future of learning
Personalized Learning
The blended world
Our kids already live in a blended world. K-12 is starting to catch up with a variety of models that combine the best of online learning and onsite support. Here’s 5 trends signaling a blended singularity: Schools become blended. The biggest growth area for online learning is traditional…
Personalized Learning
Free higher ed courses not great USED investment
Rick Hess makes a series of good arguments that the $500m ‘online skills laboratory’ isn’t a great investment. In the mixed provider post secondary space, quality content isn’t the top barrier. Â It’s pricing that reflects the sunk costs of existing institutions. Â A healthy market will make investment in…
Personalized Learning
Big Levers
There are plenty of theories about how to improve education. Most focus on what appear to be big levers—a point of entry and system intervention that appears to provide some improvement leverage. These theories usually involve ‘if-then’ statements: ‘if we improve this, then other good stuff will happen.’ Leading theories…
Personalized Learning
Wow, DOD gets learning
Two years ago I held a learning conference. A colleague invited a couple admirals. I though it was a dumb idea, but I was blown away by their sophisticated view of human development and job training. Today I spent an hour with a defense contractor that probably runs the…
Personalized Learning
Public & private investment will benefit edu
The private sector plays a big role in K-12 education especially in the four Ts: textbooks, testing, technology and tutoring. Â There has been relatively little R&D spending in education, but most of the useful investment has been by the private sector. Â Federal stimulus investments will accelerate efforts to bring quality…
EdTech
Rebooting Education: Technology & the Future of Learning
Philanthropy Roundtable held a one day conference on the Stanford campus. Here’s a summary of two interesting morning discussions Panel 1: Kid’s Eye View of Online Learning: Connie Yowell, Michael Horn, Susan Patrick Eleven year old Zach Bonner kicked off the Roundtable meeting with a tour of Florida…
Personalized Learning
Yowell & Hastings highlight Breakthru Learning @Google
Connie Yowell, MacArthur, opened day 2 of the Breakthrough Learning conference at Google with a powerful set of observations drawn from four years of grant making in youth media & learning: 1. kids (out of school) are learning, connecting, participating in new ways 2. schools are node on…
Personalized Learning
Google conference, day 1
Eric Schmidt opened an education conference held at Google headquarters. He noted that kids often ahead of their teachers on the tech front and that it’s ridiculous to memorize stuff when you could ask for favorite search engine.  His hope for the conference was that we could forge a consensus…
Personalized Learning
Districts should use budget woes to innovate
The National Journal asked about public-private partnerships backfilling budget cuts. Â Here’s my response. Public-private partnerships are a good idea; there should be more. Â But I hope the private partners supplanting public funds are in for the long run–I think schools in many states have a couple more years…
Personalized Learning
6 reasons foundations should incorporate venture strategies
Foundations should invest at least a portion of their endowments in return seeking vehicles related to their programmatic goals (often called Mission Related Investments, MRI). They should also leverage their balance sheets to provide venture debt and credit enhancements (often structured as Program Related Investments, PRI) to help scale promising…