This article was first published at Getting Smart on Feb21, 2013
In my previous post, I wrote about the school experience I wish for my own children. Today I am going to write about how as a family we have taken advantage of local and distant learning resources that allow us to treat education as a set of “platform services” that we can use to create a customized learning experience for each of our kids. Read more
This article was first published at Getting Smart on Feb 20, 2013
I wish school were different for my children. As a mom living in a school district with excellent schools, high test scores and property values, research-based practices, and warm, thoughtful educators who care about my kids you would think I would be satisfied. But like generations of parents before me, I want more for my kids than what I had. Read more
This article was first published in EdSurge on Feb 12, 2013
In 2012, the blogosphere was filled with stories about Innovation in Education, how technology changes everything, and how the growing edtech market was embraced to the point where there was speculation towards the end of the year that perhaps there was an education investment “bubble”. There were meetups , and start-ups and code-ups. Technology-enhanced tools for learning such as the Khan Academy were lauded as revolutionaryand reviled in the backlash as not only failing to revolutionize, but as beingoutright dangerous to education reform. The words “revolutionize”, “transform”, and “disrupt” were used so extensively some would have thembanned in 2013. Read more
This article was originally posted on EdSurge on October 10, 2012
What does the Maker movement have to offer education? One compelling idea is what some many consider to be an upside-down way to learn.
Larry Rosenstock, founder of High Tech High, started me thinking about this idea in a conversation we had on project-based learning. He pointed out that most programs teach kids in advance the skills they will need to succeed at the project, but Larry believes that the students should learn the skills as part of the project – just at the moment they need them.
For example, if one were to teach skills in advance for, say, scientific data collection, a teacher might show students pictures of the equipment they will use, test them on their ability to describe the function, demonstrate how to organize their data and warn them to label their axes–a somewhat mind-numbing approach.
Consider instead the opposite approach–laying out the objective of the lesson, and then helping students discover what tools will help them reach their goal. Read more
This article was originally posted on Getting Smart on December 19, 2012
In my previous post, I tackled the debate of student performance as a measure of teacher effectiveness in. Here’s why performance-based pay for teachers as an approach to teacher effectiveness runs counter to every meaningful definition of personalized education: Read more
This article was originally posted on Getting Smart on December 18, 2012
The irony is hardly lost on anyone when at education-related professional conferences educators sit in the audience as experts lecture them about how to teach as a guide-on-the-side rather than a sage-on-the stage. A “do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do” moment that often has even the lecturer chuckling. The habits, traditions, and structural constraints of conferences make such absurdity inevitable, and we all tend to take it in stride with a dose of self-deprecating humor. Back in classrooms and buildings and districts, however, similar habits, traditions, and constraints have a much more serious, and less obviously absurd effect. Read more
This article was originally posted on Getting Smart on October 9, 2012
When I worked in the high-tech industry, our products sometimes included what we called “check-box features.” These were features that would never, in reality, be used by the end customer but which purchasing agents would look at when they compared our product against our competitors. In many ways I think of classroom management software as falling into this category – with the fears about technology use that absolutely do exist among parents and educators, having a checkbox that says, “Don’t worry – we can control student technology use,” feels like a must-have. Read more
Over the 2011-2012 school year, e-Mergents has been involved in “guerilla research” to get some insight on several gnawing questions regarding the use of Android tablets in primary school classrooms. Some of the questions are profoundly practical, such as whether students can really write papers on tablet devices even though we adults are convinced we need laptops for serious writing. Some of the questions are logistical, such as whether Androids can serve the same purposes as iPads. But some of the questions are emergent: “What happens when you give students and teachers mobile devices with 24/7 connectivity to the Internet and the freedom to use them in the ways that work for them?” Read more
What is the appropriate role of wireless technology in schools? When we look at the history of technology implementations in schools, we see any number of failures that have led to cynicism regarding technology on the part of educators, a tendency to roll one’s eyes and wait for the “silver bullet du jour” to pass. In my opinion, the reason for the “failures” lies in a mismatch of capabilities and expectations, in a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of schooling, the role of teachers, and the capacities of students. Read more
This article was first published on O’Reilly Radar on May 15, 2012
Create, disassemble, repurpose! DIY-ers relentlessly void warranties and crack manufacturers’ cases, showing us what is possible when people decide that they, not the vendors, truly own the technology they have purchased. “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it,” the Make Owner’s Manifesto tells us.
This DIY ethic is now seeping into one of the most locked-down social institutions in existence: education. Educators, parents, technologists, students, and others have begun looking at the components, subassemblies, assemblies and specifications of excellent education and are finding ways to improve, reimagine, and reinvent learning at every level. They are inspired by a multiplicity of sources, from neuroscience to gaming, to knock down the barriers to learning that exist for so many young people. In every way, they are looking at the components of teaching and learning, and finding ways to re-create them to be more efficient; more effective; and, critically, more modular. Read more
