GETideas.org is the incubator where education leaders can develop their professional learning networks. This community provides tools, research, and inspiration to help transform learning institutions. The primary goal of GETideas.org is to bring people together to exchange ideas towards solving education challenges. During the last few months, GETideas.org has been specifically exploring four themes particularly relevant to today’s school leaders. These themes have been: -The Cultivation of Leadership-The Design of…
A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age
January 24, 2013EdSurge discusses a Bill of Rights and Principles, newly developed by a group of people passionate about learning, serving today’s students, and using every available tool to respond better to the needs of students in a global, interactive, digitally connected world....
Digital Content: What Does the Future Hold for Education Systems?
January 23, 2013GETideas.org hosted this GooglePlus hangout on the future of digital content. The online discussion featured a panel of education experts, including Nicole Allen, affordable-textbooks advocate, Student PIRGS; Una Daly, communication college outreach director, OpenCourseWare Consortium; and Cable Green, director of global...
Explaining Inequalities in School Achievement: A Realist Analysis
January 22, 2013In Explaining Inequalities in School Achievement, author Roy Nash argues that a realist framework for the sociological explanation of educational group differences can, and must be, constructed. A move to such an explanatory framework will allow society to take into account the...
Education 3.0: Seven Steps to Better Schools
January 14, 2013In Education 3.0: Seven Steps to Better Schools, renowned educator and technology expert Jim Lengel provides a refreshing and hopeful picture of what schools should look like, including a groundbreaking seven-step process for envisioning and building them that draws on the...
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April 19, 2013This is the first of two new reports from Project Tomorrow using data from their widely heralded 2012 Speak Up Survey. Part 1 starts out stating the importance of digital considerations in education, “We are at a cosmic moment in K-12 education. The conflux of the impeding implementation of Common Core State Standards (and other new state standards) with the advent of new, high quality, educationally rigorous and innovative digital tools…
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April 16, 2013On April 12, 2013, educational technology advocacy groups including the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SEDTA), and SIIA’s Ed Tech Government Forum held the Washington Educational Technology Policy Summit. At this meeting, FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel noted that the requirements for Common Core online assessments require better broadband connections. E-Rate was originally put into action…
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April 15, 2013Silicon Valley understands the value of computer science, and more related education initiatives seem to be emerging from Northern California, perhaps because of an increased emphasis on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education in the United States. Previously, GETIdeas.org has pointed to resources such as Stanford’s Makers in Residence program, SparkFun’s National Tour, Code.org and Code Summer+. Now comes an initiative geared towards the elementary school set, Tynker, a…
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April 12, 2013Technology-driven innovation is alive and well in the US and beyond, according to EdSurge‘s Tony Wan who recently penned a column for Fast Company magazine. In this piece, Wan gives us an idea of who is playing in the ed tech incubator space and speculates on implications for further growth. Tech incubators have traditionally been hubs where start ups can work, collaborate and learn from each other and experienced professionals…
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April 11, 2013DMLcentral has published another useful blog post; this time from the Mozilla Foundation’s Doug Belshaw. With support from the MacArthur Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation has been busy developing an open badging system that allows people to get recognition for skills learned in formal and informal learning environments. According to the Open Badges web site, “It’s free software and an open technical standard any organization can use to create, issue and…
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April 9, 2013The New York Times reports on a new tool that may help publishers and educators gain insight into the reading habits of college students. Silicon Valley-based CourseSmart tracks data points such as skipped pages, neglecting not to highlight key passages in the text, lack of note taking and how many times a digital textbook has been opened. Using this data, CourseSmart creates “an engagement index” for individual students. The theory…
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April 5, 2013Michael Robbins, a senior adviser for nonprofit partnership at the US Department of Education, reflects on his recent speaking opportunity at SxSW in this blog post. He notes, “Many conversations were intensely focused on technology to support school-based initiatives, but missing attention on how digital learning should connect students to their passions, peers, communities, and careers. We will miss essential opportunities to transform schools if transitions primarily create digital versions of…
