeremy Singer, president of the College Board, the group that administers the SAT, to ask how the group is responding, and what it felt like to get the call that the test had been gamed in this way.
It’s easy to think of the ways that technology can make humans feel alienated or alone. But technology has also brought people—and teachers and students—together in new ways that have inspired learning.
This is the third episode of a four part series about why teachers teach called “Teachable Moments.” We'll hear directly from educators who attended the EdSurge Fusion conference last fall about the challenges they face, and what brings them joy in teaching.
Writing is more important than ever, but today’s students are lousy at it. And John Warner, an author, book columnist for the Chicago Tribune, and longtime writing instructor, has some ideas about why that is, and how to fix it. EdSurge talked with Warner recently about his sometimes surprising ideas about the crisis in writing instruction, including why he thinks FitBits are part of the problem.
It’s often said that teaching and learning doesn’t always take place in the classroom. And the same is true for educators, whose teaching philosophies can be shaped by lessons that come from being a parent or coach, traveling abroad, or advancing into a new role. That was the case for four teachers featured on episode two of our four-part series on why teachers teach.
Maria Klawe is on a mission to bring more diversity to tech, and she's made progress as president of Harvey Mudd College, which is known as a powerhouse in engineering and computer science. But she isn’t declaring victory. In fact, she is the first to say she hasn’t done enough to make sure computer science is welcoming to all groups, including people of color. Here's why—and why she says the effort may never end.
When students struggle, so do educators. That’s why this week on the podcast, we hear from four educators who remember a time when they faced difficulty with an issue or a student, but overcame that struggle to find a positive outcome. This episode is the first of a four-part series we’re launching in partnership with Listenwise about why teachers teach, called Teachable Moments.
Maria Konnikova doesn’t buy the 10,000 hour rule—that theory popularized by Malcolm Gladwell that it takes at least 10,000 hours of serious practice to become a world-class expert at an activity. She believes she’s found a way to short-circuit it, and it involves marshmallows and poker. We sat down Konnikova, a bestselling author and contributing writer for The New Yorker, this week at SXSW EDU.
Many children grow up looking up to and learning from the characters they read about in books. But what about the kids who can’t find any characters that look like them? This week on the podcast, Ebony Thomas, a children’s literature researcher and critic, describes her own experiences with this, and explains why there are still so few protagonists of color in children’s books today.
Much has changed since 2012 or, as the New York Times dubbed, the “Year of the MOOC.” Where are these online course providers today—and how are universities responding? At this month’s EdSurge meetup, experts weighed in on the state of MOOCs in 2018. One thorny issue: Confusion over different micro-credentials and what they exactly signal to employers. Here’s what else they had to say.
There’s a lot we don’t know about how the brain works. But scientists are finding out more everyday—like how empathy can affect learning and student outcomes. This weekend, EdSurge caught up with John Medina, an affiliate professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Here’s why the molecular biologist says teachers should be “the cognitive neuroscientists of learning.”
Inspired by the breakout podcast Serial, a few years ago two digital learning leaders at the University of Central Florida created their own podcast—focused on online learning instead of true crime.
It’s called the Teaching Online Podcast, or TOPcast, and co-host Thomas Cavanagh says he is driven by his quest to figure out one of the grand challenges of higher education: how to use technology to raise the quality of instruction while lowering costs. Not everyone thinks that’s possible, of course, and even Cavanagh, vice provost for digital learning at the University of Central Florida, admits that edtech can spark plenty of new ethical challenges along the way.
Each month, he and co-host Kelvin Thompson executive director of the Center for Distributed Learning at UCF, give their analysis of trends in online learning over a cup of fancy coffee—and these days their fans often send them beans to brew and fuel the show.
EdSurge connected with Cavanagh (online of course) to talk about what he has learned from all those podcast chats, and about how his sidegig as a detective novelist shapes his work in campus innovation.
Just how do humans learn? And can science unlock secrets of the learning process that can help teachers and professors be more effective in their classrooms?
One of the latest people to tackle those questions is Josh Eyler, in a new book called How Humans Learn. But as Eyler warns readers at the outset, he’s not a scientist himself, but a humanist with a PhD in Medieval studies. And it turns out that is what makes the book such an interesting and unusual take on what is becoming a hot topic.
Eyler certainly spends a lot of time thinking about teaching these days, since his day job is now the director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Rice University. And while his book offers plenty of practical tips, it doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. By offering a guided tour of a variety of theories on the question of human learning, he may just cause you to rethink what teaching even is.
We talked with Eyler about what surprised him most as he dove into the topic, and what he sees as examples of great teaching.
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What’s life like after quitting a tenured job as a professor to become a freelance educator, making video courses and podcasts for a living?
That’s one question we had for Kevin deLaplante, who did just that when he left Iowa State University in 2015 to focus on running his Argument Ninja Podcast and teaching courses on his online Critical Thinker Academy, both aimed at bringing concepts from his scholarship to a popular audience.
One area he’s exploring these days is the rise of tribalism in U.S. politics and culture, and how it’s leading to polarization that is making it hard for us to talk to each other. He’s arguing for a new kind of “tribal literacy,” so we can better understand how humans are hard-wired to be drawn to certain tribal behaviors that, in too large a dose, can lead to trouble for societies. He says that, perhaps surprisingly, he has more time now and can explore the topic more broadly than when he was a traditional scholar.
He made the move during a rush of enthusiasm for so-called MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, that big-name colleges were starting to offer low-cost higher education to a wider audience. It looked like there was going to be a big realignment. But the big shiny revolution didn’t exactly happen.
So we also asked deLaplante what he thinks about the broader landscape of online education that he’s part of.
Should we build robot teachers, or even robot teaching assistants? And if so, what’s the right mix of man and machine in the classroom?
To get a fresh perspective on that question, this episode we take you to China, where a couple of us from EdSurge recently traveled for a reporting trip. One of the events we peeked in on was a two-day conference about artificial intelligence in education organized by a company called Squirrel AI.
It’s vision felt unusually utopian. The company’s co-founder, Derek Li, said during a keynote that replacing some teaching functions with AI-powered software would supercharge the country’s education system. Speaking to a crowd of some 2,000 attendees, he said, quote, “If our children are educated by AI teachers, then their potential can be fully realized.”
He mentioned that he himself has two young sons, twins, who he says are very different from each other, and he believes that having AI-driven tutors or instructors will help them each get the individual approach they need. He closed his remarks by saying that he quote “hopes to provide each child with a super-power AI teacher that is the combination of Einstein and Socrates, that way it feels like she has more than 100 teachers in front of her.”
To understand that level of enthusiasm for AI, it’s useful to give some quick context. For starters, the Chinese government has declared a national goal of surpassing the U.S. in AI tech by the year 2030, so there’s almost a Sputnik-like push going on right now in that country. And one China-watcher I talked to noted that China is facing a shortage of qualified teachers in many rural areas, and there’s a huge demand for high-quality language teachers and tutors throughout the country. So in that context, there’s probably more openness than in the U.S. to the idea of bringing in software robots for some of the teaching functions.
But Li painted AI as not just some pale substitute, but as ultimately superior to humans when it comes to some aspects of teaching. Much of what he described was not the company’s current product, but it’s vision of where it wants to go, including a plan to create an AI-powered tutor that teaches kids to be more creative. So far the company says it runs 1,600 learning centers in more than 300 cities across China.
We were curious to talk with Li further about his thoughts, so along with Betsy Corcoran, EdSurge’s co-founder and CEO, we sat down with him for an interview.
Open educational resources hit a turning point in 2018. For the first time ever, the federal government put forward funds to support initiatives around open educational resources, and recent studies show that faculty attitudes towards using and adapting these openly-licensed learning materials are steadily improving.
But, fans of OER are increasingly facing a problem. While OER started off as free online textbooks, it still costs money to produce these materials, and professors often need guidance finding which ones are high quality.
So OER advocates are realizing they need to change their pitch. While cost is still a big part of the draw, people are increasingly talking about student success and pointing to the fact that when these textbooks are open and unlicensed online, that lets professors customize them and mix and match them in new ways and improve the quality of the education.
This week on the EdSurge On Air podcast, we're diving into how the OER movement is changing, and we'll check in with a couple of people on the front lines of the movement to hear from them. We spoke with Nicole Allen, director of open education at Spark, and Julie Lang is the OER Coordinator for Penn State University, to hear what is happening on the frontlines of the open movement.
Author, speaker and school consultant Ana Homayoun works with teenagers on organization, time management and overall wellness. And as tech and social media have accelerated over the years, her job has increasingly involved keeping up with the ways young people use social media, and advising parents, teachers and even tech companies about what they need to know.
Homayoun’s latest book is about what she’s learned over the years on this topic, and it’s called “Social Media Wellness: Helping Tweens and Teens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World.”
EdSurge sat down with her to learn more about what’s happening in this space, and how parents and educators can make sense of the digital and social media world that’s happening all around us.
Replacing VHS tapes with YouTube clips is probably not the ideal version of moving a classroom into the 21st century.
While that type of digital substitution may tick the boxes of education technology frameworks like SAMR, it doesn’t always provide an opportunity for deep thinking and real-world learning.
So how do teachers actually create meaningful work and allow students real agency in a 21st century classroom?
EdSurge talked with Scott McLeod, associate professor of education leadership at the University of Colorado in Denver. He’s the author of “Harnessing Technology for Deeper Learning,” which explores how his “four shifts” protocol can help educators test whether their practices and pedagogies support the goals of learning in the digital age.
To get to Marty Ringle’s office at Reed College, you have to climb to the top floor of the Educational Technology Center building and get buzzed past a locked door that says “This is a Secure Area.” It felt like I was making a pilgrimage to the digital equivalent of a wise old master on the top of some mountain.
And in some ways that’s not too far off. You see, Marty Ringle has been working in educational technology for more than 40 years, and he’s seen it all—the birth of the PC and and their early use at colleges, the building out of the internet, which started at colleges, and the arrival of smartphones. In fact, he was personal friends with Steve Jobs, and he heard one of the early pitches for what would become the first iPod.
I made the trip recently to seek out Ringle’s perspective. After all, while tech has brought plenty of changes, not all of them have been positive. Sure it’s nice to take an Uber, but there are plenty of ways that online networks have also bred division and polarization.
Before Ringle studied technology, he specialized in philosophy. He’s one of those rare humanists of his generation who devoted their careers to technology and trying to design a better world. So I wanted to know what he thought of what’s happening with tech now, and what he sees as the legacy of this digital revolution he helped bring in.
Personalized learning has been an education buzzword for several years. A recent survey of by the state education technology directors association, or SETDA, put personalized learning at the top of the list of state priorities. But how do school leaders really do personalized learning?
A new book offers something like a step-by-step manual.
It’s called Pathways to Personalization: A Framework for School Change, written by two long-time school innovators, Cathy Sanford and by our guest today, Shawn Rubin.
Rubin spent 10 years in the classroom, and he has been the Chief Education officer at the HIghlander Institute since 2011, and has led personalized learning efforts in Rhode Island schools. He designed the Highlander Institute’s “Fuse” program, which trains educators to lead personalized learning in schools and districts.
His new book offers a five-step framework to help school leaders and teacher teams design and implement blended and personalized learning initiatives based on local needs and interests.
EdSurge sat down with Rubin during the EdSurge Fusion conference in October, to talk about his book and what he’s learned about personalized learning.
Artificial intelligence promises to have a dramatic—and yes, disruptive—effect on education and over jobs during the next decade. And here’s a second big trend—the role of China and Chinese companies, particularly those building products or services laced with the machine learning algorithms that we call “AI.”
If you wanted to get a glimpse into what these twin forces mean for the world—and for education and learning—there's perhaps no better expert than Kai-Fu Lee. Dr. Lee has done it all: He’s been an enormously influential researcher, driving forward work on AI. Originally from Taiwan, he came the US at age 11 and went on to earn degrees from Columbia University and Carnegie Mellon University. He then went on to have pivotal roles at Apple, Microsoft and Google, serving as president of Google China. He started a venture capital firm in 2009 based in Beijing called Sinoventures. He’s written eight top-selling books in China and has more than 50 million followers on social media.
His latest book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New world order, is almost two books in one: It tells the story of the development of artificial intelligence and why we should pay attention to this work. And he does a remarkably deft job of describing entrepreneurism in China, and giving us a peek at what he calls the “gladiator capitalism” that is giving rise to companies with billion dollar valuations and the power to change the world. It’s already hitting the best-seller charts.
EdSurge caught up with Dr. Lee in California over a Saturday morning breakfast in Palo Alto. Here’s why Dr. Lee believes that AI—and particularly AI developed by Chinese companies—is fated to rock our world, and how we learn.
It’s one of the biggest buzzwords in education today: the whole child. Basically, it’s the idea that educating students is about more than what’s said in class. Factors like nutrition, home life and out-of-school relationships can all play a huge role in how kids learn—and it’s something more schools are starting to pay attention to.
The theory behind whole child is one thing. How it gets put into practice is something else entirely.
That’s something Jonathan Raymond had to learn on the job. Raymond is former superintendent of Sacramento City Unified and author of “Wildflowers: A School Superintendent's Challenge to America.” This week, we hear from Raymond about what teaching to the whole child looks like in action.
For Nancy Xu, childhood revolved around her studies. That meant early-morning bus rides to school, loads of after-school classes, and by high school, spending 12 hours a day on coursework.
Xu grew up in northwestern China, and the reason for all that studying was a high-stakes test called the Gaokao, a nationwide college-entrance exam. In many cases, this one ultracompetitive test determines what kind of job the student will be able to pursue as an adult.
For Xu, all that studying paid off. She wound up earning a slot at a prestigious university in Shanghai, where she now lives and runs an education consulting company called Cevolution. The system worked for her. But now, Xu and many others are questioning whether the style of parenting that stresses such rigorous and constant study is the best preparation for the world after college.
In fact, Xu says attitudes toward education are changing in China. The phrase ‘Tiger Mothers’ has been used to refer to parents who monitor children closely with high pressure to succeed. But now, there’s a new class of parents in China who describe themselves with a softer label: Panda Moms. Xu says that means encouraging more creativity and self-exploration.
EdSurge sat down with Xu during the recent Global Education Technology summit in Beijing to ask about her ethnographic research into parenthood in China, and about what Americans can learn from the Chinese education experience.
The key to reforming schools is imagination. Think bringing the spirit of shows like The Jetsons or Star Trek to school design, throwing out all preconceptions and imagining what a new kind of school could be like designed for today’s needs.
That’s the argument made in a new book, Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Are Changing Schools.
EdSurge’s CEO and co-founder, Betsy Corcoran, recently sat down with two of the book’s co-authors, Pam Moran, and Ira Socal, to better understand their argument, and ask what practical advice they have for teachers and administrators looking to transform schools.
The first two years of college are often treated like something you just have to get through—and almost like a commodity. Even the term “general education,” as the curriculum is called at that point, feels, well, generic.
Jennifer Schubert wants to rethink the first two years. She’s come up with a new model of a two-year college that puts less of an emphasis on academic disciplines and more on they kinds of skills students will need whether they continue their studies or go straight into the job market. She calls it Alder College, though so far it’s just an idea, as its still in the planning phase.
Schubert speaks the language of both higher education and business. She’s been a professor at a traditional college, as well as a consultant and business strategist. But these days she’s getting schooled in just how hard it is to start a college from scratch.
EdSurge sat down with Schubert recently to talk about her idea, and about her struggle to get her college off the ground.
About 10 years ago, a short video called Shift Happens went viral, providing a wake-up call to educators that their students would enter a very different world once they left the classroom and entered the workforce.
The video presented a series of surprising statistics set to music.
More than a quarter of a million people have watched the eight-and-a-half-minute video, and one of the video’s creators estimates millions more have viewed four follow-up videos. It marked a bit of a cultural moment.
So we decided it would be interesting to follow up with one of those creators, Scott McLeod, to ask what he would change about the video today, and what he would include if he released a new version based on where we are in 2018.
McLeod, an associate professor of education leadership at the University of Colorado in Denver, said things haven’t gone exactly as he hoped when releasing that video ten years ago.
Open educational resources have been around for more than a decade, and the sheer number of these materials—in the form of textbooks, courses, videos, software and other public-domain resources—are increasingly available online. . But as more open materials become accessible, advocates for open education still see room for improvement.
This week on the EdSurge On Air podcast, we hear from Jess Mitchell, a senior manager of research and design at the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University, and Kent McGuire, director of the Education Program at William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, who both keynoted the OpenEd conference in New York earlier this month and shared ideas on where the open movement is headed.
There is a lot of talk these days about robots replacing humans in the workforce, but those conversations remain largely abstract. For students in school today, however, the issue is urgent, research shows. What if the job they aspire to today is no longer an option when it comes time to graduate? How can they train for jobs that don’t even exist yet?
On the other side of that equation are educators, who often draw from their own learning experiences in K-12 and higher education to inform their instruction. What responsibility do they have in preparing today’s students for a future none of them can really envision?
EdSurge recently sat down with Karen Cator, the CEO of Digital Promise, to get her take. Cator is a former director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology who has been championing digital learning since long before the term “digital learning” was being thrown around—back when she was still a classroom teacher in Alaska. Of all the issues and trends in edtech these days, she says automation is one of the most pressing—and one that all educators should be thinking about.
Do you want fries with that education?
That question is one that many professors fear is essentially coming to colleges, as higher-ed leaders adopt practices from businesses in an attempt to rethink their operations. There’s even a growing body of scholarly work that outlines a critique against the corporatization of college—arguing that even when reforms are well-intentioned, they are making campuses more like burger franchises than centers of learning and research.
So how can colleges try new teaching practices, or data-driven experiments, or other new approaches without sacrificing their core values?
That was the topic of our latest installment of EdSurge Live, an online town hall about big issues facing edtech. For this week’s podcast, we’re bringing you highlights of that discussion, which took place a couple of weeks ago. As you’ll hear we invited one of those skeptical scholars, as well as an innovation leader from a college.
Imagine you’re an elementary school student. Your teacher has told your class to watch several streaming videos for a class project. You might want to watch some of the videos at home, but your family doesn’t have high-speed internet.
That’s just one way technology in education can fail to serve some students. Mimi Ito, a cultural anthropologist at the University of California, Irvine who studies how young people use technology, says it’s not necessarily because the teachers or the people making edtech tools have bad intentions. She argues that understanding another person’s situation is tough if you don’t share that experience.
EdSurge recently sat down with Ito at the Intentional Play Summit to get her thoughts on equity in edtech, creativity and how kids’ relationship to technology has changed over the years.
Technology shapes the way we interact everyday. We FaceTime with family across the country, we send snaps to our friends to let them know where we are and what we're doing.
But sometimes we fail to realize that the platforms and data that push us to interact, they don't always do it in objective ways. Our interactions are increasingly shaped by algorithms, and those codes are designed by some human. Those programmers literally write the script for the ways that tech will make us tick, for better or for worse.
The practice of intentionally guiding user behavior is known as 'persuasive technology,' and it’s making its way into our phones, our homes, and our schools.
This week on the EdSurge On Air podcast, we talk with three experts who study persuasive tech, behavior design, and the ways that algorithms behind technology and search engines can leave damaging effects on society and further exacerbate social inequalities.
Entrepreneur Steve Blank has served as a founder, investor and even in the air force. But there’s another title he’s is known for: professor.
Blank has earned a reputation among budding and veteran business leaders alike as the father of the Lean Startup movement, a business philosophy that popularized startup concepts like “pivoting” and “minimum viable product.” And he’s taught these ideas on business and innovation at Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia and New York Universities. His course on the “lean” methodologies, called Lean Launchpad, is offered at more than 75 schools around the world and was one of the earliest to appear on the online course platform Udacity.
This week on the EdSurge On Air podcast, we talk to Steve about both his business and teaching careers, and how changes in the startup world are reflected in both the lean method and his courses. Listen below, or subscribe to the EdSurge On Air podcast on your favorite podcast app (like iTunes or Stitcher). Highlights from the conversation below have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
John McPhee, a master of telling nonfiction stories, became a teacher by accident 43 years ago when Princeton University needed a last-minute replacement. He has steered the course ever since, each spring when he takes breaks from writing books or pieces for The New Yorker, and it has become legendary in journalism circles.
The list of his alumni include some of today’s most well-known writers: David Remnick (now editor of The New Yorker), Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation), Tim Ferriss (author of the bestselling “4-Hour Workweek”), and so on.
McPhee lays out his course in his latest book, Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process, and I was eager to talk to him about his craftsmanship as a teacher. To my surprise, though, he downplayed his impact in the classroom, and even suggested that you can’t really teach the kind of writing that he, in fact, teaches.
Online education has been touted as a way to increase access to education. But it’s increasingly unclear if online learning is living up to its promise for students, even as digital learning makes its way into more institutions’ offerings. The quality of online courses still varies drastically, and research shows there are major racial disparities in digital-learning outcomes.
This has all left us asking: Who does online education really serve?
To help answer that question, we recently brought two online learning experts to EdSurge Live, a monthly video-based town hall event, to talk about their work and research in online education, and what’s needed to better serve students in the digital space. Our guests were Michelle Pacansky-Brock, faculty mentor for the California Community Colleges Online Education Initiative and @ONE (Online Network of Educators), and Di Xu an assistant professor at UC Irvine School of Education.
Some of the earliest and largest coding bootcamp programs shut their doors for good last year. And it left many people wondering if these short term tech training programs are actually worth the investment (for investors and students alike).
One person who’s remained optimistic about the shake ups in the industry is Ruben Harris. Harris is a CEO of Career Karma, which aims to help prospective students navigate the bootcamp market, and he also hosts his own podcast about breaking into the tech industry, called Breaking into Startups.
We spoke to Harris recently about how his company is trying to shift the demographics of the coding bootcamp industry and what that looks like.
It’s not unheard of for an instructor to tee up a YouTube video for a lesson, only to have the content blocked by the school or district’s censorware. And while administrators might have good intentions when they decide to use censorware, censorship is often only effective for those who play by the rules.
It’s one reason why writer and activist Cory Doctorow thinks schools and educators should rethink their approach to surveillance and censorship. In science fiction novels like “Little Brother,” he has explored the implications of mass surveillance, and on the popular blog Boing Boing, he has written on topics such as net neutrality, open access and user privacy.
EdSurge recently sat down with Doctorow in San Jose, Calif. at Worldcon, a science fiction convention, to get his take on everything from surveillance in K-12 schools to open access publishing in higher education.
MOOCs have gone from a buzzword to a punchline, especially among professors who were skeptical of these “massive open online courses” in the first place. But what is their legacy on campuses?
MOOCs started in around 2011 when a few Stanford professors put their courses online and made them available to anyone who wanted to take them. The crowds who showed up were, well, massive. We’re talking 160,000 people signing up to study advanced tech topics like data science.
The New York Times later declared 2012 as the ‘year of the MOOC,’ and columnists said the virtual courses would bring a revolution. But in the rush of public interest that followed, skeptics wondered whether online courses could help fix the cost crisis of higher education. Was this the answer to one of the nation’s toughest problems?
The answer, it turns out, is, no. Actually these days you don’t hear much about MOOCs at all. In the national press there’s almost a MOOC amnesia. It’s like it never happened.
But these courses are still around, and they’ve quietly evolved. Dhawal Shah, founder and CEO of Class Central, has been tracking MOOCs closely and steadily ever since he was a student in one of those first Stanford open courses.
Shah is our podcast guest this week, and he argues that MOOCs are having an impact, but mainly for people who are enrolling in MOOC-based degrees, where they can get a credential that can help them in their careers without having to go back to a campus. Of course, that’s a very different outcome than the free education for the underserved that was originally promised.
How good are schools at learning? Can they get better?
As a culture, we worry a lot about student learning. But students don’t learn in a vacuum: Most are part of organizations (namely schools) that involve adults who also are engaged in learning, both individually and collectively. So what could help them learn?
Here’s the one of the biggest quiet buzzwords in education: Networks. They can happen in any community—among educators, among schools or districts themselves and, of course, among students. And so emphasizing learning networks nudges educators to think about learning in different ways.
Three recent books explore the power of learning networks. This past spring, EdSurge caught up with the authors at the Personalized Learning Summit sponsored by Education Elements.
Ed Elements CEO Anthony Kim, who works with hundreds of educations throughout the US, wrote “The New School Rules: 6 Vital Practices for Thriving and Responsive Schools” with Alexis Gonzales-Black. As Kim worked with school leaders, he realized that what typically drives success or failure of efforts to improve school is not the educational approach but instead “the culture of our schools, organizational structures, and methods of communication and decision making.” He consequently identified what he sees as six “domains of school organization” and explores how schools can learn from one another in these areas.
Lydia Dobyns, CEO of New Tech Network along with co-author and long-time education pundit, Tom Vander Ark, believe deeply that school systems need to learn collectively. In “Better Together: How to Leverage School Networks for Smarter Personalized and Project Based Learning,” they write: “Networks offer the best path to avoid every school attempting to reinvent the wheel.” Dobyns’ experience, both as an executive in the private sector and now as head of the New Tech Network, which involves about 200 schools across the US, takes readers through a tour of how schools can work together in both formal and informal networks to better support student learning.
Julia Freeland Fisher, who directs education research at the Clayton Christensen Institute, similarly believes in the power of learning from peers but her focus is on students themselves. In “Who You Know: Unlocking Innovation that Expand Students’ Networks,” she writes about how students build their own networks of relationships. “Whom you know turns out to matter across all sorts of industries and institutions,” she writes. But by design, schools have wound up “limit[ing] their students’ access to people beyond their embroyic community.” This isn’t just about giving students access to social networks. Instead its about how educators can purposefully help students create relationships inside of schools that will widen their opportunities when they go beyond the school walls.
Even the best instructors may not be able to reach every student. And often that’s because there is a disconnect between what students expect from college teaching and what actually ends up happening in the classroom.
In July, three members from EdSurge Independent, a student-run group that meets weekly to discuss ideas around higher education and technology, joined EdSurge Live to share what they wish faculty knew about students today, and propose ways to fuse instructional gaps.
The guests are Angele Law, an MBA student at MIT Sloan School of Management and a strategic summer associate at Boston Public Schools; Patrick Grady O'Malley, who's pursuing a master’s degree in digital humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and who holds a master’s in educational communications and technology from NYU; and Megan Simmons, an undergraduate at Barnard College in New York City, where she studies political science.
People love to try to figure out what Apple is up to and to guess their strategy—that’s true for its education strategy as well. But often there’s not much to go on beyond press releases and speculation.
So when Apple’s longtime vice-president of education, John Couch, published a book this year with his thoughts on the future of education and accounts of his work at Apple, it opened a rare window into how the company’s views on education.
The book is called Rewiring Education: How Technology Can Unlock Every Student's Potential. And yes, it does offer some anecdotes about how Steve Jobs thought about computers in education, including how he referred to computers as an “amplifier for intellect” the same way a bicycle amplifies the physical push of the rider. In the book, Couch writes that Jobs predicted this mental bicycle would “allow us to go beyond—to discover, create and innovate like never before.”
But the book is also full of frustration—at what Couch sees as the slow pace of change at schools. He’s essentially arguing that these machines Apple has built are still not being used to their full potential in education.
EdSurge talked with Couch about his time at Apple and where he sees the company going next in education.
Often the algorithms that shape our lives feel invisible, but every now and then you really notice them.
Your credit card might get declined when you’re on vacation because a system decides the behavior seems suspicious. You might buy a quirky gift for your cousin, and then have ads for that product pop up everywhere you go online. In education, schools and colleges even use big data to nudge students to stay on track.
As we create this data layer around us, there’s more and more chance for systems to misfire, or to be set up in a way that consistently disadvantages one group over another.
That potential for systemic unfairness is the concern of this week’s podcast guest, Virginia Eubanks. She’s an associate professor of political science at SUNY Albany and a longtime advocate for underprivileged communities as well as an expert on tech. She’s the author of Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, which The New York Times called “riveting” and noted that that’s an unusual accomplishment for a book about policy and tech.
EdSurge connected with Eubanks this month to ask her about her explorations of technology’s unintended consequences, and about what people in education should consider as they leverage big data systems.
Caroline Hill is a firecracker. She keynoted the Blended Learning Conference in Rhode Island and INACOL in Florida. At both events she asked educators to challenge their notions of the use of technology in the classrooms and their conversations around equity. She has been a DC educator for years, but is now embarking on a new venture, creating an accelerator with the goal of scaling equity. She hopes to combine the start-up mentality of the edtech world with social justice issues in a really unique way.
Access to higher education is a big topic these days, but debates about how to expand access often assume a one-size-fits-all model of what college should be.
A new book due out this fall argues for the creation of colleges of many shapes and sizes, including a new set of low-cost options that are hyper-focused on helping students who just can’t afford a four-year campus experience get a first job.
The book is called A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College, and it is written by a venture capitalist making bets on which alternatives he thinks have the most promise.
The author is Ryan Craig, Co-Founder and Managing Director of University Ventures, and in the book he acknowledges a key drawback to the vision he is outlining. Many of these new college alternatives will intentionally leave out general education, and extracurriculars—or time for pranks with roommates. Craig stresses that such full-service colleges will continue to survive for those who can afford them, but that providing more career-focused options will be better for social mobility and providing meaningful access without high degrees of debt.
Is this definition of access the most practical way to achieve broader higher-education access, or is it giving up on a segment of students?
EdSurge sat down with Craig to talk about the new book, and why he thinks the debate about college access should put less emphasis on the bachelor’s degree.
If Purdue University’s purchase of the for-profit Kaplan University can be thought of as a wedding, there were plenty of people in the audience shouting objections throughout the ceremony. The loudest were Purdue professors, who argued that the pair were far too incompatible to unite.
Among those professors is David Sanders, an associate professor of biological sciences at Purdue and past chair of the university’s Faculty Senate. He organized a petition against the merger, which created what is now called Purdue University Global.
When the EdSurge On Air podcast featured an interview last week with Purdue Global’s chancellor, Betty Vandenbosch, Sanders wrote in offering to share the faculty side of the story. And though the knot is already tied, he and other professors at Purdue say they would still like to have a say in how this new institution operates.
When leaders of Purdue University wanted to move into online education, they took the unusual step of buying an existing online university, a big one with 30,000 students. And here’s the most surprising part: that online school it bought, Kaplan University, was a for-profit business—part of a sector that’s been criticized for high costs and poor outcomes for students.
The deal sparked vocal protests from Purdue professors, and hundreds of them signed petitions opposing the arrangement, calling it an unprecedented privatizing of public education. Purdue leaders, meanwhile, say that Kaplan has better outcomes than other for-profits and that it serves an important audience of adult students who aren’t able to go to a traditional campus.
This month Purdue University Global held its first graduation under the new banner. But what exactly is different now at the online institution, and how does this whole thing work?
To try to get some answers, EdSurge talked with Betty Vandenbosch, the chancellor of Purdue University Global, who had been leading Kaplan University for the past few years.
There is an art to making science fun and entertaining. Bill Nye has done it, and so has Neil deGrasse Tyson. Maybe now it’s time for a woman? For this episode of the EdSurge On Air podcast, we’re joined Sophia Shrand, host of the comedic YouTube show, “Science with Sophie.”
“Science with Sophie” mixes a bit of feminism with science, a difficult combination of things to put together in a comedic fashion. EdSurge talked with Shrand about her comedic history and how educators can learn from her work, making science entertaining.
The college affordability crisis is a familiar story to most Americans. A simplified version often goes that state funding for higher-ed institutions has decreased dramatically over the years, which has translated into massive tuition hikes for students and their families.
Sandy Baum, a fellow in the Education Policy Program at the Urban Institute, watches the issue—and its proposed solutions—closely. The story usually gets encapsulated into examples of students trapped in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. And while this may be the case for some students, Baum notes that it’s not always the full picture.
EdSurge talked with Baum about these issues—and about how innovative approaches are or aren’t helping solve the college affordability crisis.
In the education technology business, Larry Berger is considered—if not the smartest guy in the room, then certainly one of the wiser ones. With more than 20 years in the industry, Larry has seen the ups and downs, twists and turns.
In 2000 he co-founded Wireless Generation, which pioneered the use of data, digital diagnostics and assessments to support students. It was bought in 2010 by News Corporation, which invested more than $1 billion into the company and rebranded it as Amplify. News Corp’s commitment proved to be a short-lived, however. The media giant sold Amplify to private investors five years later.
Today, Larry Berger leads Amplify as its chief executive. The company is no longer as high-profile—or as big—as it once was. So what is Amplify today? What have the past years taught him, and where is the company going?
EdSurge recently sat down with Berger for an update on what Amplify’s up to, along with his thoughts on how the curriculum business is evolving. He also talked about the challenges facing edtech companies today, including his skepticism towards what he calls an “engineering” model of personalized learning.
In Australia, there’s a university that was set up to focus on distance education called Deakin University. It started about 40 years ago -- before the internet really got going, so that meant sending lessons through the mail.
These days, of course, distance education means online courses and its not a new idea anymore, but officials worry that if they’re not careful, they’ll just end up offering the same kind of education-by-mail ethos in a digital format. They’re trying to reboot their online efforts, in what they are calling a “cloud campus,” where educational experiences are designed to be digital first.
And since they also have plenty of in-person students these days, they want to reinvent the campus experience as well, by trying to blend education into busy lives. For Deakin, that has meant developing their own personal assistant for students, a bit like Siri or Alexa, but that can remind you to do your homework.
To find out more about what this university down under is up to, we recently sat down with Beverley Oliver, deputy vice chancellor education at Deakin. The conversation took place at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, as part of our EdSurge Live video forum, where people tuned in and could ask questions.
Running a lemonade stand may be the most entrepreneurial project that students get to experience. But increasingly, schools leaders want to take the spirit of these old-fashioned projects and create more—and more meaningful—opportunities for students and teachers alike to think creatively and build skills that will prepare them for future careers.
In districts like Boston Public Schools, officials have set up new teams devoted to “innovation,” to rethink everything from professional development and instructional design to class schedules and school culture. These efforts are often lumped into one overused term: “innovation.” (But what does it really mean?)
EdSurge recently sat down with Sujata Bhatt, managing partner of innovation at Boston Public Schools, to learn more about what exactly a district innovation job entails, and what it takes to get people to not only adopt an innovator's mindset, but also execute on new ideas.
A college degree isn’t the only path to meaningful work. In fact, these days it seems like there are more kinds of credentials than ever, some new ones even have trademarked names like Nanodegrees and MicroMasters.
One leading force in reinventing the credential is the Lumina Foundation, one of the largest foundations focused on higher education. The group has an ambitious goal to increase the number of Americans with some kind of high-quality credential. But what counts as high-quality? And how can students and employers sort through all the new options.
To get at those issues, EdSurge recently sat down with Courtney Brown, the Lumina Foundation’s vice president for strategic impact. She laid out the group’s vision for the future of credentials, and talked about what the cartoon The Jetsons says about the future of education and the workplace.
The campus of the future will be “networked,” argues Peter Smith, meaning that more and more academic-related services will be outsourced. That, in theory, will allow each campus to focus its energies on what it can do best and turn to outside companies and nonprofits for the rest.
It’s a key claim in his new book, “Free-Range Learning in the Digital Age: The Emerging Revolution in College, Career, and Education,” due out next month, and it’s one that might unsettle college administrators accustomed to directly overseeing more campus services in-house.
Smith has a unique perspective on innovation in education. He has led experimental colleges, including designing and launching the Community College of Vermont back in 1970, and becoming the founding president of California State University at Monterey Bay in 1994. He’s also been a force in politics, having served as a state senator in Vermont, Lieutenant Governor in that state, and then a U.S. Congressman.
These days he’s back in higher education, as a professor of innovative practices in higher education at the University of Maryland University College.
EdSurge sat down with Smith last month at the ASU+GSV Summit on the future of education, as part of our EdSurge Live video discussion series.
The eruption of teacher strikes in states all over the country caught national headlines, adding to the already heated debate about the questionable state of affairs in public schools. But the strikes aren’t over, so what is the next step for these educators? The quick-fix plans put together by legislatures in states such as Arizona and West Virginia feel more like a band-aid put on an ailing illness than an actual change. Educators in these states note that the "war" has not been won.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the largest teachers union in the country, joins the EdSurge On Air podcast for a lively conversation on what comes next for teacher strikes, working (or not working) with Betsy DeVos, and why she takes offense from people who come in to ‘disrupt’ public education.
You could call extension schools the original MOOCs. Universities first opened these offshoots more than 100 years ago, and at the time they were innovative—throwing open the campus gates by offering night classes without any admission requirements.
Extension Schools were the original attempt by higher education to offer a low-cost version for the non-elite. Thanks to a recent push towards online courses, Harvard University’s Extension School now has more students than the rest of Harvard combined. Well, unless you count the students in MOOCs, those free online courses, which are offered through a different division of the university. Let’s face it, the number of different types of degrees you could get from Harvard is getting confusing, and the same could be said for many other universities as well.
EdSurge recently sat down with the dean of Harvard’s Extension School, Hunt Lambert, to ask him to sort through all these offerings and give his vision of where his school is headed.
The phrase competency-based education is quite a mouthful, but it was all the rage a few years ago among college leaders looking to expand access to their programs. The idea can sound radical, since it often involves doing away with courses as we know them, to focus on having students prove they can master a series of skills or concepts one at a time.
It’s safe to say that competency-based education hasn’t caught on as widely as its promoters hoped, and these days you don’t hear that much about it. In part that’s because some serious questions have been raised about the model.
So what’s up with CBE, as it’s known? To try to find out, we talked with one of the pioneers of bringing the approach to a traditional university, Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University, which a few years ago started a competency-based program called College for America. And LeBlanc has helped shape policy around CBE on a national level as well. In 2015 he spent a few months on leave from Southern New Hampshire to advise the U.S. Department of Education.
He has some surprising things to say about competency-based education, including that he’s learned not to call it that with students. He talked about how he does explain it, and where he thinks the trend is going.
Jennifer Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland's College of Information Studies, has been talking about the privacy risks of Facebook data for years. As the recent scandal involving the massive amount of Facebook data leaked to the political advertising company Cambridge Analytica has raised awareness of the issues—and brought calls for change. Golbeck has plenty of suggestions for the social media giant, and she hopes the company will turn more often to researchers and privacy experts to advise them on how to better protect users.
Angela Duckworth’s research on encouraging “grit” in students has been hailed as groundbreaking, popularized in bestselling books and TED talks. It has also been called racist, and some have criticized the work for essentially blaming students for their circumstances.
Duckworth has faced the backlash by practicing a bit of grit herself. Take her reaction when a PhD candidate emailed her explaining that he was doing his dissertation about how the grit narrative ignored systemic barriers that may keep some students from persisting, no matter their character. She offered to serve on the student’s dissertation committee, to gain a deeper understanding of his criticisms.
EdSurge sat down with Duckworth this week just after her keynote at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, to talk about her work and what’s next for the nonprofit she created to translate her research into advice for teachers.
The financial crisis of 2008 was tough for the country, but the real impact will hit colleges in the year 2026.
It turns out the fiscal anxieties coincided with a dramatic birth dearth—a reduction in the number of children born, which means that the number of kids hitting traditional college age will drop almost 15 percent around 2026. That could amount to a crisis for colleges, unless they start planning now.
That’s the argument of Nathan Grawe, an economics professor at Carleton College. He’s author of a new book with a very straightforward title: Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education. EdSurge recently sat down with Grawe, who described how this slow-moving storm raises existential questions for higher education.
The United States Government Accountability Office recently released a report confirming decades of anecdotal research saying, among other things, that Black male students who account for 15.5 percent of all public school kids, represented about 39 percent of students suspended from school. That is an overrepresentation of about 23 percentage points. This report also found that students with disabilities were disproportionately disciplined in public schools.
To change this trend, some educators are looking to implement social-emotional learning (SEL) practices such as restorative justice—where students repair harm done with community service or discussions—and daily greetings, where teachers build relationships with students by addressing them each morning.
But researchers following school districts who have implemented such practices, note that SEL practices hold “limited promise” for changing trends in school discipline because notions inherent in much of the pedagogy don’t consider power, privilege and cultural differences.
To discuss his research on this topic, Edward Fergus, an assistant professor at Temple University, joined reporter Jenny Abamu on the EdSurge OnAir podcast.
In higher education, the number of computer science bachelor’s degrees follows boom-and-bust market trends in finance and technology—growing when times are good and plummeting when economies crash. And since 2010, computer science majors have again been on the incline, after a major drop off following the Dot-com bubble burst. But what have we learned from these patterns? And what can it tell us about the future?
Mehran Sahami, professor and associate chair for education in the computer science department at Stanford University, has witnessed and tracked these patterns closely. He offers insights about the past and what students and educators interested in CS should consider going forward.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-04-02-computer-science-degrees-and-technology-s-boom-and-bust-cycle
How do you close achievement gaps when all your students don’t start with the same opportunities? It’s a question of equity, a goal that is generally assumed to be one most educators want to achieve. Yet, these days the issue seems more complicated, as political debates frame equity policies as in conflict with ideals of fairness and tradition.
Last month at the Aspen Institute’s States Leading for Equity event, North Dakota’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Kirsten Baesler, noted that in her community, this question of providing equal opportunities for all through schooling could be divisive. “There is a threat certain people, certain organizations, and certain communities feel when you start to talk about equity,” she said.
This week on the EdSurge OnAir podcast, Baesler unpacks why some in her community feel threatened by the word, and she describes the challenges school leaders face in implementing reforms to promote equity in their communities.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-03-27-is-equity-threatening-might-be-time-your-district-had-a-conversation
Some educators tout the immersive power of VR technology, pointing to examples like an app that simulates what it was like to walk on either side of Germany’s Berlin Wall in the 1980s.
But what does it mean to teach in an immersive format? What can this technology do that couldn't be done before? And how might it change a professor's approach to teaching, or should it?
This month we sat down with two guests—Maya Georgieva, director of digital learning at The New School in New York City, and Rob Kadel, assistant director of research at Georgia Tech Center for 21st Century Universities—for a live video townhall, streamed from the SXSW EDU conference in Austin. It was part of our video town hall series called EdSurge LIVE. More than 100 people tuned in, with questions such as how to make VR accessible for students with disabilities and how to avoid motion sickness when using the technology.
Does this sound familiar? An Ivy League-educated philanthropist, who built his wealth from a career in technology, decides to champion education as his next cause—under the belief that today’s schools are not adequately preparing the next generation for the future.
We’re not talking about Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. Rather, meet Ted Dintersmith, who has spent nearly 20 years as a partner at Charles River Ventures, an early-stage investment firm. These days, he’s no longer spending time in company boardrooms, but rather in schools and classrooms.
Lauren Herckis, an anthropologist and research faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, has been exploring the culture of teaching at colleges and what makes professors try new teaching practices or, in some cases, resist them.
What does it mean to report on education technology from a student lens? How does the tech-health discussion impact teachers in the classroom? What are virtual school lobbyists doing to impact the national discussion on school choice and accountability?
NPR reporter Anya Kamenetz, joins the EdSurge OnAir Podcast to discuss her new book, “The Art of Screentime: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life,” and offer listeners some answers to challenging questions about the ever-evolving education technology landscape.
In higher ed people often look to a few elite schools for big new ideas. But that might be changing. These days innovation seems just as likely to come from a state school, a small liberal arts college, or even some upstart from outside the traditional system.
That’s the argument made by Bernard Bull, vice provost for curriculum and academic innovation at Concordia University Wisconsin. He’s also a blogger, and he runs a podcast of his own, called MoonshotEDU. He’s optimistic about what he sees as a greater diversity of models and teaching practices at colleges and universities. But he’s also concerned about other pressures he sees in edtech, that are pushing toward standardization as colleges experiment with big data and algorithms.
EdSurge recently sat down with Bull after his keynote at the Educause Learning Initiative’s annual conference in New Orleans. We talked about what he sees as the most important new edtech trends and why it’s still important to read tech critics.
Social media feeds are lighting up with hashtags such as #WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe and #BlackPantherLive celebrating the release of a Hollywood adaptation of the groundbreaking comic series, Black Panther.
Educators are also getting into the fandom, seizing on opportunities the film creates to teach students about empowerment, culture and even the importance of learning science and engineering.
Netia McCray, is one of the educators using the Black Panther film as an educational opportunity. She is the founder of a non-profit called Mbadika, which means 'Ideas' in Kimbundu, a language spoken in the northern region of Angola. EdSurge talked with McCray about her new YouTube series where she's working with makers to teach students how to use design software and 3D printers to recreate artifacts from the Black Panther film.
McCray also addressed the significance of showcasing this film during Black History Month, why the main actor chose to use an african accent and how a fictional film like this can have real implications on the empowerment of black women in STEM.
How do we crack a problem that has existed for decades? Jobs in science, technology, engineering & mathematics (STEM) jobs are projected to grow 17 percent between 2014 and 2024; non-STEM jobs are expected to rise only 12 percent. Even so, minorities, women and people with disabilities are still severely underrepresented in STEM-related fields. And if innovation springs from looking at problems from a very different perspective, then coaxing people who bring diverse perspectives should become a national imperative.
As part of Silicon Valley’s Commonwealth Club discussion series, EdSurge CEO and co-founder Betsy Corcoran spoke with three MacArthur Fellows actively involved in helping people from underrepresented populations enter and thrive in STEM careers. Deborah Bial, founder of the Posse Foundation, Jim Fruchterman, founder of Benetech and Dr. Manu Prakash, a physical biologist from Stanford University, bring powerful—and different—perspectives on how to over barriers so many confront when pursuing careers in STEM.
College professors don’t often talk to each other about the intricacies of their teaching practices, and it often seems a mystery to scholars what goes on in other people’s courses.
Bonni Stachowiak has created a forum to spread those stories and techniques with her long-running podcast, Teaching in Higher Ed. Stachowiak says she is still growing as a teacher herself, as director of teaching excellence and digital pedagogy at Vanguard University of Southern California, and her sense of curiosity comes through in her weekly conversations.
EdSurge talked with Stachowiak about the biggest lessons she’s learned about teaching from those interviews, and the challenges of teaching in today’s highly partisan political environment.
Larry Singer is a CEO, but not the smug type, who’s likely to engage you in a long-winded conversation about himself, while you sip on your drink and wait for someone more interesting to come along.
Singer is different. Last week he pitched EdSurge a story about his nonprofit, Open Up Resources, but, after our conversation, we found a story about a struggling innovator. He, like many of our podcast listeners, is a person who wants to do well, but also do good.
In this podcast, we talk about his crazy 30-year journey in education, which took him from Pearson to farming, to the nonprofit work he does now. We hope his story—and its imperfect ending—can motivate those of you who are on your career journeys to find work that makes you happy and taps into your passions.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-01-30-an-education-intrapreneur-on-the-difficulties-innovating-a-conservative-industry
Many colleges these days are experimenting with short-form online degrees to try to reach new audiences and offer new options, often at a lower cost. And new upstart providers are also getting into the mix, including coding bootcamps and startups like Udacity, which offers unaccredited nanodegrees. These trends raise a host of questions about the future of credentialing.
To explore some of these questions, EdSurge recently held an hour-long video forum featuring two guests: Sean Gallagher, the founder and executive director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy and author of the book, The Future of University Credentials; and Nicola Soares, vice president and managing director for Kelly Educational Staffing at Kelly Services, who has her finger on the pulse of employment and hiring trends.
Humans living in abject poverty are warring over the few of resources they have left. There’s an energy crisis, and fossil fuels are in low supply. The weather has gone to extremes. This is the setting of Ernest Cline’s science-fiction novel, Ready Player One, where human civilization is in decline, and life in virtual reality beats any day in the real world.
This page-turning novel (which is being turned into a film by Steven Spielberg) follows a geeky protagonist named Wade Watts as he undertakes a mission to win billions by finding an egg hidden inside a virtual video-game universe called the OASIS.
Among the many rich themes explored in the story is education, painting a picture that could provide lessons for how teachers and school leaders design for education today.
EdSurge sat down with two interesting educators who are working to merge ideas from science fiction novels with our reality:
Amanda Licastro, an assistant professor of digital rhetoric at Stevenson University, in Maryland. She encourages students to draw from science fiction in the writing courses she teaches and has entire assignments built around Cline’s novel.
Sophia Brueckner, a former Google engineer, and artist who currently works as an assistant professor at Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Her work teaching engineering students to prototype from science fiction has been featured on NPR, WIRED, the Atlantic and a few other publications.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-01-13-ready-player-one-using-science-fiction-to-inform-the-future-of-education
When Michael Sorrell took over as president of Paul Quinn College in 2007, the place was nearly broke and faced a possible loss of accreditation. Sorrell wasn’t interested in following the usual playbook for running a college, so he took unusual steps right from the start. He cut the football program, for instance, and turned the playing field into an urban farm.
It's part of a model of a "modern work college," which mixes work-readiness with expanding minds, and at a price that more students could afford. EdSurge recently talked with Sorrell his model, and he shared the roundabout way that this college got into farming.
As the old adage goes, time is what we want most but what we use worst. So how do we use it more effectively?
That’s the driving theme in the newest book from Dan Pink, the speechwriter, TV producer and acclaimed author of bestsellers “Drive” and “To Sell is Human.”
His latest book, “When,” draws on research from psychology, biology and economics to explore how timing impacts every aspect of our lives—including of course, how we teach and learn. For instance, what’s the best time to take a test? Why do kids need more breaks? When the school day is so packed with back-to-back classes and activities, how can students, parents and educators make the best use of time?
Pink recently talked with EdSurge about how his insights can help educators, and why everyone—kids and grownups alike—can thrive with less multitasking and more recess breaks.
On this holiday week, we're rebroadcasting our most popular episode of 2017:
Barbara Oakley, a professor of engineering at Oakland University, spends a lot of time these days thinking about how people learn. She’s taught more students than just about anyone else on the planet, as one of the instructors of one of the most popular online courses ever, which has had two million registered students over the several times it’s been offered. The title of the course, is Learning How to Learn.
EdSurge recently talked with Oakley about what she’s learned teaching all those online students. And she makes the case for why free online courses like hers—which are known as Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs—might still lead to a revolution in higher education, even though the hype around them has died down.
This year, Americans seem to be watching government processes closer than they have in the past. Every week, some policy maker, some legislative vote or confirmation hearing is trending on Twitter and Facebook. However, our guest today, Jeanne Allen, founder of the Center for Education Reform has been closely monitoring and evaluating education policy for over 30 years. She is no rookie.
As a staunch education reformist, pushing the school choice movement forward, Allen is no friend to teachers unions and school board associations saying that they maintain the status quo, or change a little too slowly for her taste. But today, we'll talk about the changes that she is seeing in public schools, covering everything from taxes to policy and how those changes are impacting education technology. We'll also try to get her to give us a sneak peek about what she's expecting from New York City's big edtech conference this year.
Art Markman is an expert on what makes people tick. The psychology professor at UT Austin has also become a popular voice working to translate research from the lab into advice for a general audience.
In his writings and podcasting, he’s tackled questions big and small, from commenting on the recent wave of mass shootings—to weighing in on why people like cat videos so much. And he’s full of surprising findings.
Markman recently talked with EdSurge about how his insights can help educators. He might just change the way you think about things like growth mindset, comprehensive testing, and encouraging students to make mistakes.
What does it really mean to prepare students for a future in coding careers? Clive Thompson, a freelance writer for Wired and The New York Times magazine, thinks the reality is not as rosy as many people think.
In a popular Wired article titled, The Next Big Blue-Collar Job is Coding, Thompson criticizes pop culture and some writers, like himself, for overly romanticizing the notion of the ‘lone genius coder’—the Mark Zuckerbergs and Mr. Robots of the world—saying that’s not what every coder looks like and that's not what many coders will be.
Thompson recently talked with EdSurge about the future of programming work in the United States and the realities students will face in their future job searches.
For Terik Tidwell, teaching kids to code is not about algorithms or apps—it’s about economic mobility.
Tidwell is director of STEM innovation at Johnson C. Smith University, an historically-black college situated in the heart of Charlotte, NC. The city is marked by contradiction: On one hand, the place is booming, home to the headquarters of Bank of America and an emerging start-up scene. But a recent analysis scored Charlotte worst for economic mobility in a survey of the nation’s 50 largest cities, with pockets of concentrated poverty cut off from the rich opportunities just around the corner.
Tidwell sees coding as a key bridge—a way to open kids’ eyes to a way of thinking, and a world of job opportunities.
“We see a lot of students are not going into computer science—they don't know about computer science,” says Tidwell. “I had one student a year or so ago who gave me feedback. I said why didn't you think about computer science? She's like, ‘I never thought of it. I didn't have it in high school. I didn't have any tech things.’”
The university is working to change that. Just this month it scored $1.8 million in grants—from the U.S. Department of Education and from the Kenan Charitable Trust—for a K-16 initiative to expose kids in nearby schools and at the university to computer science and entrepreneurship.
Tidwell talked with EdSurge about the effort during a recent conference at Stanford University for leaders of campus innovation efforts.
When all the stuffing, sauces, hams, turkeys, and pies are out of the oven, there is often a moment of peace during the holiday season where families sit around the dinner table and remember what they are grateful for. This year, we gathered with a community of educators during EdSurge’s Tech Leader Circle at the MakerDepot in Totowa, New Jersey to pause and have a similar moment of reflection.
For this EdSurge OnAir holiday special, we cut through the noise of the 3D printers to ask educators, “What is the one lesson their students taught them, that they are most grateful for?” From advocating for those in need to letting your nerd flag fly, it is no surprise that the lessons shared from these tech leaders will stay with them for many years to come.
It’s a pivotal time for artificial intelligence in higher education. More instructors are experimenting with adaptive-learning systems in their classrooms. College advising systems are trying to use predictive analytics to increase student retention. And the infusion of algorithms is leading to questions—ethical questions and practical questions and philosophical questions—about how far higher education should go in bringing in artificial intelligence, and who decides what the algorithms should look like.
To explore the issue, EdSurge invited a panel of experts to discuss their vision of the promises and perils of AI in education, in the first installment of our new series of video town halls called EdSurge Live. On this week's podcast, we bring you highlights from that discussion.
We invited three guests: Candace Thille, an assistant professor of education at Stanford Graduate School of Education, Mark Milliron, co-founder and chief learning officer at Civitas Learning, and Kyle Bowen, educational technology services director at Penn State University.
By the time John Deasy resigned his post as superintendent of the L.A. school district, he had become a polarizing figure.
In an article in The New York Times covering his resignation, Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot charter schools, put it this way: "The bitterness that had developed between Mr. Deasy and his critics impeded healthy discussion." Barr went on to ask “can we actually move forward without the extremes dominating the debate?”
This year Mr. Deasy is moving forward. And he’s trying to help lead a less bitter debate about education reform, as editor-in-chief of the new publication, The Line. It’s funded by Frontline, a software company for K-12 schools.
The second Issue of The Line, released earlier this month, features some of education’s heavy-hitters: Including former Florida governor Jeb Bush, National Education Association president Lilly Garcia, and conservative think-tank writer, Rich Hess debating the polarizing topic of school choice. It has brought both John Deasy, along with and Frontline Research and Learning Institute C.E.O. Tim Clifford, to talk about the goals of the new publication, and polarizing edtech topics.
Large classes pose tough challenges for instructors and colleges. After all, how do you craft a meaningful experience for 250 people (or more)?
Rachel Davenport, a senior lecturer at Texas State University, has taught so many large classes that she jokes she has trouble readjusting to a small seminar room. She has been recognized with several awards for hear teaching, and students regularly sing her praises (she was named “Best Professor at Texas State University” in 2013 by readers of Study Break magazine.)
EdSurge sat down with Davenport last week during the WCET conference in Denver to talk about her approach to teaching, and what technologies she’s tried—and ones she avoids.
Silicon Valley tech giants have made their stance clear on a number of political and social issues this year. Recently, Microsoft president Brad Smith went so far as to offer to pay legal fees for any employee who faces deportation after President Trump announced the end to the deferred action for childhood arrival program, better known as DACA. Teachers’ unions have also planted their flag both by condemning white nationalists in Charlottesville and the decision to end DACA.
However, leaders in the education technology space seemed to be treading a bit more lightly as they begin to address new social and political issues effective their constituents. We were curious about the role edtech leaders play in such a tense political environment, so we reached out to some.
To have this discussion, we talked to two edtech leaders who recently signed an open letter to president Trump denouncing the decision to end DACA: Jeffrey Collins, the vice president of communications and partnerships for After School App, who also happens to be a former U.S. diplomat, and Vibhu Mittal, the CEO of Edmodo and a former Google employee. Both of these gentlemen signed on to this letter and so you'll learn why they made that decision.
A decade ago professors complained of a growing “epidemic” in education: Wikipedia. Students were citing it in papers, while educators largely laughed it off as inaccurate and saw their students as lazy, or worse. As one writing instructor posted to an e-mail list in 2005: “Am I being a stick-in-the-mud for for being horrified by students’ use of this source?”
How things have changed. Today, a growing number of professors have embraced Wikipedia as a teaching tool. They’re still not asking students to cite it as a source. Instead, they task students with writing Wikipedia entries for homework, exposing the classwork to a global audience (and giving students an outside edit by an army of Wikipedia volunteers). There’s even a new peer-reviewed academic journal about using Wikipedia in higher education.
One of the biggest proponents of the power of Wikipedia in the classroom is Robert Cummings, associate professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Mississippi. He even wrote a book about the topic, called “Lazy Virtues: Teaching Writing in the Age of Wikipedia.” EdSurge talked with Cummings about how Wikipedia has changed his teaching and why he thinks professors are changing their attitude about the anyone-can-edit resources.
At times 2017 has seemed like a new era for reporting, where newsrooms have had to question and reevaluate their purpose for existing. For the mainstream media, technology has been both a friend and an enemy. So how do we prepare today’s high school journalists (and tomorrow’s mainstream reporters) for such an era?
Our guest today: educator, journalist and author of the book "Moonshots in Education," Esther Wojcicki, who most of her students call Woj, has some ideas. Esther has been teaching for more than 30 years and was an early adopter of edtech in her classroom. Today she's turned her classroom into a multi-million dollar media center. And she's one of the few educators with her own Wikipedia page. You might call her the hipster teacher since she embraced collaborative learning, flexible seating and student autonomy before it was trendy.
This week I'll talk with Esther about the state of high school journalism, how technology is changing the game for journalists in the field and the classroom, and all the things that she's doing with her multi-million dollar media center in Palo Alto.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-10-09-apps-journalism-and-fake-news-inside-esther-wojcicki-s-high-school-media-empire
The generation of students attending college today just aren’t that impressed by traditional markers of authority—and they’re not coming to campus to gaze up at wise leaders on a pedestal (well, at least according to surveys). And that’s one reason the president of Bentley University, Gloria Cordes Larson, invites students to call her by her first name.
It’s a move that President Larson -- I mean, Gloria -- sees as part of the university’s push to make higher education more of a hybrid experience between immersion in traditional liberal arts and a focus on practical skills and internships. Bentley is a bit unusual, in that it is an undergraduate institution focused on business. But Gloria Larson argues in a new book that all of higher education should embrace this mixture, and move past the notion that a college has to focus on either liberal arts or practical workplace preparation. The book is called PreparedU: How Innovative Colleges Drive Student Success.
EdSurge recently talked with Larson about her new book, and about what her research shows today’s students are looking for from higher education.
It’s not solely about having a “makerspace” anymore. These days, schools are trying to figure out how to bring making into every facet of the school day, with mobile kits, clubs and more. And when it comes to incorporating making into everyday curriculum, Cicely Day and Knikole Taylor are experts. Cicely Day works in Oakland, California at Burckhalter Elementary School as an instructional teacher leader, where she helps support teachers and students in ELA/math and in the computer lab. Two times zones over, Knikole Taylor is a blended learning specialist in a Dallas, Texas suburban school district, where she support Pre-K to 12th grade teachers and students with all things digital teaching and learning.
But despite the work of on-the-ground educators like Day and Taylor, the maker movement in K-12 schools is far from perfect. What does it really take, for example, to diversify the communities of maker educators and mentors out there? And how does one respond to educators or critics who say that maker education is “just a fad”?
To discuss and debate these questions and more, Day and Taylor came onto the EdSurge podcast. Take a listen, or skip below to get right to the Q&A!
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-09-26-what-will-it-take-to-push-the-k-12-maker-movement-to-be-more-inclusive
If you’ve ever seen the Toy Story movies, you may remember the neighbor kid, Sid. His room is presented in horror-movie fashion, with dim lighting and discordant music, and the toys are all in pieces, as Sid dismantles them and remakes them in his own crazy way.
To Mitch Resnick, an MIT Media Lab professor and early pioneer of the maker movement for kids, this Hollywood’s portrayal is problematic, and part of a larger trend toward overly regimenting education these days.
“I worry about the way the movie presents the inventor as sort of the dysfunctional character, and the bedroom with the toys that come alive on their own is the one that’s full of light and seen in a very positive light,” Resnick explains.
Resnick argues that all kids—and even grownups—should approach life the way we all did in kindergarten, where learning happened through playfully rearranging the world around us. He makes that case in his new book “Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play.” It’s an argument that the inventors of kindergarten accidentally designed the kind of learning environment needed at all levels of education these days—whether it’s in school, college, or the workplace.
EdSurge talked with Resnick this week about his new book, about what’s next for the free Scratch programming language his MIT lab developed, and about his take on what free online courses should look like (he has one coming out next month based on his book).
Five years ago, a former high school principal named Brian Greenberg joined forces with an heir to the retail giant Gap, John Fisher, to start a fund to help scale promising charter schools.
This week the group, called Silicon Schools Fund, released a report reflecting on its efforts so far, which have supported 31 schools, 24 of which were brand new, with a total of $50 million. The bad news: They admit there isn’t yet enough hard evidence that personalized learning really works. The good news: There are plenty of positive signs, both when measuring students across standardized tests and when looking for signals of engagement. They suggest moving forward with what they call Urgent Patience.
EdSurge’s CEO, Betsy Corcoran, sat down with Greenberg to talk about the report, along with his colleague Caitrin Wright. Here are highlights from their conversation.
A few weeks ago, while perusing Twitter for news stories, a few folks on the EdSurge team came across a Tweet by math blogger, TED talker, and former teacher Dan Meyer. He had recently read an EdSurge article regarding struggles that had taken place during a Fulton County Schools’ personalized learning initiative in Atlanta, and in response, Meyer Tweeted, “Can you send me a calendar invite to the meeting where we question the core assumptions of personalized learning?”
Though the “invitation” wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, EdSurge decided to take him up on the offer. Last week, Meyer join in on a very special Google On Air Hangout for a live discussion around exactly that topic—the “core assumptions” of personalized learning, where Meyer thinks PL helps or hurts classroom learning, and how technology fits into all of this.
Sometimes it's hard to imagine change—especially when it comes to a 150-year-old system, such as higher education in the United States. But much of the system we see and experience today was designed, and perhaps it can be again. At least, that's what professor Cathy Davidson writes in her latest book, “The New Education.”
As director of the futures initiative at CUNY's Graduate Center, Davidson studies and thinks a lot about cultural history and technology. In the book, she outlines several ways that higher education as we know it was blueprinted and built. But even more, she argues for why an education overhaul should happen again, especially in the digital era.
EdSurge spoke with Davidson about the book and why she thinks a revision in higher ed is necessary, and how that’s tied to the increasing presence of technology and automation in institutions—and changing economic demands.
Ideological and political conflicts exist across the world, and often appear oversimplified and binary: conservative versus liberal, left versus right, the 99 versus 1 percent.
Yet the reality is often much more complicated. And for children born in the wake of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East, growing up in the world of ideological tension has been a way of life.
While Middle Eastern entrepreneurs have tried to encourage peace and conversation between Israel and Palestine through binational work, many organizations struggle to recruit from either country. However, one of these programs—Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow (or MEET)—has used an education-first approach since 2004 to invest in bright young students. With programming support from MIT faculty and graduates, MEET brings together equal numbers of Israeli and Palestinian high school students each year to engage in coding and entrepreneurship training, and subsequently, cultivate cross-border relationships and collaboration.
Recently, EdSurge’s Mary Jo Madda came across MEET on a trip to Israel, and upon returning to San Francisco, connected with the team’s U.S. Development Director Etai Freedman, an Israeli native, to hear more about teaching student entrepreneurship and what American student-facing programs learn from MEET. Check it out!
These days algorithms have taken on an almost godlike power—they’re up in the (data) clouds, watching everything, passing judgment and leaving us mere mortals with no way to appeal or to even know when these mathematical deities have intervened.
That’s the argument made by Cathy O'Neil in her book “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy.” If algorithms are gods, she’s one of the high priests, as a data scientist and mathematician.
These days O'Neil is trying to challenge this divine narrative of Big Data and point out how fallible the mathematical frameworks around us are—whether in financial systems, in social networks or in education. As she writes, “many of these models encoded human prejudice, misunderstanding and bias into the software systems that increasingly manage our lives.”
EdSurge connected with O'Neil to hear how her behind-the-scenes view of the 2008 financial crisis led her to try to push for tools that can audit Facebook, Google, and other algorithm-fueled systems now asserting themselves in human affairs.
Neal McKenzie says teachers of visually impaired students “have been makers for a long time.” The assistive technology specialist has designed dozens of objects to help his students access content, including an award-winning device to teach Braille. In this special edition EdSurge On Air podcast, EdSurge's own Michael Winters reads McKenzie's article aloud, in which he offers tips for special-ed teachers to incorporate 3D design into curriculum, along with his favorite maker resources.
There are plenty of “innovators” and “early adopters” of education technology out there, from educators who make the rounds on the ISTE and SXSWedu conference circuits to consultants and entrepreneurs who push for adoption of certain tools or practices. But what about those who are more skeptical?
The “technology adoption life cycle,” inspired by the work of American communication theorist and sociologist Everett Rogers, argues that 50% of adopters fall into the “late adopter” or “laggard” categories. Despite making up such a huge percentage, late adopters and laggards rarely get invited to be a part of the edtech conversation. What do they need that early adopters don’t—and is it necessarily a bad thing to be a late adopter?
To find out, EdSurge invited Bret Harrison—a fifth grade teacher from King City Arts Magnet School in central California with 28 years of teaching experience—to hop on the EdSurge podcast. Harrison falls somewhere in between the late majority and laggard categories; in fact, he describes himself as a “reluctant adopter.”
Robert Talbert, a math professor at Grand Valley State University, talks about his new book on flipped learning—a method catching on these days in college classrooms. He describes it as a new philosophy of teaching. Unlike the lecture model, in which students first encountering new material in the classroom, in the flipped model the students’ first encounter with the material happens outside of class, usually in the form of video lectures. And class time is used for more interactive activities that encourage students to apply what they’re learning while the professor is there to step in and help if necessary. EdSurge sat down with Talbert to talk about his experiences, and why he thinks more research universities are taking teaching more seriously these days.
Virtual schools—a fiercely debated topic. Some, like Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and the American Legislative Exchange Council, are in favor. Others, including researchers like Columbia University professor Aaron Pallas, have pushed back. In fact, last January, Pallas called out DeVos for presenting misleading graduation rates quoted from K12 Inc. while presenting her case for virtual school expansion.
But politicians and researchers aside, what do the students who attend virtual schools think? Are they pleased with their experiences, or wishing they could return to the brick-and-mortar, traditional schools where they started?
This week, EdSurge sat down with Amanda Regan, a graduate of Virtual High School in Ontario, Canada, and Kiaha Raigoza, a product of California Virtual Academies and the Flex Program through the University of Wisconsin. Unlike the aforementioned researchers and politicians, both Regan and Raigoza experienced virtual schooling for themselves, and shared with us the pros, cons, and questions they still have around the roles that virtual schools can play in both K-12 and higher education.
If you’ve ever zoned out during a lecture, of if your students are prone to distraction as you click through your PowerPoint deck, that’s partly because we’re hard-wired not to focus intently for longer than ten or fifteen minutes at a time. Our bodies, after all, were evolved to master survival in nature, rather than staring at glowing bullet points on a screen.
That’s the argument made by Barbara Oakley, a professor of engineering at Oakland University, who spends a lot of time these days thinking about how people learn. And she’s taught more students than just about anyone else on the planet, as one of the instructors of one of the most popular online courses ever, which has had two million registered students over the several times it’s been offered. The title of the course, is Learning How to Learn.
EdSurge recently talked with Oakley about what she’s learned teaching all those online students. And she makes the case for why free online courses like hers—which are known as Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs—might still lead to a revolution in higher education, even though the hype around them has died down.
It’s no shock to anyone—there is a gender disparity problem in the computer science world. The computing industry’s rate of job creation in the United States may be three times that of other industries, but the number of females attaining computer science degrees is falling, as U.S. News reports: “In 1984, 37 percent of computer science majors were women, but by 2014, that number had dropped to 18 percent.”
However, Reshma Saujani doesn’t think the issues merely lie in offering girls more opportunities to learn. Rather, it’s a problem of culture and consistency. “A girl doing an ‘hour of code’ is not going to have an epiphany that is going to convert her,” she tells EdSurge.
Saujani, a former lawyer and the CEO/founder of Girls Who Code in 2012, has strong beliefs about how the political landscape will and should affect computer science education, as well as the biggest hurdles facing those hoping to adequately educate girls on coding. Luckily, EdSurge got the opportunity to sit down with her right before her closing keynote at the 2017 ISTE conference in San Antonio, Texas.
It’s easy to forget that notions of childhood have changed radically over the years—and not all for the better, says Steven Mintz, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “Helicopter parenting” and habits around carefully guarding, protecting and scheduling kids have their downsides.
The history of the American family and childhood is an area Mintz has long studied. And he keeps that perspective in mind as he works to keep college teaching practices up to date in his other role, as the executive director of the University of Texas System’s Institute for Transformational Learning.
EdSurge sat down with Mintz a few months ago to talk about kids today, and about why he thinks higher education is going through a once-in-a-generational transformation to respond to how they’ve changed.
The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. We encourage you to listen to a complete version below, or on iTunes (or your favorite podcast app).
On the floor of the ISTE conference, it’s easy to meet educators and administrators from all over the country (and the world at large). You can discuss edtech implementation strategies, hear about favorite tools, and get to know those practices that teachers are excited to bring back to their students.
But while EdSurge paced the ISTE floor on June 25-28 in San Antonio, Texas, we decided to ask a slightly different question: What edtech trends, products, and buzzwords do you wish would retire—for good? From “blended learning” to digital worksheets, here are a collection of comments from ten educators about their biggest edtech pet peeves.
One problem with college teaching is that professors see themselves as, well, professing— declaring what they know and believe. That’s not how good teaching works, argues Jose Bowen, president of Goucher College.
The best teachers have more in common with fitness instructors, he argues. They motivate and guide their students to accomplish their goals.
Years ago Bowen coined the term “teaching naked,” meaning teaching without technology like PowerPoint. His latest book, “Teaching Naked Techniques: A Practical Guide to Designing Better Classes,” expands on his arguments and offers practical advice for instructors who want to rethink how they design their classes.
EdSurge recently sat down with Bowen at his office at the liberal arts college just outside of Baltimore, where he argued that improving college teaching is key to helping improve the political climate facing the country.
For those of you who listen frequently, you might be a little confused since normally, we put out only one episode of the EdSurge On Air podcast each week. But this week is special, because we’re coming to you live from the ISTE 2017 edtech conference in San Antonio Texas, where more than 21,000 educators, entrepreneurs and administrators have gathered to share the best in edtech practices and tools. To kick off the festivities, ISTE brought in Jad Abumrad to deliver the conference’s opening keynote.
Jad’s got quite a set of accolades: He’s a radio host, a composer, a producer… the list goes on. He’s probably most famous for being a founder and cohost of the syndicated public radio program Radiolab. And when we heard that he would be going to ISTE, my EdSurge colleague Jen Curtis immediately got on the phone to arrange an interview with him. In a moment, you’ll hear Jen’s exclusive interview with Jad minutes before his ISTE keynote. What are his thoughts about the power of podcasts and storytelling in the classroom? Are the liberal arts still relevant in higher education? What does it mean to be a well-rounded student? You’ll hear his answers to those questions and more.
In today’s day and age, Google, Twitter and Pinterest are three of the largest employers in the United States and internationally. But are students gaining the skills that one might need to eventually apply to one of those tech giants, if the students chose to do so? In fact, in the year 2017, what hard and soft skills should students be developing in order to succeed in the 21st century workplace? What about in the year 2020? 2050?
Let’s stick with the “now,” for a moment. In a recent interview, EdSurge explored which skill sets lead to career success for students—but we didn’t talk to anyone in K-12 or higher education. In fact, we interviewed three individuals—Alexandrea Alphonso, Ryan Greenberg, and Trisha Quan—representing those aforementioned tech companies.
While the thoughts and feelings of each of the folks we interviewed do not represent the opinions of their employers, each of these technology leaders offered their thoughts in this exclusive Q&A on equity and access, areas that formal education didn’t prepare them for, and their advice for teachers working to prepare students for an ever-changing workplace.
Don’t even think of lecturing to these college students. The 14 students who just finished up the spring session of EdSurge Independent want something more active, and they want to have a voice as colleges rethink how they teach and support people on their campuses.
EdSurge sat down with three of these students--Amanda Wahlstedt, Jared Silver and Rosie Foulger--to talk about how they viewed the buzzwords and experiments happening at their campuses, and also to get a sense of what they saw as the problems with education that need to be solved.
From Apple, Google and Microsoft battling to take over the classroom, to random acts in both K-12 and higher education compromising the private information of millions of vulnerable students, 2017 has been no short of edtech news.
But when it comes to the biggest stories of the year thus far, what are the writers themselves—education reporters—reading and thinking about?
While at the Education Writers Association conference on May 31 to June 2 in Washington, D.C., EdSurge reporter Jenny Abamu spoke with a group of reporters focused on the education technology beat—Benjamin Herold of Education Week, Nichole Dobo of The Hechinger Report, and Goldie Blumenstyk from The Chronicle of Higher Education—to hear their thoughts on the biggest education technology stories of the year, what they’re working on right now, and whether the federal government is helping—or hurting—the integration of edtech nationwide.
Sara Goldrick-Rab's latest book is based on six years of studying how students struggle with paying for college. She argues that recent experiments in having students sign "income-share agreements," or ISAs, is part of a broader effort to drain public resources from higher education.
There are few individuals out there who can list both “two-time TED speaker” and “doctoral student at Harvard University” on their resume. Clint Smith is one of those people—though when you ask him about his work, he doesn’t immediately voice those accolades. Rather, he talks about his writings, and the time he’s spent teaching poetry to incarcerated men in Massachusetts.
There’s also something else he brings up—his beliefs, specifically his concerns that educators across the U.S. aren’t adequately teaching about the history of inequality and how it has come to manifest itself in this country. Smith is not one for silence (he delivered a TED talk about the “danger of silence” in 2014, in fact) and has used digital venues including Twitter to encourage others to speak up and recognize how history shapes the present.
But what are Smith’s thoughts about the role that technology plays in the ways that students navigate the world, online and offline? And when it comes to Twitter, are users merely 'preaching to the choir,” or is it truly an effective medium for changing minds? EdSurge had the opportunity to speak with Smith this week on the EdSurge On Air podcast to get his thoughts.
There are many unanswered questions about the unprecedented sale of Kaplan University, a for-profit institution with several online programs but falling enrollments, to Purdue University, one of the top public universities in the nation.
To try to get some answers, EdSurge recently sat down with Donald Graham, chairman of Graham Holdings Company, the group that sold the 15-campus Kaplan University to Purdue (for just $1). (Editor’s note, Graham Holdings is an investor in EdSurge.)
A look at some details of the deal revealed in an SEC filing suggest that Graham Holdings bears the bulk of the financial risk, and as one analyst notes, is potentially leaving money on the table. It hands off much of Kaplan University to Purdue in exchange for essentially a long-term business contract for Kaplan, Inc. (which remains in Graham Holdings). Under the agreement, Kaplan will provide technology, marketing, and other support services for the new campus of Purdue that will be formed from the former for-profit. And Purdue has the option of canceling that deal after six years (through a “buy-out”) if it feels that Kaplan’s services aren’t working out.
Graham, a former publisher of The Washington Post, knows how to skirt a journalist’s question, and even after half an hour of talking, I’m not sure he fully revealed the reasons for the sale.
The reason he sold appears to boil down to his belief in the quality of Kaplan University (he even co-teaches a course for its business school) and his hope that making it part of Purdue will elevate its reputation and success in ways it could never achieve as a for-profit university.
“Personalized learning” is a term that is no stranger to interpretation—even to the point that writers have started to argue about whether it’s worth defining or not (just check out here and here.) But no matter how a school or district defines it, is it worth including technology in that definition—or does edtech merely distract educators from understanding and delivering on what students really need?
In early March, three education research experts—Eileen Rudden of Boston’s LearnLaunch, Chris Liang-Vergara of Chicago’s LEAP Innovations, and Muhammed Chaudhry of the Bay Area’s Silicon Valley Education Foundation—joined EdSurge on a panel to discuss the very answer to this muddy and oftentimes challenging question. Check it out on this edition of the EdSurge podcast!
Before the “LMS” became an acronym and a hotly contested market of its own, Martin Dougiamas was writing code to share his “object oriented dynamic learning environment” across the web. That project would go on to become Moodle, one of the most widely-used learning management system across the world today.
Just don’t let Dougiamas catch you calling his pet project of the past two decades an LMS. Those three letters make him wince—just a bit. “I prefer to say learning platform,” he says in this week’s EdSurge On Air podcast. “Sometimes we call it an LMS maker,” he adds. Moodle’s “flexible modularity” allows anyone to “build the perfect LMS.”
McComb School District down in McComb, Mississippi doesn’t just believe in the power of technology when it comes to personalized learning. In fact, for superintendent Dr. Cederick Ellis and Summit Elementary School principal Lakya Taylor-Washington, the bigger asset in going personalized comes down to removing arbitrary grade level assignments and creating “learning labs,” a style of competency-based learning that Summit has been experimenting with since 2015. At Summit, “scholars” are grouped by readiness and performance—not by traditional grade levels—and indicate evidence of mastery by completing projects at their own pace.
In theory, the rollout and success of this instructional approach sounds feasible, but oftentimes, it’s the adults who explain how the program works—without the opinions or inputs of students. How about Summit students adjusting to the change? What do they like? What do they wish was different?
In order to hear exactly how different stakeholders feel about this competency-based system, EdSurge brought two Summit students, Kianna and Patricia, together with Ellis and Taylor-Washington to ask the question: “Do students, principals and superintendents all see eye-to-eye on saying goodbye to grade levels?”
A for-profit startup recently launched what it calls an alternative to traditional college, that takes only one year to complete, is advised closely by big-name employers, and that costs nothing at first, though students have to later pay back a portion of their incomes. What’s missing are the general-education curriculum. It’s called MissionU, and the reaction has been mixed, and passionate. Some academics have trashed it as a kind of employment service passing itself off as education. While others have praised it for trying to shake up the higher education system.
For this week’s EdSurge On Air podcast, we decided to try something different. We put together a virtual panel discussion, inviting people with a variety of views on MissionU to face off—including its founder, and a critic. Our hope was to start a dialogue and get beyond misperceptions on both sides. That means that the episode is a bit longer than usual, but it gets pretty lively, and we hope you’ll listen through to the end.
“Flexible.” It’s a word that often pops up in conversations about redesigning learning environments, relating to choices in furniture or movable walls. But according to Danish Kurani, redesigning 21st century classrooms goes much deeper than merely achieving flexibility—it involves going all the way back to considering Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Kurani is a licensed architect who focuses his work on learning spaces, and currently teaches a “Learning Environments for Tomorrow” course at the Harvard Graduate School of Education every year. Having worked on locations ranging from Denver’s Columbine Elementary to SELNY, a psychotherapy clinic and adult learning center in New York, Kurani has seen and used a variety of tactics to implement learning design in pursuit of specific goals.
This week, EdSurge sat down with him to hear about the most common design constraints, architecture gone wrong, and the work his firm recently conducted on the Code Next Lab in Oakland.
Southern New Hampshire University is known as a place trying new things, and one thing they hope to do is create a culture of change on campus. To do that, they've created a sandbox--an innovation lab called the Sandbox Collaborative. We sat down with the executive director of the sandbox, Michelle Weise, to get a tour of this unusual lab and hear why she thinks colleges need to change.
A few weeks back, EdSurge traveled to SXSWedu to hear talks about technology and chat with educators and entrepreneurs. But while there, we met someone who spoke about how edtech could better serve students with learning differences in a manner we’d never heard before. In fact, that individual, Ben Gurewitz, is a student with learning differences himself.
Gurewitz is a Bay Area native and currently a freshman at the University of California, Davis—but that represents only a small fraction of how he spends his time. As cofounder of the Diverse Learners Coalition and an active participant in Student Voice, Gurewitz seeks to use his own experiences with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and slow processing disorder as a platform to create change both inside education organizations and amongst the greater populations.
Gurewitz came to the EdSurge offices in Burlingame, California to speak about his own learning experiences in K-12, where the education system is failing to reach students, and whether or not technology is the most important component of serving all students.
Students at the University of Central Florida are busy, and it’s not always with classes. They have sports to play, student organizations to run, even parties to go to. So to keep class schedules as flexible as possible, and to offer more sections without putting up new buildings, UCF leaders have turned to offering more online courses for students on campus. But are those students missing out?
On this week’s EdSurge On Air podcast, we talked to Dale Whittaker, provost and executive vice president at the University of Central Florida. He’s currently leading another evolution in online teaching, as the institution moves into adaptive learning. They hope that the future of campus learning is for students teaming up to teach each other as they work through online exercises in campus coffee shops.
It’s pretty clear that very few people in education enjoy those typical sit-and-get professional development sessions. And when blended learning gets thrown into the mix, the situation gets even more complicated—what happens when educators seem afraid of products? Who should deliver PD, the administrators or the teachers?
Talk to administrators, and they have some answers to these questions—as well as thoughts about what parts of PD should be left far, far behind. At the EdSurge Tech for Schools Summit in Riverside, EdSurge’s own Michelle Spencer led a panel with Steve Kong (instructional services specialist for Riverside Unified School District), Stepan Mekhitarian (blended learning coordinator for Local District Northwest in Los Angeles USD), Brad Hellickson (student advisor for online learning in Corona Norco Unified) and Michelle Clavijo-Diaz (Global Education Solutions Product Line Manager, HP Inc.) to get their thoughts.
Cal State Channel Islands offers a two-week online training course for professors at the university called Humanizing Online Learning, with tips and strategies for forging personal connections with remote students. The course's creator and instructor, Michelle Pacansky-Brock, and the university's vice president for technology and innovation, Michael Berman, talk about the effort, and about how online education can involve a surprising amount of passion—and even some tears.
Jacob Allen was the first-ever youth president for the NAACP in Wisconsin and a Teach for America corps member in Chicago. But it wasn’t either of those roles that landed him on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list this past January. Rather, it was his efforts to bring an important topic back into K-12 schools—the idea of a student’s self-identity.
In 2013, Allen and his cofounder Marie Dandie created pilotED Schools, an afterschool program that has a three-tiered curriculum, specifically focusing on developing students in the realms of academic success, civic engagement and social identity. Over the last few years, pilotED has worked with more than 100 school students and families on Chicago’s South and West Sides.
But pilotED isn’t just about helping existing schools anymore. Allen and Dandie will soon be launching the first pilotED brick-and-mortar school—a daunting but unique opportunity. EdSurge sat down with Allen last week to discover how his new school model is tackling themes of trauma and citizenship in the classroom—the stuff that can really impact students’ academic success.
An unusual coding school called 42 opened a campus just outside of Silicon Valley last year. It's free -- for those who pass a month-long coding challenge -- and it focuses on peer-to-peer learning, meaning there are no professors. Brittany Bir, chief operating officer of 42 USA, explains how it works, and whether there are any lessons for traditional educational institutions.
In Tennessee, the education system made headlines a few years back when the state announced the “Tennessee Promise”—an initiative granting thousands of high school students the opportunity to attend two years of free community college. After Governor Bill Haslam announced the scholarship program amongst a flurry of news, students immediately began applying to receive funds to put towards tuition at one of the state’s 13 community colleges, 27 colleges of applied technology, or other eligible institutions offering an associate’s degree program. (And now, adults can get in on the action, too.)
But in order for the program to succeed, it wasn’t just about the community and technical colleges agreeing to be a part of the plan. School districts across the state began to see themselves as an integral piece of the equation. And one district in particular, the Putnam County School System in Cookeville, decided to push student ownership over higher education learning even further—with an extensive, dual enrollment college credit program for high schoolers.
Sam Brooks, Personal Learning Coordinator for the district, sat down with EdSurge this week to discuss the program, how his team has translated it into even lower levels (think middle school), and what he recommends other schools and districts can do to make their students more college and career-ready.
As more colleges dive deeper into their own completion and retention data, they don't always like what they see. Karen Stout, president of Achieving the Dream, talks about how community colleges can face their own internal report cards, and take action.
A few years back, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) found itself in the news for the rollout of iPads districtwide, which some ilsteners out there might remember. Since then, what’s going on with technology in Southern California’s biggest public school district?
Well, in one region—the local Northwest sector of the district—administrators, schools and teachers have been busy expanding efforts for blended learning implementation in collaboration with Stepan Mekhitarian. Mekhitarian is currently the Blended Learning Coordinator for that LAUSD sector, but that’s not the only education role on his resume. He’s been a math teacher, an administrator and conducted a doctoral research study on the skills and training needed to implement blended learning effectively and as such, he’s got advice for district admins on how to connect with all of those respective groups.
Mekhitarian is the first to admit that it can be challenging for administrators to lead blended learning initiatives when they themselves don’t have classroom experience or haven’t use blended tools before. But there’s hope, he adds. EdSurge caught up with Mekhitarian to hear about his best practices for leading edtech professional development and what advice he has for schools new to blended learning.
Last year, the U. of Michigan launched a major campus-wide effort to encourage a culture of continual improvement in teaching. The university's president, Mark Schlissel, explains why, and weighs in on the MOOC craze, fake news, and the value of higher education.
This week, we take you to Auckland. A few months back, our own Betsy Corcoran traveled to New Zealand, where she sat down with Pete Hall. Right now, Pete is the newest principal of the Taupaki School, but he also has a background in entrepreneurship and teaching. Back during this interview, he served as the Educator Engagement Lead for Network for Learning (N4L), and principal at Upper Harbour Primary School.
Betsy spoke with Pete about New Zealand’s schools, and discovered a few unique facts--including the reality that standards aren’t the be-all, end-all of schooling in New Zealand. In fact, the schools place a huge emphasis on bringing the community into the running of programs like makerspaces, and offer students a sense of autonomy that you don’t always see in standards-obsessed systems.
What can the U.S. borrow from New Zealand's schooling system?
Donald Trump is about to take office, and one of the many places where change is coming will be the education department. To find out what that could mean, we checked in with Richard Culatta, who served as director of the education department’s Office of Educational Technology in the Obama Administration and is now Chief Innovation Officer for the state of Rhode Island.
The classroom. Since the 1950s, the setup of your average second, sixth or tenth grade classroom hasn’t changed all that much. Desks lined up, students facing forward, teacher up at the front giving a lecture. The same can be said for higher education oftentimes, as well. What gives?
In early October, EdSurge hosted the Austin Tech for Schools Summit in Texas, and while there, heard a bit about what administrators and entrepreneurs are doing to actively create the “modern classroom.” How do educators redefine what classrooms look like? Blow up the design entirely? Bring in more project-based learning? In this podcast, you’ll hear from Superintendent Royce Avery and CTO Angela Matthews of Manor ISD, Director of Technology Erin Bown-Anderson of Austin ISD, assistant principal Kris Waugh of Ann Richards School, and Jon Phillips of DELL, who looks after worldwide education strategy.
What will it take to propel the “modern classroom” forward?
It’s here, it’s here! Once again, we’ve come upon that week in December when we celebrate all things programming. December 5 kicks off national Computer Science Week, and what better way to start the celebrations than with a perfectly-themed interview?
Today, we’ve got Jeffrey Martin on the EdSurge podcast. The founder of an organization called "honorCode" recently won the $500,000 Global Change the World competition for nonprofit entrepreneurs as part of the Forbes Under 30 Summit held in Boston in October. HonorCode is a nonprofit that provides curriculum and training to schools to help prep teachers to educate K-12 kids on coding. That’s right people—it’s not just about the kids, you have to educate the adults, too!
Want to hear the full interview with Sandy? Check out the EdSurge On Air podcast. For those who are familiar with the global design firm IDEO, a few words might come to mind. Consulting. Design thinking. K-12 and higher education?
Yes, IDEO has indeed carved out a space for itself in the education market. At the center of it? Sandy Speicher, the Executive Director of the Education practice and a designer by trade. She’s worked with organizations across the public, private, and social sectors. For example, recently, she and her team finished up a project with the San Francisco Unified School District centered around redefining the school lunch program.
Recently, Speicher spoke with EdSurge about the genesis of the Education Studio at IDEO, the role that design thinking plays in improving K-12 education, and where she sees the biggest opportunities for growth and improvement in schools.
Jim Shelton, President of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), provided one of the keynotes this past Thursday at the iNACOL conference in San Antonio, Texas. Jim has played a number of roles in the edtech space—-he was most recently President & Chief Impact Officer of 2U, Inc. Previously, he was the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education and the Program Director for Education at the Gates Foundation. So, it's safe to say he’s seen a lot in the education space.
Is personalized learning the real key to solving equity issues? Shelton is optimistic, and spoke to the concept of unlocking human potential and promoting equity through transformative personalized learning.
If you could create a college from scratch today what would it look like? Minerva Schools at KGI has done just that, building an accredited, four-year undergraduate program that has an inaugural class in its sophomore year. Hear Jonathan Katzman, chief product officer at Minerva, explain how students use the latest video technology to actively learn from all around the world.
Today, we’re actually bringing back an old favorite while we generate some new content for you. Back in 2015, in Davis California, we brought superintendents from across California together at an EdSurge event to chat about data and assessment, and how it gets best used in the classroom. How can we use data to make sure that we’re improving student achievement? How does one even define “student achievement”?
We talked to Bryant Wong CTO, Summit Public Schools Devin Dillon CAO, Oakland USD Gregory Firn Superintendent in Residence & Director of Strategic Partnerships,, Dreambox Learning; and Alix Guerrier President/Co-Founder, LearnZillion, on a panel to answer these questions and more. We’ll get to that in a second, but first, the news.
Thirty-two. That’s how many years John Deasy has spent in education as a teacher, high school principal, and superintendent in four different districts across three states.
Of all these roles, his stint at the Los Angeles Unified School District may be the most memorable—and controversial. As superintendent, he led one of the largest and most highly-critiqued 1:1 device deployments in the country—one that that led to a frenzy of media reporting, and a number of columnists from L.A.-based and national publications alike asking, “Where did it all go so wrong?”
After leaving LAUSD in October 2014, Deasy joined the Broad Center as a Superintendent-in-Residence, where he’s been working to develop school district leaders from across the country. But now, he’s gearing up for the next chapter: creating an organization to address juvenile incarceration and, eventually, reduce juvenile recidivism by 50 percent.
EdSurge caught up with Deasy to chat about the up’s and down’s of superintendencies, where he made mistakes, and whether technology is adding to issues of inequity.
Many faculty see introductory science courses as "gateway" classes to weed out students. Not Marco Molinaro. The assistant vice provost at the University of California, Davis, is leading the school's efforts to overhaul these classes and make them more accessible to students. Hear how UC Davis is using adaptive-learning tools and active-learning techniques to improve pass rates in these notoriously tough classes.
Blake Montgomery, one-half of the EdSurge On Air podcast team, is bidding EdSurge adieu to take on a role as a Tech Reporter at Buzzfeed. But before he leaves, he's got some thoughts about what he's noticed from his year at EdSurge. Specifically, what is he optimistic about? What was his biggest scoop of the year? Why has he become distrustful of edtech company pitches? Catch all that and more in Blake's farewell EdSurge On Air podcast.
Bridget Burns sees plenty of "superheroes"—26-year-old Silicon Valley types with good intentions, yet little understanding, for how to change higher education. Burns is executive director of the University Innovation Alliance, a coalition of 11 public research universities focused on making quality college degrees accessible to a diverse body of students. The UIA serves 400,000 students, more than a quarter of whom receive Pell grants. In this recording from an EdSurge Meetup, Burns shares what she wishes product developers understood about the challenges higher-ed institutions face.
Unity is one of the most widely used game development engines, but what does that have to do with education? We sat down with Megan Stewart, Unity's Head of Global Education, at her new office to find out.
A few weeks back, EdSurge published a podcast interview with education consultant and commentator Alan November, and Director of Secondary Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for the Houston Independent School District Mike Dorsey, after chatting with the two education experts at ISTE. The interview got quite a number of listens, likely because November said that the edtech industry had created a “mess” at one point in the interview. However, November was only able to be with us for about ten minutes in that interview, so we really didn’t get a chance to delve into what he meant by “a mess.”
Hence, EdSurge decided to enter back into that conversation with November, this time in a Q&A covering his thoughts on the “$1000 pencil,” whether Khan Academy is or is not pushing the envelope, and how any change in the classroom has to start with the teacher. How has the edtech industry created a “mess”—and more importantly, whose responsibility is it to clean up that message, according to November?
Our guest today is Gretchen Shipley, a partner at the law firm Fagen, Friedman, and Fulfrost, who often works with schools on data privacy regulations. We interviewed her for a recent article on the student privacy issues of Pokemon Go, and at the end of our interview, she started talking about some new laws that could mean big problems for schools. Compliance complaints related to the Americans with Disabilities Act are on the rise. California Teachers' access to student devices has gotten much more complicated. We sat down with Shipley at our California Superintendents’ Summit to get a fuller picture of the biggest legal issues schools will face in the upcoming year.
Jahana Hayes, the 2016 National Teacher of the Year, knows what it takes to be a good teacher. In fact, she’s been in the game for twelve years, currently serving as a history teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Waterbury, Connecticut. But she also believes that not everyone is cut out for the profession, especially if they aren’t willing to change with the times—times that have brought an onslaught of new technologies and practices into the classroom.
What does it mean, then, for the teaching profession to prepare for 2020? Last week, EdSurge had the opportunity to sit down with Hayes to hear about her thoughts on what the profession is missing, why there’s a dearth of minority educators in the field, and how her own district struggles with “antiquated ideas” about social media and the like.
Technology can do a lot of things in the classroom, but can it help educators be more empathetic towards their students? This week on the EdSurge podcast, we talk to Dr. Jason Okonofua, a postdoc at Stanford University, about just that.
Okonofua is interested in how the effects of one person’s stereotyping and another person’s threat reverberate and escalate over time. He currently researches this interest in the context of education and criminal justice, and recently completed a white paper hypothesizing that an empathetic mindset will eliminate school suspensions.
According to his research findings, published in a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, training teachers to have more empathy towards their students lowers suspension numbers by 50%, an incredibly high number when you consider that Jason’s trainings only include one 45-minute online session in the fall, and a 25-minute online session in the winter. Why are they so successful? And empathy something that can be taught through technology, or does it rely on that in-person element?
This week, we're talking to Yuta Tonegawa, founder of the Japanese equivalent of the Hour of Code. He's passionate about engaging young Japanese students with coding, but the barriers he faces are distinctly different obstacles that face his American counterpart, the Hour of Code.
The life of a district superintendent isn’t easy. You have to juggle a lot, from managing big of groups of administrators and teachers, to pushing a district forward. So, what is the hardest part of a superintendent's job, and is it related to technology?
In a series of interviews that EdSurge conducted at the ISTE conference in late June, EdSurge podcasters Mary Jo Madda and Michael Winters had the opportunity to interview Dr. Greg Goins, superintendent of Frankfort Community Unit School District 168 in Illinois. The man has made some pretty strong movements with edtech in his district, and EdSurge wanted to get to know his methods. Does Goins think Smartboards are effective? What are the edtech products he’s tired of hearing about? Listen to this episode to find the answers to those questions and more.
With Amazon making its first big education platform debut in years, we were wondering: how are other blue chip companies—Microsoft, Apple, Google—reacting to this news? While at ISTE, Mary Jo and former EdSurge podcaster Michael Winters hosted an in-person taping of the EdSurge On Air podcast with a live audience and two Google leaders, Jonathan Rochelle and Jaime Casap.
Rochelle and Casap both have a long history with the Google for Education team. Casap is a Google Education evangelist, and Rochelle is a Google Education Product Manager, not to mention a co-founder of Google Drive. Between the two of them, they have more than 20 years of experience with the search company. We asked both Casap and Rochelle about their thoughts on Amazon Inspire, where Google Education plans to grow, and why conferences seem so homogenous.
By the way, in each of our interviews, we decided to play a little game. Since edtech buzzwords drive us crazy, we had a secret word that the interviewees didn’t know about, and if they said it out loud, our audience hit the buzzer. See if you can hear when it gets said during this interview!
Alan November is a big-name educational consultant who was once a champion of technology in the classroom. But after EdSurge talked to him at ISTE, it seems that his message has slightly changed: technology isn’t having the impact we hoped for in schools.
Expectations were high for edtech. People said it would solve every problem in education, and some venture capitalists agreed. Now, November says, we’re facing a more sober reality as we see what technology can and, more importantly, cannot do.
EdSurge caught up briefly with November and Mike Dorsey, Director of Secondary Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for the Houston Independent School District, for this week's podcast.
Long before competency-based learning was trending, Southern New Hampshire University gave it a shot, largely driven by the vision of its president, Paul LeBlanc. Today SNHU is seen as a leader in closing the gap between what students learn and what the workforce wants. LeBlanc sat down with EdSurge CEO Betsy Corcoran and 1776 Partner Rusty Greiff to share his thoughts on “blowing up the delivery models” for higher ed.
It’s not easy being a game designer in college—but it sure teaches lessons about collaboration and tough decision-making. At the College Gaming Competition at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), we talked to two game creators—one technical designer and one artist—about how their game came to be and what they’ve learned from it.
Last week, I ventured down to LA for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, more commonly known as E3, the biggest videogames convention in the country. I was in search of educational video games. I found assassins and Lil Wayne, but not a whole lot of educational games. LEGO made an appearance, as did Sid Meier’s Civilization, but for a multibillion dollar industry, there wasn’t much in the way of direct educational material. I did, however, find one thing: the College Gaming Competition. It’s a game design contest where university students submit their games to a panel of industry veterans for evaluations. The experts select six finalists and one winner. All the finalists receive the honor of exhibiting their games on the main floor of E3 alongside giants like Microsoft and Sony.
To get a better look inside how the game came together, I interviewed both leaders of the Savannah College’s team. Their game is called Brobot Beatdown. It’s a virtual reality game where the player is seated inside a giant robot and does his best to destroy other players’ robots in arena combat. I played it, and I liked it! What's even more impressive is that the small Savannah College team of students created an online multiplayer game in virtual reality, something no other college even attempted. Major studios, by contrast, have hundreds of staff on one game.
I got to talk to the winning team from the Savannah College of Art and Design just before and immediately after they won. I interviewed Justin Coushot and Spencer Humphries, Brobot Beatdown's lead game designers, about how their school supported them, the "crunch" just before the competition and what they've learned from creating such a technically demanding game. Tune in!
—EdSurge Reporter Blake Montgomery
When should students specialize their learning? Does doing so narrow their futures or allow them to follow their passion to a strong portfolio?
Peter Warburton, co-founder and production manager of Rizing Games, believes that kids who like video games should start building their own as early as 10. The reason? By the time they graduate from university, he argues, they’ll be near-professional quality video game makers. They’ll also have an impressive portfolio, as gaming is a heavily project-based pursuit.
Rizing Games, a two-year game design academy attached to Cambridge Regional College, instructs 16 to 18-year-old British students on how to design games and run a gaming company as they train towards their A-level exams. It started in 2011 with 15 students in each class; it now takes 65. This year, Warburton took his second year students to E3, the gaming industry’s largest gathering, to present their games and see industry professionals at their best. We sat down with him amidst the chaos of the convention to hear his thoughts on the benefits of learning game design, the British government’s support and how terrible he is at video games.
Virtual reality a technology of potential. So much potential, in fact, that in many ways it seems to be only potential. We’ve all seen pictures of rapt viewers in Oculus headsets or Google cardboard, but widespread distribution is still a distant prospect. In many cases, it's not clear why a teacher would use virtual reality in the classroom even if it seems like a fun addition.
So today, we talked to a person using VR with a great deal of thought. Global Nomads is a nonprofit that facilitates virtual exchanges between students in the US and other countries, and it's about to launch a new VR initiative where students can digitally relocate. Grace Lau, the nonprofit's director of virtual reality,believes, as many do, in the power of VR to create empathy.
Also, if you haven’t taken our survey (https://bit.ly/edsurgeonair) yet, we’d love it if you would.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your edtech startup grow? In our very own homage to the Startup Podcast, we're examining EdSurge's recent expansion. We've doubled in size in the past year, and a lot of things are changing. How can we keep what was good about the past while remaining open to the possibilities of the future? We interviewed our VP of Sales, our CTO, the product manager of the EdSurge Index and one guy who does a bit of everything about what they've seen and what they're hoping for. Edited by Blake Montgomery.
Here’s a four letter word that’s been in the news and education articles a fair amount over the past years. The word is “grit,” and it’s something that Paul Tough, the author of "How Children Succeed" and "Whatever It Takes," addresses in his most recent book, "Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why."
Tough is a frequent commentator on school reform, low-income communities, parenting and politics, but in this particular book, he takes on the concept of “grit” and asks a crucial question: Is grit something that can be taught in the classroom?
A few weeks ago, Paul Tough made his way to the NewSchools Venture Fund Summit in California, and EdSurge’s own Tony Wan got the chance to sit down with him to get the story behind the book, and what it’ll really take to help children succeed—whether grit can be taught, or not.
THE US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY was out in force at Maker Faire Bay Area. The Department hopes to demystify the goings-on at its various national labs in the Bay Area by portraying its scientists as makers. Those scientists also hope to excite kids about the advanced technology they get to use. We spoke to three scientists about sensors, supercomputers and cybersecurity to learn more.
THE US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY was out in force at Maker Faire Bay Area. The Department hopes to demystify the goings-on at its various national labs in the Bay Area by portraying its scientists as makers. Those scientists also hope to excite kids about the advanced technology they get to use. We spoke to three scientists about sensors, supercomputers and cybersecurity to learn more:
THE US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY was out in force at Maker Faire Bay Area. The Department hopes to demystify the goings-on at its various national labs in the Bay Area by portraying its scientists as makers. Those scientists also hope to excite kids about the advanced technology they get to use. We spoke to three scientists about sensors, supercomputers and cybersecurity to learn more.
DEMOS APLENTY: One of the most crowded tents at Maker Faire was the “Learn to Solder” tent, which allowed young makers to learn what holds circuit boards together. Would-be makers were tasked with soldering a circuit that would allow a Makerbot pin to light up. We spoke to one volunteer in the tent to learn why it’s important for makers to learn how to solder.
“IT’S LIKE THE STATE FAIR FOR NERDS:” Many families return to Maker Faire year after year. We spoke to one family that’s been attending Maker Faire for many years to find out what keeps them coming back. Meet the Bakers from Menlo Atherton, CA:
Mitchel Resnick (or Mitch, for short) knows his making—from a lot of different angles. And he’s not too bought into the whole “electronics and gadgets” side of the maker movement.
Resnick has been in this business for more than 30 years, and it’s safe to say that he’s seen the maker movement—and the state of STEM education, in general—go through its phases, its ups and downs. He’s currently the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research and head of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, where he and his team have developed products familiar to many a science educator: the "programmable brick" technology that inspired the LEGO Mindstorms robotics kit, and Scratch, an online computing environment for students to learn about computer science.
Is making something that every school should be doing—and are all interpretations of “making” of equitable value? EdSurge sat down with Resnick in his office at the MIT Media Lab to learn more, and to find out how he and his team are working to bring more creativity into the learning process.
The question on everyone's mind at NewSchools Venture Fund's 2016 Summit: How will we know when education has become more equitable?We interviewed Dreambox CEO Jessie Woolley-Wilson and Democrats for Education Reform President Shaver Jeffries for their takes on the most contested issue in education.
In addition to this week's regularly scheduled podcast programming, we're bringing you an exclusive conversation between executives. At the NewSchools Venture Fund Summit, EdSurge's own CEO Betsy Corcoran interviewed Edgenuity CEO Sari Factor about Edgenuity's rapid expansion to 17,000 schools, Factor's definition of blended learning and what makes a good implementation.
Edgenuity, formerly known as Education2020, was originally created, as Factor put it, for students who "couldn't be in the classroom, for one reason or another." Now, after five years of rapid growth, the company is expanding its products, services and focus this fall; tune in to hear more.
Enid Rey is no stranger to controversy. A powerhouse and a lawyer by training, she's currently the head of the School Choice Department in Hartford, Connecticut's public school system. In a city like Hartford, where most people of socioeconomic background and race don’t mix neighborhoods, Rey’s job has been, at least recently, to market magnet schools to parents and students from both neighborhoods, encouraging them to integrate.
Her responsibilities came to prominence when she was interviewed for the Peabody award-winning podcast "The Problem We All Live With," created by This American Life.
When it comes to issues of equity and diversity, it’s everyone’s problem—like the title says, it’s a problem that we all live with. EdSurge had the opportunity to sit down with Rey at the recent NewSchools Venture Fund conference to hear how she proved innovative in her approach to segregation, and to ask what it really takes to turn efforts in one district into a viral movement.
Every month or so, EdSurge hosts a summit to bring educators and edtech companies together (there might be one coming up near you). Sometimes, we're lucky enough to have students join us, and when we do, our student panel on edtech use is the highlight of the event. Educators, administrators and entrepreneurs alike love frank talk about what works for students and what's just annoying them.
In Episode 61, we showcase a video made by the Youth Development Program, an after school program within Los Angeles Unified School District, where the students sound like us! They're interviewing each other about the Kids Marathon using their best newscaster voices. We also talked to a student journalist duoAt our Los Angeles summit about the craziest things they've done with technology and what their school would be like without it. Tune in!
The Obama Administration recently admitted its work in higher education is far from done. Undersecretary of Education Ted Mitchell, the president’s No. 1 authority on higher education, said he’d give his team an “incomplete” grade. Why?
Mitchell previously served as CEO of NewSchools Venture Fund, president of the California State Board of Education and president of Occidental College. In his role with the federal government, he’s been been focused on improving college completion rates for first-generation, low-income students. Mitchell’s tenure will end this year when Obama leaves office.
EdSurge recently had the chance to sit down with him to ask what kind of legacy the administration will leave in higher-ed innovation. Here’s our conversation.
This week, we spoke to two teams who scientific acumen brought them all the way to the White House for the nation's annual science fair. Second in our series is a team from Baruch College Campus High School in New York City that built a semi-automatic vacuum to ride on the back of subways to clean up trash.
This week, we spoke to two teams who scientific acumen brought them all the way to the White House for the nation's annual science fair. First in our series is an automotive technology class from James Logan High School in Union, California that built a charging station for solar cars.
This week, the EdSurge On Air podcast features three "Extra" editions focusing on investors: how they choose what to invest it, where the money is flowing, what personalization in schools means to them, and more.
On this episode, we speak to Brigette Lau of Social Capital. Brigette shares how her organization, Social Capital, measures and evaluates the health of the companies that she invests in, as well as the reality of free/freemium business models. Does she believe free products will work out in the long run?
This week, the EdSurge On Air podcast features three "Extra" editions focusing on investors: how they choose what to invest in, where the money is flowing, what personalization in schools means to them, and more.
On this episode, we speak to Brian Dixon of Kapor Capital. Kapor Capital holds a significant role in the space of investing: they do about 20 investments per year, and the average investment size is anywhere from $100,000 to $250,00. Dixon gives an inside peek into how Kapor makes its decisions.
This week, the EdSurge On Air podcast features three "Extra" editions focusing on investors: how they choose what to invest in, where the money is flowing, what personalization in schools means to them, and more.
On this episode, we speak to Jennifer Carolan, a former educator who started a vertically-focused seed fund under New School Venture Fund as a non-profit back in early 2010, and has since made more than 15 investments. She talks impact investing, venture capital, and what efficacy really looks like in reality.
On April 5th, the city of Newark and Gadget Software, a company that aims to teach people how to build mobile apps, launched a joint venture to make mobile app development classes available to the entire Newark community. Using community centers as classrooms, both the city and the company hope to interest young students and adults alike in mobile programming. The question is, how many residents will take the time to participate in a 10 week class outside of school or work?
We interviewed Seth Wainer, CIO of the Newark Office of Information Technology, about his hopes for the program, the problems he aims to fix, and what this initiative will do that a $100 million investment in education couldn't.
Technology can bring great benefit far outside the ecosystem of a city. Rural schools are often understaffed and underfunded, so digital courses can bring extra faculty in from afar, and inexpensive digital materials can provide much needed resources to students. That said, bringing technology infrastructure to a school far from a city is no easy task.
However, one individual in particular knows a lot about how to run a rural school. Daisy Dyer Duerr is a former principal from Arkansas who’s now working with rural schools across the country on technology initiatives and training for teachers and administrators. She transformed her floundering Title I school without any technology into a top-performing school with cutting edge devices for its students. Check out the podcast to hear her story.
There are few people who know teachers and the art of teaching as well as Barnett Berry. He’s the founder and CEO of the Center for Teaching Quality, a national nonprofit that advances a high-quality public education system for all students, driven by the bold ideas and expert practices of teachers.
Barnett’s two books, Teaching 2030 and Teacherpreneurs, frame his bold vision for the teaching profession’s future. But is it too bold? Perhaps downright impossible?
A few weeks ago, The Center for Teaching Quality put out a new paper commissioned by the Ford Foundation, all about the concept of “deeper learning.” Barnett stopped by EdSurge to share some of the papers’ findings, but we wanted more. Barnett and his team make the argument in the paper that if we want to achieve deeper learning in the classroom, we need to do a better job developing teacher leaders. But does that mean they have to leave the classroom to become administrators? And where does technology play a role in all of this?
This week on the podcast, Betsy Corcoran interviews Eduardo Briceño, founder and CEO of Mindset Works, a company that takes university research and turns it into programs for schools. He's bullish on the growth mindset; that's what his company is named after.
It's a concept that's becoming increasingly common in education debates today, and as it does, it becomes vulnerable to more misconceptions. We asked Eduardo to come and clarify somethings for us and talk about his own journey with the concept through the nine years Mindset Works has been around.
Don't forget that you can subscribe to the podcast on all of your favorite podcast apps! To follow us on iTunes, just follow this linkinto iTunes and hit "subscribe"—if you have the podcast app on your phone, the show should automatically download the next time you open it. You can follow us on SoundCloud here or search for us on your favorite podcasting site.
With all this talk about candidates for Election 2016, it can be easy to forget that there’s someone else that’s had quite an impact—from a presidential perspective. And no, we’re not talking about Barack Obama.
About three years ago, a 9-year-old donned a suit, gave America a pep talk, and became a viral sensation with his fresh take on dancing, politics and joy. That young fellow is Kid President, the central character of a popular YouTube channel produced by SoulPancake. In real life, Kid President is Robby Novak, a current 6th grader from Tennessee whose brother-in-law, Brad Montague, created the concept of Kid President with Robby back in 2013.
During the recent CUE conference in Palm Springs, CA, Montague gave the opening keynote on March 17th to an auditorium overflowing with teachers and administrators from up and down the West Coast. His theme? How to be “awesome”—specifically, how Robby’s worked to bring joy into people’s lives, and how some of that joy gets lost when kids turn into adults. EdSurge got the opportunity to steal Montague away for a half hour, to better understand how his message relates to student voice.
When the popular children’s television show "Reading Rainbow" graced TV sets across America in the 90s, host LeVar Burton took students through a world of literature and storytelling. Today, he’s back at with the Reading Rainbow app. Back in 2014, LeVar announced that he would be returning to the reading game. Since then, he claims that readers have enjoyed over 20 million books and videos about reading. We spoke with LeVar to see what’s next for the app, what he’s reading and what he’s learned about adults from reading so much children’s literature.
On this week's podcast, Blake Montgomery has some lessons from his first SXSWedu and senior editor Mary Jo Madda interviews Eric Sheninger, a former principal of New Milford High School and current Senior Fellow at the International Center for Leadership in Education.
After overcoming serious skepticism of edtech, Sheninger was responsible for implementing highly effective technology programs at New Milford. He’s since moved on to helping other schools do the same at the International Center for Leadership in Education. He emphasizes efficacy, data and accountability. Stay tuned till the end to hear his one essential piece of advice for edtech companies. Enjoy!
Sound the alarm! We’ve got a big, big dose of edtech trends for you, and we’re serving them up on a silver platter. On Wednesday, EdSurge launched the first round of our Edtech Trends 2016 report, sponsored by AT&T. Unlike those trend articles that pop up around December, when people share their guesses about what’ll be big in the new year, we talked to 20 administrators, 17 teachers, 24 companies, 16 investors, and 16 other edtech voices to figure out—what are people thinking and planning around right now?
We have technically have eight trends in the report. However, for the sake of this podcast, we’re focusing on one big theme, and one that we hear about a lot. What’s the benefit of free products… vs. freemium? You know, those products where you get a part for free, but have to pay for other features? Listen in to find out.
In Episode 51, we're bringing you the edtech news and a deep dive into sexual assault on college campuses, specifically technology’s role in reporting it. Increasingly, survivors of sexual assault and the federal government are demanding that universities provide more prevention, reporting options and counseling. Can tech create scalable and useful solutions even as some universities sweep accusations and convictions under the rug? We interviewed chief development officer of Sexual Health Innovations (SHI), a company that makes an online reporting tool for survivors of sexual assault in college, and a Stanford student involved with the company. You'll hear their thoughts on tech's current and future role in reporting the crime and the sharp criticisms they face.
Larry Cuban—whose been a teacher, a superintendent, and more—is an academic whose thoughts and feelings about edtech are the ones we’re featuring on the EdSurge podcast today.
Cuban’s writings have great impact and reach in the education. Every year, Rick Hess put out an “Edu-Scholar Public Influence ranking.” The metrics recognize university-based scholars in the U.S. who are contributing most substantially to public debates about education. And Larry Cuban, a former Stanford university professor, makes the top ten list every single year.
Talking with him in person reveals a whole new light about who he is as a voice and as a teacher. In this interview, we hear his thoughts on venture-backed companies, technology in education, and more.
EdSurge has been all over the place these last few weeks— from the Educon conference in Philadelphia to Washington D.C. for Teach for America’s 25th anniversary Summit. And in each place, the conversations have been anything but boring.
When it comes to big themes, one particular conversation caught our attention. Summit Public Schools CEO Diane Tavenner and founder of Deans for Impact Benjamin Riley went head to head on whether “personalized learning” is the answer to solving the achievement gap. We were there to catch a few sound bytes.
The term on everyone's lips these days is “adaptive learning:" Proponents promise the technology has the ability to improve educational experiences in personal, efficient and scalable ways. It's unclear, though, what the inner workings of the technology look like. We called some of our expert friends and asked them to talk about how adaptive learning works in their fields, and they spoke at our recent meetup in San Francisco. We heard from EdSurge's president Tyler McNally about our recent research on adaptive learning and several others:
Jennie Dougherty—Associate Director of Innovation, KIPP Bay Area Angela Estrella—Teacher, Instructional Coach and Parent James Harrell—Talent Development Manager, Oakland Unified School District Johann Larusson—Lead, Center for Digital Data, Analytics and Adaptive Learning, Pearson Elena Sanina—Senior Manager of Blended Learning, Aspire Public Schools Esther Tricoche—Associate Partner, New School Venture Fund
Missed the meetup? Not to worry. We recorded the talks along with the news from this week so you can catch up on both.
We're bringing you the latest in edtech from the week of January 23-30: Pearson and Scholastic's dark and stormy night on the stock market, Coursera's new fees, your weekly Ka'Chings and more.
What’s math got to do with it? Everything, says Dan Meyer, creator of the the popular blog dy/dan. Meyer is one of America’s most popular math educators—he has 43,400 followers on Twitter who are ready at any moment to talk about math—and he’s been through many transformations: Math teacher, math education researcher, now chief academic officer at Desmos.
What's changed? What's stayed the same? Are math students in America always doomed? We spoke with him about the stories math can tell, types of instruction and the state of math education today. Tune in for that and the news on this week’s EdSurge On Air.
We interviewed Dan about a lot of concepts, and we want your help filling in the details. We didn't have time to ask him about all the granular details of what makes a great math classroom—the tools, the tech, the pedagogy, etc—that make a great math classroom. Tweet us @EdSurge and Dan @ddmeyer to get the conversation started!
Last week, we interviewed Beth Box, who wanted to reinvigorate waning student interest and boost her students' scores on state tests. This week, we wanted to continue the conversation about educational gams with another maker: An 8-year-old student. Samaira Mehta lives in Mountain View, California, where she goes to school and teaches workshops in coding. She's the creator of the board game Coderbunnyz, which teaches young kids about algorithms as they guide a rabbit down a path and around obstacles. Samaira made the game after spending a great night playing board games with her parents. They didn't want to play any more because she kept winning (or so she says), so she went to do some coding. She got to do her two favorite things in one night, and she wanted to share that excitement with other kids, especially her younger brother. He's four.
Beth Box is a lifelong resident of Okeechobee, Florida. She's also a 7th grade civics teacher at Yearling Middle School. She describes herself as "always in love with the Okeechobee school system." That's not common, nor is it still the case. Standardized testing has limited the freedom Beth used to feel in the classroom. She didn't feel like students could learn at their own pace, and they stopped caring because of it. Some students didn't even care when they got an F.
Beth, facing a daunting civics test, took a big risk: She switched her instruction to mastery-based learning and made the whole class into a game. She named it Give Me Liberty, and her students have to find 35 documents—she teaches to 35 test standards—that were essential to the founding of the United States or else risk the whole country falling into a dystopian dictatorship. Tune in to see if they can save their country and improve their scores.
This week on the podcast, we've got the news and the story of Beth Box. Check it out.
Salman Khan’s Lab School in Mountain View, CA, has slowly been gaining recognition—but is it really as innovative as people might imagine? EdSurge asked that very question last week.
Khan had the idea to open a school long before he started his online platform Khan Academy, and after visiting the Lab School, we at EdSurge were curious about whether he wants to expand to other cities—but before engaging in a Q&A with the man himself, we took to Twitter to get an idea of what our podcast listeners would want to know. Questions came rolling in: Are students actually learning? Is this just an easy way for Khan Academy employees to try out new products on children? After all, the Lab School and Khan Academy are in the same building; the school’s on the first floor, and the nonprofit’s on the second.
Check out EdSurge's podcast interview with Khan to see what we found out.
(rerun) What's the biggest edtech deal of 2015? That would, be LinkedIn's acquisition of Lynda.com. On April 9th, the two companies announced that Lynda.com and its 250,000 learning videos would be purchased for $1.5B.
The week after the deal was announced, Lynda.com co-founders (and husband and wife) Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin stopped by EdSurge to chat with CEO Betsy Corcoran about their company's history.
EdSurge had a pleasant surprise last night, so we wrote a poem about it. Merry Christmas!
The Maker movement. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, this phrase refers to a recent trend towards, well… making things. AdWeek has a pretty solid definition, saying that the maker movement is an umbrella term for independent inventors, designers and tinkerers. It’s a convergence of computer hackers and traditional artisans, and taps into American admiration for self-reliance and building.
With the growth of makerspaces in school systems, the Maker movement has also been making its way into K-12 and other educational spaces across the world. Maker Faires across the country attracted an audience of 1.1 million people this year, and at the heart of the Maker movement, there are a few key players driving its growth.
Dale Dougherty, Founder of MAKE Magazine and the creator of Maker Faires, is one of those people. And this week, we got some time to sit down with him and hear about what he predicts is next for making in education.
This week on the podcast, we hear pitches from three brave companies, BloomBoard, edWeb and LessonCast. And when the pitches are done, it's time for our four educators sharks to attack, asking the tough questions of the entrepreneurs.
If you'd like to come to our next event in January, you can sign up for information here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1gUdEm_HokqpvSe0erYPrPYimI4q-XZ1sury0KaNRO2s/viewform
Being a superintendent is anything but easy. Bureaucratic politics, having to work with multiple stakeholders, communicating a 1:1 plan to tens of thousands of students and teachers… heck, that’s not a job that just anyone can do. In fact, that might be why the average district superintendent in America doesn’t last longer than three years in the position.
But when it comes to tenure, there’s one notable exception--and that’s Dallas Dance, the current superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools. Dance is a relatively young superintendent in comparison to others--he’s currently in his 30s--and he’s been in the role for four years. But that’s not all--in September, Dance told board members that he wanted another four-year contract when his current contract ends June 30.
Right now, the Baltimore community is wondering if the board will let him stick around--”Will Dallas Dance get a new deal?” reads one newspaper entry. Lucky for us, we got a chance to sit down with Dallas back at the iNACOL conference in early November to learn about what can go wrong when communicating a rollout of technology, Dallas' favorite tools, how to sell to superintendents, and how Dallas gets professional development. Yes, that’s right. Superintendents need PD, too.
We've been hearing all year about the wonderful things students are doing with podcasts. So this week on the show, we showcase a couple of them.
First, three 5th graders from the Park School in Brookline, MA share with us an immigrant's journey from Uganda to the United States. Then, in a segment created especially for the EdSurge podcast, three high school students from Oxon Hill High School in Maryland debate whether technology should be used more or less in school.
Girls are underrepresented in computer science education and professions. According to the National Science Board’s “Science and Engineering Indicators for 2012,” women make up only 26% of Computer Science and Mathematical Science professionals in the United States.
Believing that number begins with computer science education, we dove deep into the challenges girls face when learning and teaching computer science this week.
Steve Blank is known by some as “The Startup Whisperer" -- the guy that entrepreneurs turn to when they have questions about how to start or energize their business. He is also a serial entrepreneur, professor and investor who is perhaps best known for his books Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Startup Owner's Manual.
Last week Steve stopped by our studio to cast his experienced and critical eye on the business of edtech. In a wide-ranging chat with EdSurge CEO Betsy Corcoran, Steve talks about about the history of Silicon Valley, edtech’s commercialization problem, and whether entrepreneurship in edtech is really any different than regular tech.
This year's annual iNACOL symposium began and concluded this week in Orlando, Florida. The event featured over 180 sessions and workshops on everything from new school models to data privacy in blended learning to examining student outcomes.
EdSurge's Senior Editor (and podcast co-host) Mary Jo Madda, and Director of R&D Christina Quattrocchi attended the conference, and stopped by the podcast studio to share their reflections on this year's conference.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-11-13-what-stood-out-at-inacol
Ever wonder about all the hype about using Minecraft in the Classroom? This week, we explore how real teachers from all over the US are using the popular game to enhance their students' learning. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-11-06-minecraft-is-coming-to-a-school-near-you
This week on the podcast, we invite you on an international field trip to our northern neighbours. On our trip we’ll explore how edtech has changed in Canada over the past couple years; discuss how union-district relations mirror those in the US; and hear arguments for which country is the best place to start a new edtech company.
Do high-income communities, which enjoy the resources and flexibility to experiment with bold ideas, offer the most ideal test-beds for innovation? Or do the most viable—and practical—ideas come from low-income neighborhoods where the challenges and needs are visible everyday?
EdSurge welcome two entrepreneurs to the debate: Alejandro Gac-Artigas, the founder of Philadelphia-based Springboard Collaborative, which seeks to close the achievement gap and end summer reading loss by engaging parents and training teachers, and Max Ventilla, the mastermind and founder of AltSchool, a Bay Area-based network of “microschools” that currently charges more than $20,000 a year in tuition.
It’s not every day that we receive visits from entrepreneurs or nonprofits leads who can site as viral of growth as the EdCamp movement. For those of you wondering if that the name for some educational type of summer camp, let me help you out. Edcamps, or “unconferences,” bring together teachers, tech experts, entrepreneurs, and anyone else interested in the education landscape, to talk about, well, whatever they want. They involve very little planning, and the schedule is entirely decided by participants only once they’ve showed up to an EdCamp. Sound a little unconventional? Well, this novelty has become, dare we say, a viral movement since the very first gathering back in May 2010. In fact, there have been more than 250 Edcamps around the world in the last year alone.
The Executive Director of the EdCamp Foundation, Hadley Ferguson, stopped by the EdSurge Office on October 19 because we were curious to learn more about just what caused this viral growth. But we didn’t stop there. Are there too many EdCamps? Are entrepreneurs starting to use them as a marketing opportunity, which affects the sacred space that is EdCamp? Are these worries becoming a reality? Hadley answered all those questions and more in this EdSurge Extra.
Privacy. What a buzzword, but also a major point of contention for the past twelve months. Parents, companies, educators… everyone’s been jumping into the conversation on this topic. The proliferation of education technology has led to many questions about what, and how, student data is collected, analyzed and used. As student privacy and security concerns grow, how do we respond?
Last week, EdSurge conducted a panel in partnership with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, a global law firm that’s got its eye on the privacy debate. Panelists included Dan Carroll, co-founder of edtech company Clever, and Reach Capital partner Shauntel Poulson. EdSurge CEO Betsy Corcoran dove into how edtech leaders should address privacy issues while still advancing learning opportunities. Do companies need to yield to the demands and whims of privacy critics? Or can we all somehow reach a Kum-ba-ya understanding around the edtech campfire? Listen to the podcast to find out.
Sometimes educators and edtech companies break up. Three educators discuss their experiences when relationships with companies end and share lessons for other educators as well as companies.
Not too long ago, it was pretty new that students could print their own papers in the classroom, or that teachers could spontaneously print materials for their classes. But these days, printing has gotten a little bit more advanced--and we're not just talking about 3D Printing. If one startup as its way, the average science classroom might soon be printing live cells. That’s right, live cells. This week, we talked to the two co-founders of SE3D Education, who are making a table-top, affordable 'bioprinter' that they hope will change the way we teach biology and other science subjects. And the big question on our mind is this: Should students be able to print living cells?
Seattle-based Lane Merrifield is an expert when it comes to selling to consumers--but he’s also becoming an expert on selling to schools, too. He’s the Club Penguin guy--remember that big massive multiplayer online game that was basically a virtual world for kids? Well, Club Penguin was acquired by Disney for $350M in 2007, and now, Lane’s in the edtech game with an assessment platform called FreshGrade. He’s got some good insights into the similarities and differences between selling to consumers and selling to districts, so we brought him on the podcast for your listening pleasure.
On this EdSurge Extra, we chat with Dr. Gisele Huff of the Jaquelin Hume Foundation. Gisele talks with EdSurge CEO Betsy Corcoran about the differences between charity & philanthropy, technology's ability to transform education and her new project to give education its north star.
One voice has been conspicuously absent from the discussion around #IStandWithAhmed: students. This week we chat with four K-12 students to hear their reactions to the plight of Texas teenager Ahmed Mohamed.
Being a teacher superstar isn’t easy, especially when you’re driven by a vision to help out kids, but are a loner in your school in regards to the way you feel. Esther Wojcicki, an American journalist, educator, and vice chair of the Creative Commons board of directors, is a firm example of one of those superstars. From her journalism classroom at Palo Alto High School in California, she has gained a reputation for being one of the foremost thinkers on education and technology.
But even Esther knows that working alone and striving alone aren't as effective as joining together, and as such, she recently published a book entitled "Moonshots in Education". The book covers digital and online learning in the classroom and what it takes to make a "moonshot," or those superstar examples of teachers and schools. She interviews quite a number of moonshots--and so we decided to talk to Esther, the moonshot herself, to go more in-depth on what truly make a successful blended environment.
Michael Horn has been a powerful force shaping the changes in education over the past decade. In an interview with senior editor Mary Jo Madda at our California Summit, he spoke about how he defines the nebulous term "blended learning," why teacher autonomy is critical to successful learning, and how blended learning today differs from collaboration techniques teachers have used in the past.
There’s no question that the best part of hosting a podcast is speaking with the fascinating guests we have on the show. From newly minted edtech billionaires to students and teachers, podcasters get the chance to hear from people all over the country. So this week, we decided to go super meta and spoke with three of those edu-podcasters: Jeff Bradbury of "Teachercast", Jason Bodnar of "Principally Speaking", and Chris Nesi of "The House of #Edtech". We asked them what they’re hearing from their guests, and what they think will be the big trends of the upcoming school year. Check out their answers--do you agree?
We talk to companies all the time about how they test their products, fail quickly and learn. But what if schools did the same thing? That's exactly the concept behind the "Tiny Schools Project,” an initiative led by Matt Candler of the New Orleans-based nonprofit, 4.0 Schools.
A live recording of a focus panel from the EdSurge Davis Superintendents Summit.
Panelists for this event included Barbara Nemko Superintendent, Napa COE; Jason Borgen Director of Innovation & Learning, Portola Valley School District; Michael Moody CEO, Insight Education Group; and Meera Vaidyanathan Vice President Content, TenMarks. Mike Lawrence, Chief Executive Officer of CUE moderated the panel.
Last week, Forbes writer George Anders put out an article entitled, "That 'Useless' Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech's Hottest Ticket." After reading the article, we here at EdSurge thought to ourselves... gee, what should edtech companies really consider when hiring new blood? To find out that answer and more (including whether or not Anders' feelings negate the relevance of tech training programs like Dev Bootcamp), we brought Anders into the EdSurge office to get his thoughts beyond the article. Listen up, CEOs and administrators--you might just want to hire that Romance Languages major.
A live recording of a focus panel from the EdSurge Davis Superintendents Summit
Panelists for this event included Cary Matsuoka Superintendent, Milpitas USD; Kyle Brumbaugh Director of Educational Innovation, Presentation HS; Steve Ritter Chief Product Architect, Carnegie Learning; and Michael Hageloh Director, Global Education, littleBits. Michelle Spencer, Summits Director at EdSurge facilitated the panel.
A live recording of our Keynote Panel from our Davis Superintendent Summit.
Panelists: Richard Culatta, head of the Office of Educational Technology for the Department of Education; Michael Horn, co-founder of the Christensen Institute and author of the book "Blended;" and Esther Wojcicki, award-winning Journalism and English teacher at Palo Alto High School. This panel was moderated by EdSurge's CEO Betsy Corcoran
A live recording of a focus panel from the EdSurge Davis Superintendents Summit.
Panelists for this event included Bryant Wong CTO, Summit Public Schools; Devin Dillon CAO, Oakland USD; Gregory Firn Superintendent in Residence & Director of Strategic Partnerships, Dreambox Learning; and Alix Guerrier President/Co-Founder, LearnZillion. Mary Jo Madda, Senior Editor at EdSurge moderated the panel.
Edtech blogs are writing about all aspects of life around schooling these days. But why is it important that they do so? And if you want to get started as an education blogger, what should you do?
Our advice: Learn from the experts. We talk to blogger Paul France (http://paulemerich.com/) and EdSurge CEO (and long-time journalist) Betsy Corcoran to hear their tips.
More than 1.6 million teachers are members of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second largest teachers' union in the country. But how does this organization feel about technology's role in the classroom? EdSurge got the insider's perspective and sat down with AFT vice president Mary Cathryn Ricker to chat edtech, charters and more on the EdSurge podcast in this special "EdSurge On Air Extra."
Where and how exactly does the conversation between educators and entrepreneurs go awry? And when it does, is there anything we can do to fix it?
To find out, we followed Kerry Gallagher (www.KerryHawk02.com) as she spoke to Justin Chando, CEO of Chalkup (www.chalkup.co)at ISTE.
We’ve got a gem of a interview for you this week. To hear what’s been going on at Google, one of edtech’s big kahunas, we sat down with Google Education evangelist Jaime Casap, and Jonathan Rochelle, Google Education Product Manager and a co-founder of Google Drive. Yeah, that’s no small feat. You’ll hear their thoughts on the origin of Google’s Education products, equity, and whether Google will eventually pull out of the education game at some point. Plus, our weekly roundup of the edtech news!
ShareMyLesson. BetterLesson. TeachersPayTeachers. How can an educator chart a path through the landscape of online content marketplaces and platforms? And where will Edmodo Spotlight and TES Global's new marketplace fit in?
This week, grab your compass and come along as EdSurge CEO Betsy Corcoran gives us a guided tour of the world of content marketplaces—and offers up her perspective on what makes a content sharing platform stand out.
There's a lot going on at ISTE. A very tired Mary Jo and Michael break down what they saw on their first day of ISTE.
(Correction: In our description of the ISTE pitch fest winners, we name Mathbreakers as one of the four finalists. The company that was selected to go to the finals, and that is described in the podcast, is Mathspace; Mathbreakers did not compete in the pitch fest.)
We hear about edtech from the perspective of entrepreneurs and educators. But what about the viewpoint of a student?
This week, EdSurge hears from Kaela Quinto, a rising sophomore at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in San Jose, CA. Kaela's experiences with blended learning completely changed the way she thinks about math—but we'll let her tell you herself.
It's time for an edtech election update. We ask an expert what the leading presidential candidates are saying about education.
https://www.edsurge.com/n/2015-06-22-edtech-election-update-what-we-know-about-hillary-jeb
Ah, the eternal debate: Google or Apple? This week on the EdSurge podcast, we bring the debate from the classroom to your ears, with educators arguing the merits of their respective device providers.
Listen up to hear Diane Darrow, Apple Distinguished Educator, articulate the assets of iPads, and James Sanders, former teacher and big fan of Google in the classroom, staunchly defend Chromebooks. Interested in more thoughts from educators and entrepreneurs on the two devices? Come by the EdSurge Device Debate Meetup on Thursday, June 18 at 6PM!
At the end of June, educators and entrepreneurs alike will flock to one of the biggest edtech events of the year. No, we're not talking about the EdSurge Boston Summit on June 12 and 13—although we hope to see you there, educators in the northeast! We're talking about ISTE.
So, how can a first-time ISTE attendee craft a feasible schedule around the overwhelming barrage of events and panels? Luckily for us, eight-time ISTE attendee, last year's keynote speaker, former educator and entrepreneur Adam Bellow stopped by the EdSurge office to give us recommendations and his predictions for ISTE 2015.
Finland has not been the most "digital" of education systems. But that may be changing, suggests John Martin, chief executive of Sanoma Learning, which lays claim to being continental Europe's biggest pure-play education company.
For more information, head to the full article here: https://www.edsurge.com/n/2015-06-02-edsurge-on-air-extra-lessons-from-a-finnish-company
We've finally reached the end of standardized testing season, and the news from around the country has not been good. With frozen computer systems and student opt-outs stealing most of the headlines, we wanted to know: Is there anyone for whom testing went well?
Enter Ned Kirsch, Superintendent of Franklin West Supervisory Union in Vermont.
We spoke to Ned about what his district was expecting from testing this year, and what actually happened. We also asked him why he thought testing went smoothly in his district. (Spoiler: It was a combination of good planning and good circumstances.)
This week, we dive into a report from the AFT targeting causes of teacher stress--and were technology fits into that role. Also on deck--Ka'Chings of the Week, a student's take on whether or not blended learning worked for her, and more.
On this week's podcast, EdSurge's Charley Locke and Alice Myerhoff take a look at the two recent MOOC university partnerships, and how much a MOOC degree could substitute for an undergraduate—or MBA—experience. Will these courses actually deliver what they promise to the nontraditional students they hope to serve?
Listen below for our discussion on MOOCs, plus the latest edtech news on student data privacy, edtech implementation in districts, and more!
This week on the podcast, Mary Jo Madda and Michael Winters tackle two big questions from this weeks' news. First, what exactly is happening over at AltSchools? It raised $100M this week, but where does all of that money go? We discuss AltSchool's model and hear from the school's founder about its future. Second, Google Classroom celebrates its first birthday this week. But is the wide use of Google Classroom a good thing? Sure it's a high quality - and free - tool, but could that actually be a risk for teachers using it?
Happy Teacher Appreciation Month! We're kicking off the month with augmented reality art shows, some big Ka'Chings, and a report on the elephant in the room: Amplify. Amplify is one of the most scrutinized companies in education technology, and this week, we take a look at whether or not CEO Joel Klein can weave together a collection of independent efforts—and win customers along the way.
What's the biggest edtech deal of 2015 so far? That would, of course, be LinkedIn's acquisition of Lynda.com. On April 9th, the two companies announced that Lynda.com and its 250,000 learning videos would be purchased for $1.5B.
The week after the deal was announced, Lynda.com co-founders (and husband and wife) Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin stopped by EdSurge to chat with Betsy Corcoran about their company's history.
This week, the EdSurge editorial team has been feeling a bit like jet-setters—and we want to bring our conversations about edtech across the country to your ears. We've got thoughts on local edtech adoption from teachers in Los Angeles at our EdSurge Tech for Schools Summit (big question: what the iPad debacle really a debacle?), plus a special guest report from our managing editor Tony Wan, who traveled to the Windy City to bring back insights from Arne Duncan at last week's Education Writers Association conference.
With announcements of 2016 presidential bids in the news, we at EdSurge are having animated discussions of what different candidates hope to change in US education. This week, we take a look at the education stances of Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. Plus, catch up on the proposed changes to FERPA, how to get your classroom project funded on DonorsChoose, and more!
The biggest of news in edtech this week comes from the biggest Ka'Ching we've seen in a while: LinkedIn's $1.5 billion purchase of Lynda.com. What does it mean for the edtech industry? Why would LinkedIn Purchase Lynda.com? EdSurge CEO Betsy Corcoran stops by to discuss the deal, as well as her experience at this week's ASU-GSV conference.
Several edtech companies have shut their doors, while certain cities are producing new incubators. Sense an oxymoron? EdSurge CEO Betsy Corcoran co-hosts the podcast this week with Mary Jo Madda to chat fundraising, the newest Chromebook, and whether or not the edtech bubble is bursting--or if there's really an edtech bubble at all.
This week on the show we discuss our brand new PD guide and Denver Public Schools' approach to PD, the launch of not one, but two new accelerators this week, and the controversy brewing over history role-playing game, Mission US. We also welcome EdSurge reporter Charley Locke as a podcast host for the first time.
This week on the show, we run through the top stories from EdSurge this week and discuss TES' new CEO, Yik Yak's effects on the classroom and try our best to describe a graph to you using only audio. That last bit seemed like a pretty bad idea at first, but we think it turned out ok.