Not all adolescent play takes the form of steps up Maslow’s pyramid.
Action Collabs and Rapid Fire Presentations at Big Ideas Fest 2011
It is almost six o’clock on Tuesday and I am sitting in the lobby of the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay at the Big Ideas Fest 2011. At the core of this unique conference is a product development process called an Action Collab. Think Startup Weekend with a focus on big ideas in education, […]
How Do We Measure the Value of EdTech?
For better or worse, NCLB has forced public schools to be data driven. School leaders think hard every time they make a purchase, condone a new course, or approve a field trip request. And it’s not just because their purchasing budgets have shrunk by 50% in each of the last three years. School boards, accreditation […]
The Alchemy of EdTech – Predicting Future Trends
Prognostication is an occult art usually left to wizards, be they charlatans or visionaries; Nostradamus or Kurzweil. In EdTech, however, there is a global cooperative engaged in predicting future trends on a yearly basis – and they’re pretty good at it. The New Media Consortium’s Horizon Report is an annual view into trends in education […]
How families should be choosing a high school
Education is a social enterprise. So is the process of selecting a high school. Parents talk to their friends with school-aged children and seek their opinions. Sometimes this anecdotal reporting is insightful. I suspect, given how few parents spend time in their children’s high schools during the school day, that these exchanges are rife with […]
Kids Will Rise to Match Their Own Facebook Profile #EdTech #Education #SocialMedia
Instant messaging on AOL was one thing, checking-in everywhere you go, tweeting about the experience you are having, and then instantly sharing the photos you take while you are there is the next level. Twitter was founded in 2006; Facebook only two years before that. This means that the tweens who were early adopters to […]
New #EdTech, Old Teachers, The Adoption Myth #ISTE
An unfortunate assumption that edupreneurs frequently make is one that is also made by administrators inside the system; the ageist assumption that older teachers are unlikely to change their practice. It is a small minority of teachers in their later years that refuse to change their practice. My experience has been just the opposite of […]
The #EdTech Backchannel in the Classroom? Really?
Yes, really. The backchannel can work in the classroom, as it does at a conference, if a teacher can monitor the conversation as it is happening. If you are making a product that includes a backchannel application, make sure any student to student messages or student to whole class messages pass through a teacher filter […]