Archive
component:where.technology
Homework: play a game
eSchool News ran a fairly extensive piece on serious games. Here’s a few excerpts: Moving Learning Games Forward: Obstacles, Opportunities, and Openness,” by Eric Klopfer, Scot Osterweil, and Katie Salen of the Education Arcade, an MIT research division that explores games that promote learning through play,…
Edu-innovation requires investment and incentives
On Monday I attended an education technology conference—a few hundred people reviewing very simple education tools. On Wednesday I attended a military learning technology conference (I/ITSEC)—16,000 people experiencing sophisticated and realistic simulations of flying a fighter, piloting a battleship, and patrolling a village. US education and defense budgets are…
In defense of the good school promise
While channel surfing on Thanksgiving morning, I found a school board association meeting where a famous prof was railing on standards and testing with lots of applause from the audience (in a state contemplating delaying college-ready math and science standards until 2015). I agreed with many of his assertions like…
10 biggest K-12 developments of 2010
Despite lagging state budgets, 2010 will be a year of great progress in American education. Here’s the 10 biggest developments of the year ahead: Race to the Top awards will be made in two phases to about 18 states and will set the standard for excellence in state policy. About…
The big switch to digital is on
Texas announced a massive English adoption of Pearson products–both print and digital. Pearson has been making a huge investment in curriculum development by making new Scott Foresman and Prentice Hall material available in both print and digital formats. It’s a big switch from the old days (like a year…
RTI = personalized learning
The National Center on RTI defines the new buzzword as follows: Response to intervention integrates assessment and intervention within a multi-level prevention system to maximize student achievement and to reduce behavior problems. With RTI, schools identify students at risk for poor learning outcomes, monitor student progress, provide evidence-based…
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…
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…
What will be the ‘shipping container’ of Edu2.0?
Forty years ago the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted a standard size container and it revolutionized shipping—investment in common infrastructure went up and the cost of goods shipped went down. Wal-Mart and globalization happened. We need a digital content standard to launch the second…
Preparation is the new equity issue
The terminal indicator of the American achievement gap is the graduation gap and its cousin the college gap. African American and Hispanic students are twice as likely to drop out of high school than white students and less than half as likely to earn a college degree.