STEM
Personalized Learning

System Upgrade: What Math Can Do For You

Guest Author

“Why do we have to learn Algebra?” was the question a student asked me one day in the middle of class. I hadn’t been teaching very long so I wasn’t entirely sure what to say. I tried to ignore it but he asked again so I came up with some lame reasons like, “you’ll need it later,” or, “lots of jobs use algebra every day,” — but the more I looked at what I was teaching, the more unconvincing this sounded — even to me.
Personalized Learning

Dell Foundation Gives $500k Grant to ST Math Education Initiative in New York City

Getting Smart Staff

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation is providing a $500,000 grant to the education non-profit MIND Research Institute to bring its innovative, visual math education program to 6,000 New York City elementary school students in 2012, in a blended learning environment. Currently used in six of the nation’s 10 largest public school districts, students and teachers using the program have on average doubled growth in math proficiency.
Personalized Learning

Use Google Drive as a “Stepping Stone” to 3D Learning

Guest Author

Craig Roberts, assistant director of education at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, believes his students learn better when they explain things visually. So, he has them build fruit fly brains out of Play-Doh, and construct human brain cells out of miscellany from The Scrap Exchange, a local nonprofit creative reuse center. More often, he sends them to the whiteboard to illustrate core concepts using a splash of color and lots of lines.

Personalized Learning

High School Wind Energy Project Inspires College Careers in STEM

Guest Author

Wind is the fastest growing source of renewable energy in the world today and the students at Camden Hills Regional High School in Rockport, Maine, have learned that first hand. Six months after the commissioning of the school’s NPS 100 wind turbine, the students, teachers and community have grown accustomed to the 121-foot-tall, sleek white tower that stands next to the athletic fields.
Personalized Learning

NCTAF Learning Studios: The Future of Learning

Tom Vander Ark

Every once in awhile, we see pictures of the future -- a graphic image, a set of relationships, new tools at work, the buzz of a culture that feels remarkably productive. For me, site visits to Big Picture and Edvision schools were really influential 12 years ago -- and why I'm still enthusiastic about flex school models that engage and empower students.
EdTech

SMARTtech Roundup: Common Core and More

Carri Schneider

Blended Schools & Tools Duncan on Digital. Education Secretary Arne Duncan called Tuesday for the nation to move rapidly from printed textbooks and toward digital ones, citing global competition among the chief reasons for doing so. The New Frontier. The Center for Digital Education and Converge released…
EdTech

Game Change: How Game-based Learning Helps Common Core

Guest Author

One of the exciting things that leaps out to me when reading the new Common Core standards for Mathematics is that the spirit of inquiry and curiosity is back, hardwired into a document that will likely form the basis for mathematics teaching and learning for a long time. My attention is drawn for example to the Standards for Mathematical practice where it emphasizes that students need to become persistent problem solvers, plan solution pathways, and ask themselves, “does this make mathematical sense?”