The Future of Education: There is No Easy Button
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A look around the corner in four memos: Re: Form The Policy and Economic Context of Education and Learning Re: Shape Technology and the Rise of Personalized Learning Re: New Changing Institutions to Face the Learner (Charters, collaboration, and rebooting the system) Re: Create Learners Hacking Education for Themselves (Education as the next big data startup)
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The Future of Education: There is No Easy Button
- 1. About the Future of Education: There is No Easy Button
- 2. Agenda Re: Form The Policy and Economic Landscape of Education and Learning Re: Shape Technology and the Rise of Personalized Learning Re: New Changing Institutions to Face the Learner (Charters, collaboration, and rebooting the system) Re: Create The Rise of Learners Hacking Education for Themselves (Education as the next big data startup)
- 3. Re: Form The Policy and Economic Context of Education and Learning
- 4. An Idea a Century in the Making … and the Time is Now
- 5. The Ones That Get Away - Then
- 6. The Ones That Get Away - Now
- 7. The Ones That Get Away - Next
- 8. Disruptors Don’t Play by the Rules Reuven Gorsht @reuvengorsht
- 9. It has Real World Consequences Reuven Gorsht @reuvengorsht
- 10. The Disruption Revolution Reuven Gorsht @reuvengorsht
- 11. No Child Left Behind: They are.
- 12. Common Core: Adopted in 43, Repealed in 1 Governing
- 13. 23 States embrace School Choice for Special Needs Students KPLU
- 14. Obama: Free College as Universal as High School White House
- 15. The Long Shaddow of the Sequester APM
- 16. Education, Race, and Social Justice USCM
- 18. Student Loan Debt Crisis : $1.2 Trillion and Counting
- 19. For Profit Colleges unitedrepublic.com
- 20. For Profit Colleges: New Rules, Reduced Numbers
- 21. Re: Shape Technology and the Rise of Personalized Learning
- 22. Scandal and Setback at LA Unified KPCC
- 23. Annual Educational IT Spending CDE $10.2 Billion $10.5 Billion $20.7 Billion K-12 Higher Education Total
- 24. Educational technology is used to enhance traditional learning. Educational technology is used to transform traditional teaching and learning. Educational technology is fully integrated into each student’s learning. 2000-2010 2010-2020 2020-2030 We are here Evolution of Learning in the 21st Century CDE
- 25. How Technology is Changing the Learning Landscape CDE 30% 25% 19% 16% 10% Supporting project- based learning Providing personalized learning Offering blended and virtual learning classes Partnering with other institutions on advanced courses Following a flipped classroom model
- 26. Digital Content Adoption CDE have adopted some e-textbooks or digital content, but in a limited, siloed fashion 61%
- 27. Digital Device Adoption | Student BYOD Pew Internet 42%of students use their cell phone to look up information in class.
- 28. US Internet Connectivity CDE 42% Pew Internet Foundation Of Americans have access to the Internet. 98%
- 29. K-12 Technology Priorities Mobility; and Common Core/State Standards Online Testing Professional Development Digital Content and Curriculum Personalized Learning1 2 3 4 5 Cybersecurity Policy Data Management/Analytics Student Data Privacy Cybersecurity and Data Security Tools Networking Infrastructure Upgrades6 7 8 9 10 CDE Digital School Districts
- 30. Community College Technology Priorities CDE Digital Community Colleges Digital Content and Curriculum Network Infrastructure Modernization (Wired & Wireless) Website Redesign/Updates Server and or Desktop Virtualization Mobility-Devices and App Support1 2 3 4 5 Cloud Services Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Server Refresh Computer Refresh Cyber Security Tools and Testing6 7 8 9 10
- 31. Higher Ed Technology Priorities Demonstrating the Business Value of IT Improving Student Outcomes Developing IT Funding Models Optimizing the Use of Technology Hiring and Retaining Qualified Staff1 2 3 4 5 Balancing Agility, Openness and Security Developing an Enterprise IT Architecture Developing Security Policies for Mobile and Cloud Providing User Support Increasing the Capacity for Managing Change 6 7 8 9 10 Educause
- 32. Re: New Changing Institutions to Face the Learner (Charters, collaboration, and rebooting the system)
- 33. KIPP: The Audacity of Hope and Discipline, Together KIPP
- 34. When Acceptance is Not Enough: College Completion KIPP
- 35. “No Excuses” approach to College Completion KIPP
- 36. Citizen Schools: Closing the Opportunity Gap Citizen Schools
- 37. When Public School Districts and Charters Collaborate BVP
- 38. MIT’s $30 Million Reboot of Teachers Colleges Woodrow Wilson Academy
- 39. It’s All Picking Up S.T.E.A.M.
- 40. Re: Create Learners Hacking Education for Themselves (Education as the next big data startup)
- 41. Creation in the 1990s CDE
- 43. Are MOOCs the Future? WIRED
- 44. Whither the Lecture Hall: Blended Education? Oregon State University
- 45. Blended Learning and Big Data MIT
- 46. Sesame Street as the Original Low Cost MOOC Brookings
- 48. Creatives and Makers: YouTube and Learning Hacks Make:
- 49. The Maker Movement and Young Creatives Tested
- 50. Education is Awesome! Lego and Building the Future
- 51. 3D Printing and a New Generation of Creators
- 53. Big Data Exhaust and Educational Performance
- 54. Crowdsourcing and Personalized Learning: A “Twin Win” HMH
- 55. Colorado: Big Data and Behavioral Economics in Education
- 56. Kick starting Education Kirkstarter
- 57. Kick starting Education Kirkstarter
- 58. The KlabLab Bus: Creating and Learning One Song at a Time “Using everybody’s creative spark to make learning something everybody wants to be part of”
- 59. Anti Obesity: Kids build an App for That WKRC
- 60. Just ask the Kids… Reuven Gorsht @reuvengorsht
- 61. And Learner-Creators Are Showing the Way Reuven Gorsht @reuvengorsht
- 62. Welcoming Dr. Kecia Ray CDE
- 63. Contact Information Placeholder Cathilea Robinett Executive Vice President e.Republic crobinet@erepublic.com 916.932.1336
Editor's Notes
- The education has evolved through three revolutions – agricultural, industrial, and technological. The last one has been the trickiest – it brings so much potential to transform, it is unleashing unprecedented levels of innovation and creativity. At the same time, even as educators, policy makers, and activists pursue all manor of reforms for the education system, others are learning and creating outside of the system.
- In our time together, we’ll walk through four pictorial “memos” about the future of education – about reforming, reshaping, renewing, and recreating it from the inside out and the outside in.
- Learning has value in its own right. As a practical matter, it is also a key part of a vibrant economy and a stable, healthy society. And policy makers are investing huge sums of public money to improve outcome … with decidedly mixed results.
- Jean Piaget, a Swiss philosopher and psychologist and Director of the International Bureau of Education, declared in 1934, “only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse – whether violent or gradual. If the agricultural and industrial revolution relied on conformity, our future depends on inventors, innovators, and creatives.
- He finished high school but Harvard could keep him. The Harvard Crimson called him "Harvard's most successful dropout" — the rest of the world just calls him ridiculously rich. For more than a decade, Bill Gates has been one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest, men in the world. The son of an attorney and a schoolteacher, Gates entered Harvard in the fall of 1973, only to drop out two years later to found Microsoft with childhood friend Paul Allen. In 2007, more than thirty years after he left Harvard, the co-founder of Microsoft would finally receive his degree (an honorary doctorate) from his alma mater. At the commencement, Gates said, "I'm a bad influence. That's why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today." ---- http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1988080_1988093_1988082,00.html
- Harvard couldn’t keep Mark Zuckerberg either, even though he created what would become Facebook while studying there. The experience made Zuckerberg something of an education reformer. And he put some serious money behind his vision. In September 2010, then Newark, NJ mayor Corey Booker received a $100 million pledge from Zuckewrberg to help transform Newark Public Schools. Two years later, Zuckerberg donated 18 million shares o the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a community organization that includes education in its list of grant-making areas. ----- Young, Elise (June 8, 2013). "Zuckerberg Plans Fundraiser for Cory Booker’s Senate Run". Bloomberg. ^ Christine Richard, "Ackman Cash for Booker Brings $240 Million Aid From Wall Street", Bloomberg, October 28, 2010 Jump up ^ "Education". Silicon valley Community Foundation.
- Will these guys be next? Will high tech shop class be enough to keep these innovators and creatives in school after they see they can create their future – without need of high school diploma, never mind a college degree. But long gone are the days of shop class, or even "vocational training," said Stephen DeWitt, the senior director of public policy for the Association for Career and Technical Education. For many years, he saw career and technical education cut by shrunken budgets or "literally and figuratively left in the back of the school, separate from academics."
- We’re seeing significant cracks in what was once a universal educational experience. The next divide is forming between kids who need school to establish themselves in society – and those who are leaving the system to create a future for themselves, and who don’t see a need for formal education in making the education.
- And its not just the kids. You can see the effects of the educational mismatch in the way generations of employees are faring in the workplace.
- Conformists line up on the left. Innovators and creatives are reshaping the world around their world view – and power and influence is shifting in their direction.
- NCLB began with bipartisan optimism – with built in resistance from some constituencies within the system. It was a high stakes bet on high stakes tests as a way to reform the system. With Congress now attempting to rewrite the No Child Left Behind law, signed into law in 2002, the latest version, it’s a good time to look at what NCLB accomplished and did not accomplish. Since data is so important to school reformers today, here’s a look at some, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was of the long-standing Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Its provisions, such as testing grades 3-8 annually in reading and math and punitive sanctions, took effect over the next several years. The law is more than seven years overdue for reauthorization by Congress. This year, both the House and Senate are showing strong interest in voting for a new version. NCLB called out the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) as the nation’s report card (or primary means for evaluating the success of NCLB). Here are key findings, based on an analysis by FairTest, comparing the rate of progress pre- and post NCLB results: The rate of progress on NAEP at grades 4 and 8 was generally faster in the decade before NCLB took effect than since. That is a consistent trend both overall and for individual demographic groups, including blacks, English Language Learners (ELLs) and students with disabilities. Score gaps in 2012 were no narrower and often wider than they were in 1998 and 1990. The slowdown in math was pronounced, especially at grade 4. In many cases, the rate of gain slowed even more after 2007. ----- http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/10/no-child-left-behind-what-standardized-test-scores-reveal-about-its-legacy/
- Common Core has become a toxic brand, the most contentious issue on the education landscape, reviled by partisans at both ends of the political spectrum. That doesn’t mean it’s going away. For all the pushback against the Common Core -- a set of standards that outline the content and skills students are expected to master at each grade level – 43 states are still on board. Efforts to repeal the Common Core this year in Arkansas and Mississippi, for instance, led instead to commissions that will study the issue. Legislation to repeal the Common Core has only been successful in Oklahoma.” The effort to improve educational standards and make American students more competitive with their international peers was led several years ago by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, with backing from the Gates Foundation. Common Core really took off, though, with the Race to the Top grant program that was part of the 2009 federal stimulus package. States that embraced the standards had a better chance of getting extra money under the program. Common Core is proceeding in most states. In places like Indiana, the brand name may have gotten dropped, but the essential elements remain intact. This spring, standardized tests based on the standards are being rolled out in schools all over the country. In Kentucky, a simple rebranding as Kentucky Core helped the initiative gain acceptance. . Common Core supporters aren’t resting easy. Opposition to the standards has become something like a litmus test for GOP presidential candidates in 2016. But proponents are starting to feel as though the program will remain intact, at least in most places. “I’m not worried about it,” says Chris Cabaldon, the mayor of West Sacramento, Calif. “A majority of states are still on track. They have weathered the worst of it.”
- Gov. Bill Haslam ceremonially signed the Individualized Education Act on Wednesday in Nashville, allowing the families of children with special needs additional educational options. The bill was privately signed into law last month, making Tennessee the 23rd school choice state, and only the fourth state to have an education savings account (ESA) program for families of those with special needs. "There is an education revolution sweeping the country and it has touched Tennessee- parents are hungry and anxious to take more control over their child's education, especially parents' whose children are trapped in schools that fail to meet their needs," said Tommy Schultz, spokesman for Haslam, in a written statement. "...Tennessee has taken a positive step forward in offering parents and students access to quality educational options."
- The White House first pitched its plan to make community college tuition free (in January 2015), the administration said the goal was to make "two years of college as free and universal as high school." If a student attended at least half time and maintained a 2.5 GPA, he would pay zero for class. So long as that student has an AGI of less than $200,000. Obama Community College Plan – a plan to offer free community college tuition to students who meet specific criteria About $60B over 10 years paid by the federal government States and localities have also taken action: Tennessee and Chicago offer a community college scholarship for high school graduates
- On Monday (June 22), the House Appropriations Committee released its draft spending bill for Labor, Health, Human Services and Education, and budget watchers noted deep cuts to federal education funding. It cuts nearly $3.8 billion from mostly education and healthcare. The National Institutes of Health is one area that gets more money. You might think the GOP-controlled committee is responsible for these proposed cuts, but it’s really the fault of the Budget Control Act, also known as the sequester, which requires that Congress not increase the deficit. "There is no good way to allocate this," says David Reich, a senior policy consultant with the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The Veterans Affairs scandal means veterans' medical care will get more money. "There’s a pretty strong consensus that there is a need for a several billion dollar increase" at the VA, says Reich. But that means there's less to go around for everyone else. The cuts would hit school improvement grants, literacy programs, magnet schools, teen pregnancy reduction programs, and more. Joel Packer from the Raben Group says the deficit has shrunk so both Democrats and Republicans could work to raise the budget caps. "Something has to happen by midnight, September 30 this year or the whole federal government shuts down," Packer says. But don’t worry too much about this bill becoming law. It also blocks all Obamacare funding. So there's little to no chance it will be signed into law by the president. The final bill is due for a markup by the full committee on Wednesday.
- Name the Injustices, Own Them, Change Them "We can't hide from any of these hard truths about race and justice in America," she added. "We have to name them and own them and then change them." In a speech earlier in the week, she pledged her commitment to investing in early childhood education; working to lift “the crushing burden of student debt,” Should Clinton win the White House in 2016, it's possible the next administration would walk away from some of the more controversial education policies the Obama administration has championed, such as teacher evaluation systems and higher academic standards the federal government has incentivized through No Child Left Behind waivers and Race to the Top grants.
- It has been a volatile decade. The economic crisis in 2008 prompted many to stay in school (or return to school) to weather the storm. But we are not at record levels of college enrollment – something that has been seen as the “great equalizer” across demographic groups. Enrollment is also an indicator of the relevance and affordability of college in people’s lives. Significantly, enrollment declined 2.2% between 2010 (18.1M) and 2012 (17.7M)
- USToday characterized the ballooning amount of student debt as a “bonkers” $1.2 Trillion shared by 40 million Americans. Student debt levels have increased 84% since the recession (Experian) and a total of 240% since 2003 (Mother Jones) For comparison, total credit card debt in the US is $891 Billion (according to the federal reserve)
- A single Doonesbury panel sums up the problem with many For-Profit Colleges. An college experience marketed to marginal populations, they attract $32 billion in taxpayer money. United Republic’s report card on for-profit colleges is disturbing: They take a large share of federal aid To serve fewer students than public and private non profit colleges And produce even fewer graduates … Not graduating does not excuse student debt, on which their students default on at alarming levels.
- The bankruptcy of Corinthian Colleges – which also ran Everest and Health – in May left many students scrambling to salvage something of their education. Corinthian as well as other for profit systems had been seeing declines in enrollment and the loss of access to some federal aid money. That after the Education Department issued new rules in October 2014 to hold career colleges accountable for the programs they offer and promote improvements that protect students, benefit consumers and honor taxpayers’ investment. Under the new rules, the loan payments of a typical graduate at a program cannot exceed 20 percent of discretionary income or 8 percent of total earnings. Programs with graduates whose loan payments equal 20 to 30 percent of discretionary income, or 8 to 12 percent of total annual income, would be placed in a warning zone. A program would be labeled failing if typical graduates have loan payments that surpass 30 percent of discretionary earnings or 12 percent of annual earnings. Programs that fail in two out of any three consecutive years — or land in the danger zone for four consecutive years — will be ineligible for aid. Based on the Education Department’s estimates, about 1,400 programs would not pass the accountability standards. The rule covers thousands of programs at for-profit, public and private non-profit colleges. ---- http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/05/27/for-profit-colleges-lose-bid-to-scuttle-government-rules/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/16/the-most-significant-for-profit-rules-in-years-are-about-to-go-into-effect-and-lawmakers-are-still-fighting-over-them/
- Technology has long held the promise of ushering in an era of student-centered, personalized learning.
- Pictured: Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy It turns out that the Los Angeles Unified School District was not too big to fail. There were many moving parts, conflicting and compressed schedules, and other factors that contributed to the collapse of the program. It has had a chilling effect on one-to-one initiatives. The disclosure or thousands of emails with vendors, LA Unified canceled the contract with Apple and Pearson and open its one-to-one technology project to new bids. After the district has purchased about 75,000 iPads – enough for about 15 percent of its students and teachers. About half were preloaded with the Pearson software. The project was estimated to cost about $1.3 billion by the time it was to be complete. http://www.scpr.org/blogs/education/2014/08/25/17192/how-did-la-schools-decide-on-ipad-software-it-star/
- 10 billion here, 10 billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money. These are projections from the Center for Digital Education on IT spending in K-12 and higher education in the year ahead. It is not an issue with a lack of money in the system. It may be an issue of how that money is being used.
- Stephen Covey is famous for saying, begin with the end in mind. Where ed tech is concerned, the same applies. This is a framework by our John Halprin, reflecting the best practices in academic and business circles. [Reveal] We’re behind where the framework suggests we should be…. But there is still a 15 year runway for us to get it right.
- Here is the most recent report card on progress against that 2030 vision based on survey results from the Center for Digital Education.
- In the same survey, almost two-thirds of schools report having adopted e-textbooks or digital content – but they concede is being done in a limited, siloed fashion.
- A growing classroom trend is the rise of student bring-your-own-device (BYOD). Ask any teacher and they tell you that there is no doubt students BYOD each and everyday. More interestingly, is the fact that regardless of whether or not technology has been incorporated within the lessons, over 42% use their cell phones to regularly look up information related to what they’re learning in class. Educator opinion of student devices is mixed, but regardless, students are hacking the traditional system by adding their own devices to the learning experience.
- There is a myth that the Internet and integrated technology solutions cannot be used across the board in education because of the vast digital divide in our country - In March of 2015, President Obama put this myth to rest and announced that for the first time in history – over 98% of the American population had access to high-speed wireless Internet. This doesn’t diminish the fact that we need to ensure education is adaptive for those that don’t have access, but it also shines a light on the incredible opportunity educators have. They have a global, interconnected network of knowledge and resources at their disposal and the real challenge is helping educator understand it’s true potential.
- These trends are helping to shape the technology priorities for the public K-12 system….
- Community Colleges are prioritizing their technology investments around an increasingly mobile off-campus student population.
- And the priorities of colleges and universities compiled by Educause indicates that their priorities have returned to the fundamentals = with a focus on people, processes, and infrastructure.
- Much good work is being done to meet this little girl’s expectations …
- KIPP – the Knowledge is Power Program - is a national network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public charter schools dedicated to preparing students in underserved communities for college. It is driven by inevitably young, hard-charging teachers – a reflection of its founders who are alum of Teach for America. The signature feature is high behavioral and academic expectations for all students, the vast majority of whom are low-income, urban black and Hispanic kids. It’s this last feature that led KIPP and the others to be branded “No Excuses” schools, a label not universally embraced within the category. The reputation of the No Excuses model is complicated and often divisive among professional educators. Outside the education bubble in the broader public mind, however, these high-flying charters are much-adored, attractive young upstarts, and the antidote to the dark, dispiriting “dropout factories” of media caricature.
- An additional 6% have earned Associates degrees. Low-income black and Hispanic students are by far the least likely U.S. students to graduate from high school and attend a four-year college. Those who are accepted to college are least likely to stick around and earn a degree. For each one who earns a bachelor’s degree, 11 fall short somewhere along the line.
- The April 2011 release of KIPP’s College Completion Report changed the No Excuses narrative almost instantly from “college acceptance” to “college completion.” A bold and laudable exercise in transparency, the report gave ammunition to KIPP’s boosters and critics alike. Thirty-three percent of the earliest cohorts of KIPP middle-school students were found to have graduated college within six years, four times the average rate of students from underserved communities and slightly higher than the figure (31 percent) for all U.S. students. It was a clear and unambiguous accomplishment. Yet two out of three former KIPP students were failing to reach the bar, however audacious, that KIPP itself had established as “the essential stepping stone to rewarding work, a steady income, self-sufficiency and success.” KIPP has held fast to the idea that college is indispensable. The goal remains to see 75 percent of graduates earn a four-year college degree, comparable to the rate at which top-income-quartile students graduate. The bar has been set not by its critics but by KIPP itself: if KIPP and other No Excuses schools are to fulfill their promise as game changers in American education, and rewrite the script on reaching and teaching underserved kids, their graduates must not merely be accepted to college; they must demonstrate success once they get there. KIPP has identified a number of factors it believes are critical to raising its students’ college-completion rates, including enhanced academic preparedness; a set of “character strengths,” like “grit,” self-control, and optimism; matching each student with the right college; social and academic integration once they arrive on campus; and college affordability. The organization is making an increasingly aggressive effort to exercise some measure of control over each of these factors through partnerships with at least 20 colleges nationwide designed to create a pipeline to four-year colleges able to offer the greatest possible commitment and support to KIPP alumni. http://educationnext.org/no-excuses-kids-go-to-college/
- ABOUT CITIZEN SCHOOLS Founded: 1995 in Boston by Eric Schwarz and Ned Rimer Estimates for 2013-2014 Academic Year School partnerships: 32 Children served: 5,300 Volunteers engaged: 4,700 AmeriCorps members: 244 Citizen Schools is dedicated to helping all children discover and achieve their dreams. We mobilize a team to enable public middle schools in low-income communities to provide a longer learning day rich with opportunities. Our deep partnerships with schools put young adults on track to succeed by connecting the resources ofcommunities, companies, governments, and philanthropies. The opportunity gap There is a critical gap in education. But it isn’t an “achievement gap” as the media often describes it. It’s an opportunity gap. Students in upper-income families spend 300 more hours each year with adults than do the three million students in lower-income families. Upper-income students also benefit from almost $8,000 worth of enrichment activities yearly—robotics camp, piano lessons, academic tutoring, and more. We can close this gap, and help these three million students discover and achieve their dreams, by connecting students who want to learn and adults who have something to teach…families with big dreams and volunteers with big hearts…visionary school leaders and a non-profit with a proven model…citizens and schools. We can fill children’s afternoons with the kinds of moments of discovery that the nation’s most privileged parents don’t think twice about paying for. An innovative model Citizen Schools teachers become a special part of schools’ faculty, and are made up of passionate AmeriCorps members, aspiring educators, and community volunteers driven to fill afternoons with inspiring learning experiences.
- Pawtucket School District and Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy Announce District-Charter Collaboration to Personalize Learning for Students In September 2015, more than three hundred high school students enrolled at Pawtucket Learning Academy High School and Blackstone Valley Prep High School along with their teachers will partner for a truly innovative educational journey. The two Rhode Island high schools are partnering with Summit Public Schools, a leader in providing its students with a personalized experience. Summit is sharing its tools, curriculum and resources, as well as providing two weeks of professional development. This partnership promotes the opportunity to create a rich learning experience that allows every child to realize his or her highest potential. This experience is focused on the key elements of college & career readiness that set students up for success both academically and with the life and social skills they need. Pawtucket’s high school graduation rate has jumped 20 points in recent years. This learning experience focuses on the skills needed for college and career readiness. Key elements of the program include deeper learning that allows students to engage in projects that mimic and solve real-world problems, as well as a focus on 1:1 mentoring to help students learn how to plan, organize and prioritize their learning based on their individual needs and goals. Students also develop the skills to drive and own their learning, invaluable developing the habits and behaviors that lead to academic and personal success. Students at Pawtucket Learning Academy and BVP High School will use technology on a daily basis to research, publish, collaborate, and monitor progress. Every student will have access to a Chromebook, enabling them to access the curriculum outside their classroom walls.
- Pictured: An unidentified University of Nebraska-Lincoln Teachers College undergraduate works with students in this photo from the 1950s. For decades, Arthur Levine, the former president of Teachers College, Columbia University, has tried to imagine a new kind of institution for training teachers. He envisions a combination West Point and Bell Labs, where researchers could study alongside future educators, learning what works and what's effective in the classroom. That idea is now set to become a reality. In June 2015, Levine and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation announced a $30 million partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the goal of creating a better model for teacher training. The new approach to teacher preparation will focus on what Levine calls "competencies," not seat time. MIT, which doesn't have a school of education, will conduct the research to guide the new curriculum and develop technologies focused on digital learning. Levine says transparency will be a goal, and the lessons learned will be shared with education schools across the country. "Our hope is that they'll take our ideas, take our practices and adopt them themselves," says Levine. Sharon Robinson, head of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, says her group's 820 member institutions have always been wary of sweeping proposals, but this one is worth considering. "I will not be representing this as a threat to the membership of AACTE," Robinson says. In large part, she explains, because Levine's project is going to build on the innovation that's already going on in schools of education across the country. Besides, she says, Levine has a good track record of working with teachers' colleges, and that will go a long way in getting their collaboration. Levine says the Woodrow Wilson Academy for Teaching and Learning will open its doors as a graduate school of education in June 2017.
- Much of this energy is manifesting itself in the rise of S.T.E.A.M. (Science Technology Engineering Arts Mathematics) schools across the country. The goal of STEAM schools is to provide college ready K-12 institutions that focus more on project-based learning and less on traditional classroom instruction. STEAM schools embody what it means to truly flip a classroom around by providing personalized learning environment designed around each student and their individual needs. What started as a select movement with S.T.E.M. schools has been open-sourced with a new model that can be easily adopted and integrated into most K-12 learning environment.
- What if she and her friends prefer to learn outside of educational institutions? She is of a generation that is not just consumers – they are creators.
- In the 1990s, creation using technology was incredibly burdensome and restrictive due to the vast knowledge that was a prerequisite to adding to a greater ecosystem online. You had to have the right knowledge, equipment and business-savvy to take an idea and turn it into a marketable solution online. Learning how to enter this ecosystem required finding experts and bodies of knowledge that could be tapped into, with much patience, before you wrote your first line of code.
- Fast forward to today, and almost all the technical barriers to creating something new have been removed - allowing for people to learn in new ways and giving birth to new learning models. What you see of the screen is what happens every 60-seconds online. What you may not realize behind each like, photo, comment, video, etc. people are empower to create something new at the push of a button. If someone gets stuck today, they can Google an answer or watch a YouTube video from their cell phone to find the quickest and most optimal workaround.
- MOOCs are not without their flaws. As MOOCs are free—and they probably always will be—low completion rates will persist. And as long as there are lousy teachers—and there probably always will be—there will be lousy courses. But to condemn the entire model for these kinks would be like condemning Uber for the possibility of getting a bad driver or Airbnb for the chance that a guest might trash your house. These companies needed the freedom to figure out how to deal with these issues. Perhaps more importantly, they needed the space to figure out what purpose they really serve. It’s that kind of patience that’s allowed Uber to grow from a taxi service to an on-demand delivery giant, and enabled Airbnb to transform itself into a full-scale hospitality brand, not simply a tool for finding a cheap couch to crash on. To judge a breakthrough technology by only its earliest flaws is to ignore all the good it might do when given the time and the trust to do it. But studies like the one from MIT are providing an affirmation for the model and its advocates: that it’s possible to get a quality college education without the hefty price tag.
- In addition to connecting people to education online, MOOCs are also starting to find their way on campus, as universities like MIT and others are adopting what’s known as a blended learning model. In a blended learning environment, students receive most of their lectures by video so they can spend class time doing hands on work. At MIT, two out of every three undergrads use MOOCs as part of their on campus courses.
- Another unintended consequence of MOOCs is the massive amount of data they produce on how people learn best. EdX has found, for instance, that the longer a video lecture runs, the less time students spend watching it. So if a video lasts 40 minutes, students may only watch it for 2. If it’s 6 minutes long, they’ll watch the whole thing. Such insight questions the very format of the college lecture, which often involves a professor pontificating on a topic for an hour or more. “It says learners want to learn in bite-sized chunks,” he says. Now, edX has even launched A/B testing on its site, allowing professors to try out different methods of teaching and comparing student outcomes. “It’s how a professor can begin to learn what’s working and what’s not working and have a process for improving the course,” he says. More recently, edX found yet another application for its courses: college prep. In an effort to cut their budgets, school districts across the country have cancelled advanced placement courses, even as students increasingly look to those courses as a way to cut down on college tuition costs. EdX is now hoping to fill that gap by allowing students to take those courses online.
- n the nearly 50 years since its creation, about 80 million American children have watched Sesame Street. For many Americans, Jim Henson’s Muppets are iconic cultural figures that trigger childhood nostalgia. What many Americans might not associate with Sesame Street, however, are the rigorous standards for research and evaluation that continue to shape the show’s educational programming. Because each lesson is crafted with the input of experts in early education, you probably learned more from those Bert and Ernie sing-alongs than you ever realized. In a new study on how exposure to Sesame Street affects children’s educational performance, the Brookings Institution found that children living in places where the broadcast signal for Sesame Street was strong were 14 percent less likely to be behind in school compared to children living in places with a weak signal reception. The research has implications for the ongoing debate over methods for expanding access to early childhood education. Because Sesame Street boasts an extremely low cost-per-child—Kearney and Levine quote one estimate that prices the show’s production at $5 per child, per year—the show could be a readily affordable and scalable intervention. Sesame Street: Early education by MOOC “In essence,” Kearney and Levine write, “Sesame Street was the first MOOC.” MOOCs—or Massive Open Online Courses—have grown in popularity over the last several years as new technologies have enabled the transmission of educational programming, courses, and material to students around the world at a low cost. Today, most MOOCs cater to students in higher education, for example Stanford University’s Stanford Online initiative. Still, the authors hope their analysis can speak to the benefits of MOOCs for many educational purposes and levels. ---- http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brookings-now/posts/2015/06/sesame-street-was-the-original-mooc
- Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization created in 2006 by educator Salman Khan to provide "a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere". The organization produces micro lectures in the form of YouTube videos. Khan realized that remediation—going over and over something that you really ought to already know—is less embarrassing when you can do it privately, with no one watching. With the videos came drilling. He programmed Java modules that would fire questions at them automatically. If they got 10 questions right in a row, the software would push them to the next level, which had harder problems. (As a bonus, he could peek at the database online to make sure they were actually doing the practice.) Though Khan didn’t know the academic terminology at the time, he was implementing classic “mastery-based learning”—requiring students to prove they’ve conquered material before advancing. ---- http://www.wired.com/2011/07/ff_khan/
- Speaking of YouTube, life hackers and creatives are more likely to go to YouTube than the library when the have questions or want to learn how to do something. Not surprisingly, many of the videos for learning are created by Makers, that is members of the maker movement. "Maker spaces aren't in schools and they need to be," MAKE magazine founder Dale Dougherty told a crowd at Maker Faire in Michigan last summer. "Not just a summer camp, not just an after-school program." MAKE secured a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to build the "hacker spaces" in schools - a move some criticized because of its military ties. The money helped to launch maker spaces at a handful of Northern California schools this school year. The goal: more than 1,000 by 2016. ----- More: http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/post/2015/04/03/how-the-maker-movement-is-transforming-education
- But teachers and students are becoming makers – even if nobody has given it the official OK. Or maybe because nobody has given it the official OK makes it all the more compelling. Seth Godin points out that there is more than a little Thomas Edison that inspires maker movement – he is remembered for saying, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” It runs counter to a high-stakes, grades-obsession to “fail until it works” but at the heart of the maker movement is the notion, “if it’s risky it’s making.” At the same time, making happens when things that were hard become easier – thanks in large measure to technologies such as 3D printers, sensors, accelerometers, and the iPhone … http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/post/2015/04/03/how-the-maker-movement-is-transforming-education
- The new generation of makers in local schools have national and international venues to share their work, and learn from other school-age makers. For example, the LEGO Education Builder Award is now an integral part the 2015 Google Science Fair – both of which were created recently and outside of the school system per se. This award honors a student who uses an innovative, hands-on approach to solve some of the greatest engineering challenges. The winner, along with a parent or guardian, will travel to The LEGO Group headquarters in Billund, Denmark, where the student will meet with LEGO Education employees and designers. The student will tour the LEGO Manufacturing facilities, LEGO Idea House and receive tickets to LEGOLAND Denmark. The winner will also receive a classroom set for their school of the LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 along with curriculum. They will also receive a custom LEGO brick build designed by one of the LEGO Education designers in Billund, Denmark. Additionally, the student will have access to work with a LEGO Education executive for 6 months as a mentor to learn how to launch a business and the art of entrepreneurship. The regional finalists will be announced on July 2, 2015 and then the 20 finalists will be selected and announced on August 4, 2015 who will be flown to Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. for the live, final event on September 21, 2015.
- We have already seen many ways in which 3D printing and mathematics have converged. Most commonly it has been used to help students envision graphs and mathematical models. Some students have a difficult time grasping numbers and diagrams that they can only see on paper. This isn’t a learning disability, but rather just the way that some of our brains function. 3D printing helps those students who have a more difficult time envisioning equations, elaborate graphs, and complex mathematical models to more easily see them through tangible representations. Most importantly though, 3D printing brings a “cool” factor into a subject which could normally be quite boring. The Simon Foundation for the advanced research in math and basic science, has an video on this.
- There is no reason education can’t be fun. In fact, when its fun, it engaging. And when its engaging, its effective – and kids learn. So there is considerable promise to bringing gamification to education. To make the argument with big numbers, maybe there are lessons to be had in the experience of the 5 million people who play games an average of 45 hours per week for helping the 1.2 million students who fail to graduate. Why not apply the things that keep people playing to keeping kids learning. [Reveal One] It shows advancement to keep you interested. [Reveal Two] In includes incentives, rewards and habit-making cues to keep you engaged. [Reveal Three] In ups the ante with success, revealing new things, and introduces challenges that require multiple skills to solve. http://www.knewton.com/gamification-education/
- As education increasingly occurs online or through educational software, it is creating an explosion of data that can be used to improve educational effectiveness and support basic research on learning. It has given rise to new subfields in data science: educational data mining, learning analytics, learning at scale, student modeling, and artificial intelligence in education communities, as well as standard data mining methods frequently applied to educational data. Insights for teachers through big data The features of online learning that lead to better learning. The sequence of questions most effective for a specific student. Which student actions are associated with better grades. Which students are at risk for not completing the course. Three key data sets for big data in education System-wide Data: This includes grades, disciplinary records and attendance. This data can be used to draw inferences that can inform recommendations. Inferred Student Data: Analysis could explain whether an incorrect answer was due to lack of proficiency, distraction, or a badly-worded question? It can also tell you the probability of a student passing a quiz. This is a difficult type of data to generate, requiring low-cost algorithmic assessment norming at scale. Inferred Content Data: This could include questions asking how well a piece of content performs across a group of students, or how well a question assesses what it intends to.
- Luis von Ahn, a professor at Carnegie Mellon and creator of a startup called Duolingo.The site and smartphone app help people learn foreign languages—something he can empathize with, having learned English as a young child in Guatemala. But the instruction happens in a very clever way. The company has people translate texts in small phrases at a time, or evaluate and fix other people’s translations. Instead of presenting invented phrases, as is typical for translation software, Duolingo presents real sentences from documents that need translation, for which the company gets paid. After enough students have independently translated or verified a particular phrase, the system accepts it—and compiles all the discrete sentences into a complete document. Duolingo is a delightful “twin-win”: students get free foreign language instruction while producing something of economic value in return. The most important insight has uncovered is that the very question “how people learn best” is wrong. It’s not about how “people” learn best—but which people, specifically. There has been little empirical work on what is the best way to teach a foreign language, he explains. There are lots of theories, positing that, say, one should teach adjectives before adverbs. But there is little hard data. And even when data exists, von Ahn notes, it’s usually at such a small scale—a study of a few hundred students, for example—that using it to reach a generalizable finding is shaky at best. Why not base a conclusion on tens of millions of students over many years? With Duolingo, this is now becoming possible. Crunching Duolingo’s data, von Ahn spotted a significant finding. The best way to teach a language differs, depending on the students’ native tongue and the language they’re trying to acquire. In the case of Spanish speakers learning English, it’s common to teach pronouns early on: words like “he,” “she,” and “it.” But he found that the term “it” tends to confuse and create anxiety for Spanish speakers, since the word doesn’t easily translate into their language. So von Ahn ran a few tests. Teaching “he” and “she” but delaying the introduction of “it” until a few weeks later dramatically improves the number of people who stick with learning English rather than drop out. Some of his findings are counterintuitive: women do better at sports terms; men lead them in cooking- and food-related words. In Italy, women as a group learn English better than men. And more such insights are popping up all the time. The story of Duolingo underscores one of the most promising ways that big data is reshaping education. It is a lens into three core qualities that will improve learning: feedback, individualization, and probabilistic predictions. From: Learning with Big Data: The Future of Education Viktor Mayer-Schönberger & Kenneth Cukier 60 pages, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/learning_with_big_data_the_future_of_education
- The Colorado Department of Education is six years (begun 2009) into its Relevant Information to Strengthen Education (RISE) program. That program is bringing together more personalized data about its 860,000 students, 2,000 schools and 178 districts. Policy makers would be able to tell if specific programs, say, for reading intervention, have an impact on student performance. "Information doesn't tell the whole story, but we've been able to get a glimpse on what's working or not working," Domagala said. "We probably have a ways to go to where we can definitively say here are things that are proven to work and here are things the data is not supporting.” Using behavioral economics (specifically social norming), yhe state wants to help show students and educators the difference between their performance and where they need to be if they want to be college or career ready. It also would like to use performance data to develop an "early warning system." For instance, if it finds that when middle school students struggle in math, it ultimately affects their ability to get into college, it could develop ways to intervene and boost those students' long-term performance.
- When conventional funding sources are out of reach, creatives and innovators are now turning to Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites. The reboot of Reading Rainbow is the most successful (and most ballyhooed) education kickstarter to date – where over 100,000 people pledged $5.4 million to bring the popular kids TV show back for a new digital generation. Critics claimed that it was funded by a bunch of baby boomers who missed the show that they raised their kids on (and the that Reading Rainbow model was obsolete because, well, kids today create rather than just consume media.) Still, it is 100,000 people who volunteered $5.4 million – opening up possibilities for the next innovation …
- I’m not saying that The Apollo 11 Virtual Reality Experience is that next big thing. Much more modest than Reading Rainbow, the creatives behind it have raised the equivalent of $58,000US to render archival Apollo 11 films as a … [Reveal] navigable VR environment using Oculus helmets. Oculus is now part of Facebook. Imagine the possible reach for science, technology, and history teaching that no classroom, no educational institution, and no space agency could have done otherwise.
- KlabLab started a nationwide tour to help uncover new ways to learn by changing the entire learning experience. KlabLab has gone from school-to-school to take the most pressing challenges faces students and turn them into interactive and consumable media. Flash cards needed an upgrade and KlabLab scratched that itched and helped students learn in a format they were most versed it – music. During KlabLab’s first tour, they discovered that not only do students respond to new media for learning, they are also avid creators of it already. KlabLab incubated this realization and worked directly with students to create a series of music tracks and music videos to break down complex topics like molecular biology. Students stayed after school and showed up at the crack of dawn every morning just to engage with the creation process demonstrating they were excited about learning. Imagine if this same hands-on model was applied in more ways.
- A group of students at Rockdale Elementary (in a Cincinnati suburb) are combining healthy living with technology and starting Wednesday, you can see the finished product. Last year, the fifth graders at Rockdale were given the task to create a project that would help combat childhood obesity, these kids were more than up to the task. They created an app that allows children to track how many calories, how many grams of fat and how much cholesterol they're taking in with each and every food item they eat. The app is called “Healthy Run” and it's a part of a collaboration with Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Medical Center and the Partnership for Innovation in Education, otherwise known as PIE, the kids also had help from professors at NKU to develop the technology for the app, which rewards kids with points for making healthy eating choices. Since the students began working on the app last year, it's turned into more than just a project. Principal Belinda Tubbs-Wallace. School administrators say that not only are the kids buying into the concept, but for the most part their parents are as well. They say parental involvement is just as important because then healthy eating is something they do not only at school but also at home. Read More at: http://www.local12.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/Students-create-app-for-healthy-eating-140936.shtml
- Whether it a teacher who teaches beyond the test. Or a student who helps to teach his parents or siblings to use the tablet he brings home from school. Or whether it watching a Khan Academy video … Or taking all or part of a course through a MOOC … Or learning how to understand and use math in new ways by creating new things on a 3D printer … Or learning by doing through the Maker community … Or rebooting a TV show for a new generation to encourage families to read together … Or a virtual reality experience to explore the lessons of an early space mission … Of creating an app to encourage classmates to be mindful about their health… … small changes have a huge impact.
- Yes, kids need structure. Yes, the economy (and society as a whole) need kids and adults who can work within social norms. Yet Google has learned something about people – if you give them freedom, they will amaze you. And the thing that has been true of people throughout history is that if you don’t give people freedom, they will take it.
- We’re thinking about our next act too … with an innovator and creative at the helm of our Center for Digital Education. Dr. Ray will be joining us in mid-July after the end of the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools’ school year where she oversees the design, implementation, and evaluation of instructional technology programs. Dr. Ray began her remarkable career as a middle school science teacher. After publishing an assessment to measure technology literacy in 1999, she conducted research in the US, Canada and South Africa on the use of technology in the K-12 classroom and the use of distance learning technologies to facilitate engaging learning environments. Dr. Ray is a member of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) where she is Chair of the ISTE Board of Directors. She also serves on the board of eLearn Institute and continues to serve on the Davidson County Community Education Commission. Dr. Ray was appointed by Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam to the Advisory Council on Alternative Education in 2013 and she served on the Board of Directors for the Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education from 2007-2012.