"edu 2.0" entries

iPod program helps school test scores

Oregon third graders' reading and math results benefit from iPod Touch access.

An iPod pilot program in an Oregon classroom lifted math and reading scores. Results from that single pilot inspired the Canby School District to provide iPod Touch access to all its third graders.

The Big Picture: What are we making in school?

Elliot Washor of Big Picture Learning organized an educational symposium during Maker Faire Detroit. The symposium brought together educators and practitioners who explored engaging the hands and minds of students, sometimes called thinkering. As a group, they experienced Maker Faire and then met to discuss “how making can be an integral part of how young people figure out who they are in the world.” This is a really key idea, I think: what we can learn by making is a process of discovering what we can do, and we begin to participate in making and changing the world around us.

Teachers become senseis while tech handles drills

A school finds success moving drills to software. Is there a model here?

San Diego's High Tech High has found success with ALEKS, a software package that uses simple feedback to reinforce fundamental math skills. This example hints at a revised teacher-tech relationship, where the technology handles drills while teachers coach and offer guidance. Toss in additions like mobile access and 24/7 connectivity, and new possibilities — and new questions — arise. In this post, Marie Bjerede examines all these angles.

Fast-tracking: Alternatives to college

How Zoho's internal program finds talent outside universities.

Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu discusses his company's internal "university," which brings in kids unlikely to attend college and uses self-learning to prep them for IT careers. Could the U.S. benefit from a similar model?

A constellation you should know

A look at Chicago's i.c.stars educational program.

This blog post has been sitting on my computer’s desktop for a few weeks now…. I’m finally getting around to telling you about a great week I had at the end of May. It started off with a brief trip to Northern California with stops at Dale’s amazing Maker Faire (equally impressive were his sprinting skills as he leapt into…

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?

Don't get stuck in Edu 2010

A literal adoption of the National Education Technology Plan could undermine future tech use.

The National EdTech Plan aspires to bring together the best of what we know of teaching and learning with the very best technology has to offer in 2010, yet we can be certain that technology will offer even more in 2012, 2015, and 2020.

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.

Make-offs: DIY indie innovations

How low-cost, open-source tools are energizing DIY.

With Maker Faire Bay Area scheduled for this weekend, we take a look at makers who are using low-cost, open-source tools to create sophisticated projects and experiments. The DIY movement in science and technology is demonstrating that it can do inexpensively what large companies and even Big Science have spent millions doing. I call them "make-offs," low-budget knock-offs of scientific and industrial technology built with off-the-shelf components.

Educational technology needs to grow like a weed

Want to scale education reform? Plant a tech seed and help it flourish.

Iterative development and feedback loops have lifted the software world. Now it's time for educational technology and reform to benefit from the same techniques.