teachers
The race to platform education
Across the full spectrum of education – primary, secondary, and higher – we are witnessing a race to develop platforms for content, learning, teaching, and evaluation. As liberating as the web is, tremendous centralization of control is occurring in numerous spaces: Google in search/advertising/Android, Amazon in books/cloud computing, Facebook in social networks, etc. I use a smaller range of tools today than I did five years ago. And the reason is simple: companies are in a landrush to create platforms that will tie together previously disconnected activities and tools.
Finance For Future Generations
Brian Page By Brian Page “All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.” – John Adams On the…
Teaching Math Without Words—And Getting Big Gains
Mathematical thinking is a problem-solving skill but we use a lot of abstract symbols and words to try to teach kids math procedures. Just look at a textbook or observe a middle school classroom. Our text-based approach works for some students but is confusing and complicated for too many,…
Get out the blender, kids
I think I have just glimpsed the future, or at least what could be the future, of public education. I’m talking about the effective use of today’s technology to enhance learning, or what insiders are calling ‘blended education.’ Michael Horn, a co-author of Disrupting Class, provided a definition: Blended learning is any time a student learns at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace.
Good Work: People That Can Do No Other
Jay Kimmelman moved to Africa to launch Bridge Academies I love people that do what they do because they can do no other. You can see it in their clarity, persistence, and the ability they say no to the BS most of us put up with. In some…
Open High School of Utah Offers 30 Semesters of OERs
Open High School of Utah, a public charter school, announced today that it will offer its curriculum from 30 semesters of content in math, science, language arts, social studies and electives as an open educational resource (OER) on its website repository.
Six premises, seven ideas for better teacher training
At the Twitter Town Hall with Education Secretary Arne Duncan (related: the full transcript of that dialogue is online) on August 24, he promised some new initiatives regarding schools of education. In the hope that the suggestion box is still open, I have a suggestion — not for the Secretary but for schools and colleges of education.
Indiana Chief Outlines Reforms
Tony Bennett is Indiana superintendent of public education. Bennet chairs Chiefs for Change and was recently recognized by Fordham as a leading reformer. Here's a few excerpts from his blog today.
The New Equity Agenda
Nearing a quarter of the school populations, Hispanic students are generally not well served by U.S. K-12 education. Here’s five state policies that would help.
Mental Models
Smart schools will help students develop rich mental models by engaging them in systems thinking early and often with games, sims, and virtual environments.