Welcome to the Education Renaissance
Today's disruptive changes in education -- from the proliferation of digital devices to the availability of open educational resources, online universities, and badge-based certification -- have the field abuzz like never before. Recently I had the opportunity to give a talk at WNET's Celebration of Teaching and Learning on creating the conditions for innovation in education.
Q&A: ShowMe Founder Taps Into the Great Teachers of the World
ShowMe Founder San Kim joins us today to discuss how ShowMe, a mobile app that allows educators to record and share whiteboard lessons with students, is tapping into the knowledge of great teachers to deliver quality lessons to students around the globe. San Kim first developed the idea of a whiteboard-based online teaching technology while working as a tutor and classroom instructor in high school math, science, writing and more. ShowMe was founded in 2009 and took several years to develop into the simple and widely used app that it is today.
When Will Blended Learning Be Mainstream?
At the CUE conference this month, a questioner asked our Panel a simple question about blended learning – What is your prediction for when blended learning will be a mainstream application in education?
The 10 Big Issues of Our Time
The introduction of real college and career ready expectations is occurring simultaneously with the shift from batch-print to personal digital learning. These two shocks to the American education ‘system’ lead to at least 10 big issues that need to be addressed.
Dallas Area District Embraces STEM & Educate Texas Partnership
Educate Texas, formerly The Texas High School Project, announced a major STEM (science, tech, engineering, and math) partnership with a small mostly low income and minority district south Dallas district, Lancaster ISD, and powered by a $4.8 million grant from TI. Part of T-STEM, the announcement builds on the most successful state STEM network in the country.
Would Alabama’s Football Coach Nick Saban Do This?
We all know that something in our educational processes is not right. Our businesses talk about how our graduates lack skills, our government talks about how we are falling behind as a nation, our neighbor talks about how they can’t find a job and our schools talk about how frustrated they are. Like the scene in the movie Moneyball “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” All talk aside, what is the fix? We can even debate it, yet not many will argue that something needs to change. Once we starting fixing our nation’s education our neighborhoods can begin to regain their confidence, our communities can start to feel like an actual community and our local economies may just start to pick up.
Blackboard Buys MoodleRooms & Embraces Open
Blackboard announced today that it bough Moodlerooms and its international counterpart NetSpot, hosting solutions for open learning management system Moodle. It's an important commitment to open education resources. Ray Henderson's announcement blog said "we believe the most important new dimension shaping the LMS market today is the growing acceptance of open source software."
Learning STEM in Classrooms Modeling the Future
The typical elementary, middle and high school classroom is filled with chairs and desks, chalk and erasers, and a teacher and students. There is also closet space for backpacks, cabinet space for educational tools and wall space for exemplary student work. Does this traditional classroom provide the best teaching environment for teachers and the best learning environment for students? The answer depends on what needs to be taught, and we are quickly finding out that educational needs of the future look much different than the past.
Project-Based Blends
Proejct-Based Learning is a great way to engage students and encourage deeper learning. Blended environments makes it easier to create time for projects. New tools make it easier to create consistently rigorous projects. Digital learning makes it easier to build skills to successfully participate in a PBL environment.
SmartTech Roundup
Mobile Mojo In the past year, schools have been buying up wireless technologies like iPads. PC Mag reports that over 1.5 million are in use in educational institutions (bet it’s a lot more than that). Boston’s NPR station reports that over 600 districts have ditched textbooks and…