Career & Technical Ed
future of learning
EdTech
MIT Media Lab Is Innovating Its Way to the Future
The graduate program at MIT Media Lab, where new technology is born, is creating unexpected combinations to discover unique applications of technology in our daily lives.
Personalized Learning
Review: No Excuses Works But There Are Some Lousy Charters
The National Study of Charter Management Organization (CMO) Effectiveness released their final study, Diverse Strategies and Diverse Student Impacts. The factors that differentiate high performers from the dirt bags are behavior policies and teacher coaching--the high expectations, no excuses culture.
Personalized Learning
The Learning Mindset: Winning in the Civilian Sector
The 1% and 99% are making headlines. But I'm more worried about the 20%, the 50% and the 75%. The 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan vets age 18-24 who are unemployed, the 50% who are underemployed, and 75% who don't graduate from the programs of study that they start after they get out.
Leadership
Staff Picks: Blended Learning, Smart Phones, EdReform, 21st-Century English
Tom picked blended learning as the topic of the year. Karen picks a review of the recent book Teaching Generation Text, which looks at the benefits of mobile learning in the classroom. Sarah picks Byron Sanders' response to the heated debate around Gene Marks' recent Forbes article, "If I Were a Poor Black Kid."
Personalized Learning
Education Funding Should Promote Equity, Performance & Innovation
Kansas governor Brownback is proposing a new school funding formula that would let counties raise their local property taxes rates to spend more on schools. He's right that school funding needs an overhaul, but he's missing all of the key ingredients: school funding should be weighted, portable, and performance-based.
EdTech
Our 10 Favorite Websites & Blogs
This week, we’d like to showcase some of our favorite websites and blogs for information around innovations and learning. Taking Note Taking Note, written by former PBS and NPR reporter John Merrow, is an extension of Learning Matters, which is an independent media production company…
EdTech
Fareed’s Economic Fix
America's problems are not economic, demographic or technological. They are political. Simple policy measures can change our fate. If we built out our infrastructure, kept monetary policy pro-growth and reformed our tax code to encourage business investment, we would have growth, a manageable deficit and a bright future.
Personalized Learning
10 Frames for Education: A Case for Options
The cacophony that is U.S. public education is a function of overlapping frames—the variety of aims and perspectives from which stakeholders approach the ‘system.’ Following is a list of ten dominant frames: 1. Workforce development: the 21st century skills folks are primarily concerned with preparing a larger percentage of students…
EdTech
Free, Mobile, Clouds and Other Innovation Topics
We can’t reform our way to the education our kids need for their future. The gap between what they need and what our Bismarckian schools can produce is widening. This is a problem of obsolesce not effort or intent (at least in most places). Telling one teacher to differentiate instruction…
EdTech
Review: Schooling in the Workplace
A review of Nancy Hoffman's new book, School in the Workplace, How Six of the World's Best Vocational Education Systems Prepare Young People for Jobs and Life. Its blended learning workforce style.