Archive
element:where
Bloomfire Formalizes Informal Learning
Here’s an article with a little western MI love for Bloomfire , a Kalamazoo start up creating groups “of informal, social-learning opportunities can be dedicated to anything from sales strategies to fishing.” Bloomfire Manefesto is a little groovy, but if you’re not thinking about the future of…
Technology is Missing From Nation's Education Narrative
Tom Vander Ark of Revolution Learning and I were speaking recently around corporate interests in education. One bright spot to this corporate interest in social movements is the Pepsi Refresh Project, which presents a broad list of categories to urge consumers / social media savvy constituents to choose where…
Merryl Tisch: More Innovation, Less Political Bullying
I will post a longer article based on my interview with Merryl Tisch, Chancellor, New York State Education Board, Board of Regents in a few days. Here are some of her quotes: Q: What is your vision for online education and technology innovation within mainstream education in the next…
3 Pivot Points to a Performance-Based Education System
In education, there’s a lot up in the air right now: standards, testing, employment practices, budgets, student technology, online learning, and federal policy. It’s conceivable that if we took advantage of the uncertainty, a few places could emerge with a better and cheaper education system. Here’s three pivot points that…
One Solution to Middle School: Eliminate Them
National Journal is exploring the ‘forgotten middle’ grades this week. I’m not a fan of middle schools and find the growing urban trend toward K-8 or 6-12 configurations to be promising. K-12 charter networks like Aspire confirm this trend by creating paired elementary and secondary schools. Giant urban…
Online Com/Tech College Enrollments Grow
This story about increased online community college enrollment in Louisiana is interesting for a couple reasons: 1. Online Community and Technical College enrollment jumped 43%-a combination of more courses and worse economy. 2. Students and colleges saved money learning online. 3. Increased ability to take CC…
In Case You Wanted a Rebuttal
EdWeek ran a ridiculous op-ed by David Marshak, of Eastern Washington University. Here’s the brief response: Marshak’s logic is flawed, his data is bad, and his history revised. Over 1200 new schools were funded through dozens of networks with strong design principals including the emergence of CMOS-the…
More Online Learning, NOW!
More online learning, now! In a new report, Alliance for Excellent Education suggests that online learning can help solve the skill gap, the funding gap, and the teacher gap. Since leaving office five years ago former West Virginia Governor Bob Wise has been the leading federal policy…
Pearson Vision Impressive
Textbook publishers are catching a lot of grief these day, some of it deserved. But I met with a Pearson exec this morning and continue to be impressed by the leadership of this company (with whom I have a business relationship). Long before Obama landed on readiness, Pearson realigned…
Teacher Quality Means Some Must Go
The President and Secretary deserve credit for advancing the teacher quality agenda–a tough thing for democrats to do. Some of the credit for that goes to Jon Schnur and DFER. Because we don’t have very good predictive techniques, it’s important to watch teachers in their first few years,…