A new paper entitled Launching Successful Readers: the Role of ICT in Early-Grade Literacy Success has been published by the Joan Ganz Cooney Foundation. The intended audience is policy makers and educational technology developers. This intentionally brief report calls for interested parties to consider applying literacy research to addressing barriers to literacy growth and to the design of comprehensive literacy programs with the goal of avoiding the creation of more…
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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March 10, 2013The value proposition for educational technology seems to periodically challenged in the media, and there’s a bit of that in this NPR piece. Referring to a recent Pew study on teachers’ use of technology and several fairly superficial examples of student learning, NPR laments the fact that there hasn’t been much of a correlation between test scores and use of technology in schools, “So far, there hasn’t been a way…
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March 9, 2013Stanford University’s ‘Makers-in-Residence’ is an initiative designed by researcher Paulo Blikstein to give secondary students more in-depth experience with engineering and design thinking. Now in its third year, a cohort of 12 students participates in a variety of activities and challenges within the university’s Transformative Learning Technologies Lab for approximately 8 weeks. Not only is this experience giving hands-on design experience to students, it is providing fodder for research by…
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March 8, 2013Summer DIY activities are popping up for kids in the United States, First, Maker Education has announced a Maker Corps that will mentor students in Maker Spaces housed in community centers, schools, and libraries. SparkFun is also planning on taking their DIY work on the road, teaching courses across the country on engineering-oriented topics such as computer programming, the PicoBoard Scratch sensor, SparkFun Inventor Kit and e-textiles. Learn more about…
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March 6, 2013In January, Codeacademy and the White House announced a joint initiative to encourage youth to learn computer programming called Code Summer+. Codeacademy’s co-founder, Zach Sims, declared that “coding is the new literacy” and this seems to be part of a larger movement to cultivating awareness of the importance of computer science. Code Summer+ is part of a larger youth jobs initiative from the U.S government, and is designed to prepare more…
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March 5, 2013In this blog published in January of 2013, Mimi Ito announced the publication on a new report on connected learning. Principles underlying this research agenda and learning framework include the following: Learning Principles Interest-powered Peer-supported Academically oriented Design Principles Production-centered Openly networked Shared purpose Core Values Equity Social connection Full participation Download the full report and summary here. Make sure to also check out the Connected Learning web site and…
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March 5, 2013Inspired by the Educate to Innovate Campaign, President Obama’s initiative to promote a renewed focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, the National STEM Video Game Challenge is a multi-year competition whose goal is to motivate interest in STEM learning among America’s youth by tapping into students’ natural passion for playing and making video games. The challenge is open to middle and high school individual students and…
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March 4, 2013Code.org is a new non-profit aimed at improving computer science education. The main goal of this organization is to make sure that every student in every school has an opportunity to learn to code. Computer programming is today’s “superpower” in education. Check out their web site and this promotional video featured a variety of celebrities.
