August - 2015

Aug 26, 2015
3 min

3 Ways to Avoid School-as-Usual

50.1 million children will attend school in grades PK-12 this fall, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Of those, approximately 1.3 million will be entering prekindergarten. Expectations and tensions run high in many families as their only or youngest child enters the public or private school system. Whether or not their child has attended pre-school prior to this, it is still a major transition, and most kids struggle with the change, as do their paren

Aug 24, 2015
4 min

What If You Built an EdTech Company and Not Enough People Came?

In January, Ambient Insight reported that global investments in learning technology reached $2.34 billion worldwide. In the U.S. market, with the industry reporting as much as $1.61 billion in funding halfway through this year, many would think we don’t need to worry too much about the future of edtech. After all, this already surpasses 2014 totals of $1.36B. The EdSurge Edtech Index lists nearly 1,600 different products in categories that include curriculum products, teacher

Aug 24, 2015
5 min

Can We Teach Someone to Be More Self-Directed?

If you are familiar with the story of Timothy Doner, the kid who taught himself 20 languages, you are probably not only impressed by his linguistic prowess but also by his belief that language opens you to a new world view. Doner tells us that his language learning journey began after years of instruction at school, instruction that started with French class in third grade and continued with Latin in seventh grade. He was unable to converse in French, and in learning Latin, h

Aug 24, 2015
2 min

Can We Back Into a Plan for More Relevant Learning Design?

If we look ahead to tomorrow’s workplace, we know that employees need to be increasingly: Agile thinkers and problem solvers Technically savvy Capable of managing and sorting through massive amounts of information If we look at today’s college graduates, what do we see? In one New York Times report, Steven Ratner describes millennials as “the best educated generation.” Yet, despite his characterization of them as “engaged, upbeat and open to change,” he also notes that “They

Aug 23, 2015
4 min

Maker Spaces and Digital Fabrication Democratize Learning

As Paulo Blikstein noted “Innovation and collaborative problem-solving are core skills for virtually any career, and yet those are the very elements that have been pushed out of the schools by the mandates of standardized testing.” If you’re a parent who is frustrated by this, perhaps you sign your child up an after-school robotics class, or you register for an online program such as DIY.org, or maybe it’s a kind of hybrid plan and you order your daughter (or son) a Blink Bli

Aug 23, 2015
3 min

What Did You Do This Summer?

When people ask “How’s your summer going?” it reflects a paradigm built around a traditional school year calendar but which applies to a subset of the population who can really take advantage of that model. Of course, I remember the beach-filled days of my childhood with great fondness. My parents provided wonderful summers of abandonment that sharply contrasted with the “regular” part of the year when I was in school. So now, when people ask me the question, I simply say, “I

Aug 23, 2015
2 min

Start AIMMING for Success

It’s time to start AIMMing for success. AIMM is a simple acronym for Academics Integrated with Making and Mentoring, a straightforward formula for achievement. It requires the blending of academics, a maker curriculum, and mentoring to help build the knowledge and skills to succeed in an uncertain future. Each of these three components reach, of course, across wide swaths of territory. But they present a means of preparing our kids for a future hinted at but not yet fully def

Aug 23, 2015
5 min

Are You Planning on Sending Your Child Back to School as Usual?

What if the school to which your child returned in the fall was so different from what the industrial age, traditional school looked and behaved like that you could barely recognize it? What if instead, your child was welcomed into a building without classrooms, a community of learners centered on a foundational set of learning standards and was provided the tools and resources with which to meet those standards? In such a school, there would no longer be the need to: Report

Aug 23, 2015
3 min

Questions Raised by a Placeholder Diploma

Last week I observed over 600 students from the LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts graduate at the esteemed Avery Fisher Hall. Lining the aisles in uniform white caps and gowns, the students expressed their individuality mainly via style of footwear and cap decoration. From dangerously high heels to worn-out Converse, and from glittery bulls-eyes to a construction hat mounted with a mortarboard, our kids made their way toward the stage to the accompaniment of the La

Aug 23, 2015
3 min

Letter to My High School Graduate

Tomorrow you will participate in a ceremony at one of this city’s most prestigious cultural institutions to celebrate your graduation from high school. I am so proud of you for making it to this point and for the choices you have made in order to get here. And I so respect the decisions you have come to in planning out the next few years of your life. I know that situations change, and yours probably will, too, but you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and you’re off to

Rewriting Paradigms

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