"eith Devlin is a well-known mathematician and the author of many popular math books. He is co-founder and Executive Director of Stanford University's Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute and is well known as the "NPR Math Guy." He's also a big fan of using video games as a teaching tool and the founder of an education technology company called BrainQuake."
"The guy who helped create the "Hour of Code," an event that even got President Barack Obama pecking out a line of JavaScript, almost sounded apologetic.
"Not everyone should 'code,'" acknowledges Hadi Partovi, CEO and founder of Code.org, in a chat with EdSurge. But everyone should learn to think like a computer scientist, he adds. "We're about helping schools teach computer science," Partovi says, namely, to frame questions or information the way that computer scientists do."
Wizer is a fantastic free tool for creating simple digital worksheets that enable learners and teachers to do some pretty complex things. When I first discovered the tool a few months back I was really impressed by how easy it was to create really engaging blended learning content for class or homework, so it's great to be able to publish this Q & A with Nira Mayorchik Sheleg the Co-founder & CEO.
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"I've tried to get into coding but my cleavage is just so distracting," quipped one young woman in this provocative YouTube video.
"When I'm not menstruating, I'm ovulating, so there's no time to code at all," lamented another.
If this all sounds entirely ludicrous, it's supposed to.
Girls Who Code, a nonprofit dedicated to bridging the gender gap in tech, created this satirical clip to feature in a three-part series that explores the ridiculous gender stereotypes that exist in the world of computer science.
"We wanted to try something different and use humor and satire to question the stereotypes that tell our girls that coding is not for them," said Reshma Saujani, the organization's founder and CEO, in a statement. "Our hope is these videos will spark a much-needed conversation about the messages we send our young women and what we can do to create a more inclusive, well-rounded image of a programmer.""
"2006 wasn't just the year of the world's most famous TED Talk. It's also the year that Ignite Talks-a rapid-fire presentation style-originated.
These bite-sized presentations take up no more than 5 minutes each, and are starting to show up in more and more education venues-spreading virally like EdCamps, and popping up at conferences like ISTE and EdSurge's own Tech for Schools Summits. The movement has grown steadily to a total of 350+ Ignite organizing teams since the first event debuted in Seattle in 2006.
Speak with educators and entrepreneurs, and there's talk of applying the Ignite Talk model to professional development, student projects, or investor pitches. Why? According to Ignite Talk co-founder Brady Forrest, it's an easily-approachable format that forces people to talk succinctly and hone their public speaking-a skill that just about anyone who presents to groups of people or students should work to develop.
EdSurge caught up with Forrest and a number of Ignite Talkers to learn more."
"Taking friendship bracelets into the digital age, Jewelbots teaches young girls to tinker and code their way into the exploding world of wearable technology.
Whether it's the Queen of Coding Grace Hopper or the new wave of women innovation engineers, fashion brand CEOs and musicians, young girls today have a growing number of role models who use science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in their recipes for success.
Having more role models is critical, but according to the founders of Jewelbots-the so-called friendship bracelets for the iPhone era-the next generation of women leaders and inventors will chase STEM endeavors at an early age, like a game of tag."
"In some ways you can think of Ooomf as a kind of "Pinterest for apps." Users can build catalog of apps that follow a particular theme, and share catalogs with other users. Founder Mikael Cho says if you "identify as a creative, or a traveling nomad, or a hustling innovator, and we have different apps in each category, but the entire idea is to be a part of the whole life cycle of an app, from idea to creation.""
"Using grapes to teach??? If that is your first thought then I am going to take it you are not yet familiar with Vine. To put it simply, Vine is a mobile app (iOS, Android, Windows) that enables users to create and post short (7 seconds max) looping video clips. These videos can then be shared on Vine's own social network, or to other social media services such as Twitter and Facebook.
So how does this fit into the classroom? How can anything be taught in just 7 seconds? Well, author, teacher trainer, #Edchat founder and Twitter all-star Shelly Terrell has put together a very cool slide deck to show you how:"
"Augmented reality is fun, but what makes it better than computer programs, online learning or even book reports and flashcards? To find out, we spoke to teacher-turned-techie Drew Minock, co-founder of the educational blog TwoGuysAndSomeiPads.com and a "4D Education Evangelist" for the augmented reality company Daqri. Here are his thoughts on how augmented reality can have an impact on education: "
""There's a huge gap between the needs and requirements of the job market of the 21st century and what the education system is delivering," said Vishal Talreja, founder and CEO of Dream A Dream, a Bangalore-based organization that prepares young people from vulnerable backgrounds to succeed in a changing world.
Talreja is right -- neither employers nor education leaders (not to mention some students themselves) would argue otherwise. But it is the second point Talreja made before the 2015 LEGO Foundation IDEA Conference that educator-innovators should pay the most attention to: "Learning spaces, which could be physical spaces of learning or just safe environments for learning, are extremely critical."
A learning space differs in both look and feel from the traditional classroom. In the past year, we've met social entrepreneurs with an eye on education who are creating cost-effective methods to infuse schools with the type of culture and design that students need to better develop their curiosity, creativity, and imagination, and better achieve desired learning outcomes."
""There's a huge gap between the needs and requirements of the job market of the 21st century and what the education system is delivering," said Vishal Talreja, founder and CEO of Dream A Dream, a Bangalore-based organization that prepares young people from vulnerable backgrounds to succeed in a changing world.
Talreja is right -- neither employers nor education leaders (not to mention some students themselves) would argue otherwise. But it is the second point Talreja made before the 2015 LEGO Foundation IDEA Conference that educator-innovators should pay the most attention to: "Learning spaces, which could be physical spaces of learning or just safe environments for learning, are extremely critical."
A learning space differs in both look and feel from the traditional classroom. In the past year, we've met social entrepreneurs with an eye on education who are creating cost-effective methods to infuse schools with the type of culture and design that students need to better develop their curiosity, creativity, and imagination, and better achieve desired learning outcomes."
"If you build it, will they come? That is the question many schools have about finding room on campus for a "makerspace."
The just-released 6th annual New Media Consortium Horizon Report K-12 Edition listed makerspaces as an emerging technology in the year-or-less adoption timeframe. "Makerspaces are increasingly being looked to as a method for engaging learners in creative, higher-order problem-solving through hands-on design, construction, and iteration," the report noted.
That sounds great, but what is the definition of a makerspace, and how do you launch one? As Dale Dougherty, one of the founders of the maker movement, has said, a makerspace might share aspects of shop class, an art studio, science labs and home economics. It could focus on electronics, robotics, woodworking, sewing, laser cutting, programming or any combination of those."
"I've been reflecting on what it was like each time I started a new venture. For Rubicon Project, my co-founders and I were brimming with excitement, passion, and energy. We knew what we were creating was going to disrupt the media industry and make it better, faster, smarter.
But maintaining that high has been difficult. Eight years later, I've found that our excitement, passion and energy at Rubicon comes in waves. It's so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day monotony and slowly drift away from the very mindset that is our company's foundation. How can we return to that attitude of innovation?
So I spent some time wondering what had first motivated us: the original idea? The opportunity we recognized? The team we had assembled?
Then I realized it had been the opportunity for disruption. We all recognized an opportunity and had ideas on how to capitalize on that opportunity, but the excitement, passion, and energy was born out of the realization that a single idea could change the way an entire industry operated.
My next thought jumped to other famous inventors and wondering about their disposition when they created their innovations. This step required some research, so I decided to study some of history's greatest innovators. I reflected upon the innovative people I work with and those that I most admire. Through this process, I discovered that there is a definitive mindset of innovation, and I broke it down to seven attitudes."
"Jewelbots are colorful, programmable, smart friendship bracelets to get girls excited about coding. Sure, they're pretty and interactive: but what Jewelbots founders really want is to inspire tween and teen girls to understand the basics of coding, and take on building features of their own.
Girls can program the bracelets right away without writing code, using simple if-then statements-the foundational logic of engineering-from the linked mobile app. The bracelets light up, vibrate or flash, letting girls communicate with each other in Morse code. They can also communicate when other Jewelbots wearers are near. The bracelets are connected through Bluetooth, and can be used with or without a linked phone."
"The question of what creativity is and how it works will perhaps remain humanity's most unanswerable - but that hasn't stopped us from trying. On the heels of Neil Gaiman's recent reflection on the subject comes one from filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, founder of the Webby Awards and daughter of the great Leonard Shlain of Art & Physics fame. In this short installment from AOL's The Future Starts Here series, Shlain offers ten steps to the creative process based on her own experience in film and art, expanding, perhaps inadvertently, on Graham Wallace's famous 1926 model of the four stages of the creative process and incorporating other notable theories of yore, like John Dewey's emphasis on hunches and T.S. Eliot's insistence on idea-incubation."
"There's Maker Media, MakerCon, MakerShed, Make: magazine and 131 Maker Faire events that take place throughout the world. Now the founders of all these Makers want a way to connect what they refer to as the "maker movement" online. So Maker Media created a social network called MakerSpace, a Facebook-like social network that connects participants of Maker Faire in one online community."
"As Sergey and I wrote in the original founders letter 11 years ago, "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one." As part of that, we also said that you could expect us to make "smaller bets in areas that might seem very speculative or even strange when compared to our current businesses." From the start, we've always strived to do more, and to do important and meaningful things with the resources we have."