Survey: Majority of School District Administrators Endorse Online Classes
News Release: Key challenges facing school districts, including budget realities and the need to improve student engagement, are driving district administrators to embrace online learning, according to a survey report released today from Blackboard Inc. and Project Tomorrow®.
Trustees Want Big Bucks, But We Deserve a Better Bargain from Higher Ed
Yesterday, Jeff Selingo, editorial director at The Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote an editorial in the NYTimes called Fixing College where he lamented the “lost decade,” from 1999 to 2009 where most institutions of higher learning were fat and happy and produced few productivity gains. He urged "better use of technology in the classroom" and "more online learning." Selingo said "We can’t afford another lost decade."
NMC, CoSN, and ISTE Release the K-12 Horizon Report Toolkit at ISTE 2012
The New Media Consortium (NMC), the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and the International Society for Technology in Education have released the NMC Horizon Report > 2012 K-12 Edition and are releasing the accompanying CoSN Horizon Report: 2012 K-12 Edition Toolkit in a special session at the ISTE 2012 Conference.
Informal Learning for a Better World
nformal learning should not be seen as a threat to the formal education system, but as a challenge, model, and important counterpart. With the rise of the open content movement, some of the world’s best educational content — from TED talks to MIT’s OpenCourseWare — is now freely available online.
Zspace: The Future of 3D Learning
Zspace is an impressive immersive environment with obvious learning benefits. These workstations will be pricy for a while, so Zspace is not an education 1:1 solution just yet. But every young person needs to experience an immersive design and learning space like this. These workstations should be in high school and college STEM labs and public libraries. Virtual dissections, field trips, and design projects must be part of every high school experience.
Hewlett Foundation Launches Prize for Short Answer Scoring
The Hewlett Foundation launched a $100,000 prize for scoring short answer student responses today on the Kaggle platform. After successfully tackling essay scoring, this prize takes on the more difficult challenge of scoring, with a high degree of accuracy, constructed responses of less than 150 words.
Changing the World One Mind, One Song at a Time
Grammy-nominated indie-jazz singer Carolyn Malachi teams up with The School Fund to keep students in school with the power of music.
Is the Flipped Classroom the Right Tech Approach for Teachers?
By Charles Perry “Flipping” a classroom refers to a reevaluation of a standard classroom environment where the teacher functions as a “sage on the stage” and the students as passive receptacles for knowledge. Teachers who flip their classrooms instead serve as a “guide on the side” who introduce new…
Good Work: The Abundance Mindset
There are two kinds of change agents—angry ones and hopeful one. The hopeful ones work toward new solutions. A subset of them approach the world with the ‘abundance mindset’ knowing that we’re riding an exponential curve that promises innovation. Abundant mindsets have mapped the human genome and launched space flights; they will expand access to quality education and extend life. They might even fix Washington DC.
Online Learning Keeps Sisters Together
Two sisters from Nevada, Kaleigh and Danielle Fair, graduated from high school together the other day. As this touching video shows, the odds against these young women were extraordinary. Their school, Nevada Virtual Academy, and the teachers there evened those odds and made their journey together across the commencement stage and through their high school experience possible.