smart cities
Leadership

What Would Real Community Engagement Look Like?

Guest Author

By: Preston Smith. By taking the time to build a real relationship with parents like Maria and encouraging them to see their own leadership capacity, schools can become catalysts of broader community transformations.
EdTech

Startup Weekend Edu Phoenix

Tom Vander Ark

Startup Weekend Edu came to Phoenix this weekend. T eams worked on preschool reading, classroom guests, real-time feedback for teachers, better PD, autism supports, and small business on boarding. It's more evidence of Phoenix rising as a tech and EdTech hub.
EdTech

How Government Helps and Harms Entrepreneurs

Tom Vander Ark

Thirty years ago there were a couple dozen incubators, now there are a couple thousand; there's even an association. A dated survey suggests about one-third of business incubation programs are sponsored by economic development organizations, one fifth by cities or counties, another fifth by higher education.
Leadership

Building Innovation Partnerships

Guest Author

Guest Author: Greg Butler. We can no longer count on education systems to ‘fix’ education in isolation, the challenge will require multiple stakeholders working across organizational and sectorial boundaries to collaborate and innovate in continual inquiry based cycles of improvement.
Leadership

Smart Cities: Los Angeles Startup Weekend EDU 1/24

Tom Vander Ark

Last year, my Smart Cities: LA post complained about the lack of “innovation and collaboration” in the city, but things are more interesting a year later. The first Startup Weekend EDU in the City of Angels will take place on the weekend of January 24th at UCLA Anderson.
Ed Policy

Networks, Platforms, & Procurement

Tom Vander Ark

Schools in a network share a common mission, pedagogical approach, measurement system, structure, schedule and staffing strategy. Networks are usually horizontal (i.e., same school model and support system), but the concept could be applied to a vertical feeder pattern (e.g.,ReynoldsburgeSTEM) or a small district (e.g.,Mooresville)
Personalized Learning

Students Shine Through Digital Portfolios

Guest Author

Voyager Academy Charter School in Durham, NC is a project-based learning school that currently has about 1,250 students across grades K-11. We started with 320 students in grades 4-7 in 2007 and have grown exponentially. This upcoming school year we will add 12th grade and complete our growth.