Posts by Guest Author

Personalized Learning

Say Hello to The Netflix Generation

By: James Cross. Today's students are the ‘Netflix Generation’ — they've grown up in a world where video is available instantly, on-demand, and on any device. With video now accounting for 43% of all online traffic, forward thinking colleges and universities are looking to explore the rich educational possibilities video can offer.

Difference Making

Student Entrepreneurship in Action

By: Esther Wojcicki. What does it take to get students interested in learning entrepreneurial skills? I can tell you what doesn’t work---teaching to the test, which is unfortunately is a national obsession today. Testing does not lead to real world skills.

Personalized Learning

Choosing Excellent Schools – Not Charter Versus District

By: Don Shalvey. Too often these days in schools, if you support charter schools you are seen as against the school district or even against public schools. Or, if you are a supporter of the district, you are often seen as anti-charter and against giving educational choices to parents.

Personalized Learning

Design Thinking: A Human-Centered Approach to Innovation in Education

By: Sandy Speicher. We tend to think first about the needs of the system and create solutions from there. But what if we looked first to the needs of people, and then designed ways the system could meet its goals by serving these needs? This is the heart of how design thinking gets to innovative solutions.

Personalized Learning

New Study Reveals Trends in Professional Learning

By: Jason Lange. A 2013 Australian study conducted by the government-funded Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership and the nonprofit Innovation Unit examined 50 high-performing corporations, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations from around the globe to identify common features of professional learning experiences.

EdTech

It’s Time: Connecting What Students Need & What Entrepreneurs Create

By: Stacey Childress. Pull mechanism refers to things like challenges, prizes, and advanced market commitments – ways of paying for innovations based on their actual performance. This in contrast to government agencies and philanthropists making upfront investments in design and development of solutions and then “pushing” them to (or some would say on) buyers and users. A key idea is that some sort of coordinated action on the demand side – in this instance from schools, districts, and states – will create compelling reasons for suppliers to behave differently, better, more responsively.

Personalized Learning

Got Game? How Play Enhances Learning

By: Delicia Sepulveda. For the past two years, I've had a hand in creating games that today reach hundreds of thousands of students, helping them learn math in a fun and engaging way. I get to see students playing with puzzles that I designed, and I get to experience first-hand the impact of these games on student learning.