May 2013
1 post
Which Way for K12 Blended Learning? (Part 2 -... →
Just beyond the mountains, there is a land where unicorns run free, jumping from rainbow to rainbow. The children call the land “Edtech Nirvana.”
It may be that education moves at such a glacial pace that it is possible to see into the future. However, predicting the future is difficult and conventional wisdom can be extraordinarily unreliable. Here are a few things I’m thinking about as I...
February 2013
2 posts
Which Way For K12 Blended Learning? Part 1:... →
Hard to believe it has been two years since we published The rise of K12 blended learning. Here are a few things I think I’ve learned over the last two years…
EdSurge: Is Your School Ready to Date a Start-Up... →
Here is some dating advice for K12 schools and startups that are interested in one another…
August 2012
1 post
Investing in Education Innovation
This was originally posted on the Innosight Institute Education Blog.
Ask yourself, would the next Rocketship Education or Goalbook grow in your backyard? If not, what would it take? One thing is for sure: education innovation does not happen by accident.
Tom Vander Ark recently made some great suggestions of different ways to invest in blended learning by dollar size.
Here is a broader...
July 2012
1 post
Education and the illusion of expertise
This entry originally ran at Dropout Nation.
Okay! Okay. My turn. You don’t have a crystal ball, you can’t look at a kid and predict his future any more than I can. I’ve sat at those kitchen tables with you and listened to you tell those parents ‘When I know, I know! And when it comes to your son, I know’. And you don’t. You don’t!
—Billy Beane,...
June 2012
4 posts
The future of education? It’s a love story.
[This was originally posted on EdSurge.]
******
There are two vibrant conversations going on in education right now.
The first centers around creativity, and is led by the likes of Ken Robinson, Tony Wagner, and Dale Dougherty.
The second is about personalization and innovation, and includes Sal Khan, Tom Vander Ark, Sebastian Thrun, and Clay Christensen.
The two conversations couldn’t be...
4 tags
A Learn.ist Board for K-12 Blended Learning Models →
See whether you like this one or MentorMob better.
2 tags
A MentorMob Playlist for K12 Blended Learning... →
Enjoy! Need to try Learn.ist and Gooru next…
May 2012
10 posts
School Design 101: The Class Schedule is Your...
[This was originally posted on the Innosight Institute Education Blog.]
******
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
—Alice in Wonderland—
I am fortunate to collaborate with a number of amazing educators who want to completely reinvent high school education.
Through this process, I began to notice that school design frequently...
Ten Books That Make Me Want to Reinvent School
The Accidental Creative, Henry Todd (2011). The “conception” and “birth” of our ideas are small bookends to the real work of creating - the process.
The Architecture of Learning, Kevin Washburn (2010). To build true understanding you must use “perceptual thought.” That is thinking that overlays the new data with known experience and blends the two to produce...
“Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.”
– Winston Churchill
Roundup on Maker Faire and Future of Learning...
Maker Faire brought out a flurry of ideas about how making, innovation and design are causing us to re-think education. Here are my favorites. Huge thank you to all the bloggers for helping celebrate Maker Faire!
Beth Rabbitt: Teacher Innovation, Making, and Underwater Mood Robots (EdUpgrade)
Robert Schwartz: Enabling Schools of the Future (Huffington Post)
Tom Vander Ark: Maker High - Why...
2 tags
I Want a School For Makers
Guest post by Josh Densen, Bricolage Academy
I can’t wait for Maker Faire, the two-day festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness planned that starts today in San Mateo, California. It’s a little strange that someone trying to start a new charter school in New Orleans would spend the time travelling halfway across the country to the world’s coolest show and tell exposition. But in many...
2 tags
I Want a Classroom Full of Craftsmen
Guest post by Ben Daley, High Tech High
“Probably the greatest and commonest mistake we all make is to forget that learning is a necessary incident of dealing with real situations.”
John Dewey (p. 4), 1915
craftsmanship noun workmanship, technique, expertise, mastery, artistry His carvings are known for their style, detail and craftsmanship.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/craftsmanship
“I want...
Innosight Institute: We Need a Fab Lab For... →
A modest proposal to shake up school design. My latest post on Innosight Institute Education Blog.
3 tags
HuffPostEdu: Risk Should Not Be A Four Letter Word... →
Great post by my good friend Rob Schwartz. My favorite part:
As I imagine what schools may look like, I bump up against my pre-conceived and ingrained notions of what school has always been — seat time, mandated testing, teacher credentialing, students in rows of desks, classroom management, staffing, custodial needs, and on and on and on. These throw up barriers to any new notion of what...
2 tags
“I don’t think about failure - I think about iterating.”
– Olin College engineering student
1 tag
Innosight Institute Updates Blended Learning... →
From Michael Horn and Heather Staker:
The updated taxonomy includes a number of changes. It eliminates two of the six blended-learning models—Face-to-Face Driver and Online Lab—because they duplicate other models and make the categories too rigid to accommodate the diversity of blended-learning models in practice. The new definitions are intentionally broad and open, rather than specific. They...
