Elizabeth Corcoran
Elizabeth Corcoran has been a staff writer and editor for Forbes, Scientific American and The Washington Post. She is starting a stealth nonprofit for using technology in education. She also writes at: http://21stcenturylessons.blogspot.com/.
Gaming education
Classic ed-tech games and build-your-own methods are now joined by the "gamification" movement.
There are three types of digital games being used in schools. Which you prefer speaks volumes about the role you believe schools should play
Makers versus Sponges
School tech should start with a simple question: Will students absorb others' ideas or make their own?
Today's technology lets us choose if we want to absorb other people's ideas or build our our own. Shouldn't that be starting point when we argue about the role of technology in schools?
Venture capitalists do it. Why shouldn't philanthropists do it, too?
Our problems in education are too intense, funding is too thin and time too precious to take on duplicative efforts. We need to apply some of the same discriminating standards in our philanthropic Edu2.0 projects that we use in for-profit ones.
One way to build a smarter school infrastructure
A new partnership gives teachers and schools help with tech integration
Ask a hundred kids to draw a picture of “home” and you’ll see some common themes: “home” should be safe, warm, fun, inviting. There should be room to play, to rest, to grow — maybe even to work. And then there will be a million differences, including laugh-out-loud details (bunkbeds on the ceiling?) as well as sweet ones. Ask a…
Drop testing edutech
How teachers use technology rarely matches how it was designed.
We drop test hardware before we send it into the field. Seems like it's time to start drop testing software programs before sending them into the classroom.