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Replacing written text with artwork, photographs, or illustrations offers a number of advantages, especially early in the school year.  Visual imagery is very accessible and a lot less intimidating to a wide range of learners including non-readers, struggling readers, and English language learners. This enables these students a greater chance to practice some of the forms of complex thinking that they will need as the year progresses such as using text evidence, identifying theme, and making connections.

Another advantage the visual imagery has over written text is that it is very fast to decode.

Artworks can and should be treated just as a written text. By doing so, students can get their academic thinking started early, laying a foundation for them to build on throughout their school year.

Unfortunately, the system of reading we inherited from the ancient scribes —the method of reading you are most likely using right now — has been fundamentally shaped by engineering constraints that were relevant in centuries past, but no longer appropriate in our information age.

search for innovative engineering solutions aimed at making reading more efficient and effective for more people

But then, by chance, I discovered that when I used the small screen of a smartphone to read my scientific papers required for work, I was able to read with much greater facility and ease.

While "technology will replace teachers" seems like a silly argument to make, one need only look at the state of most school budgets and know that something's got to give. And lately, that something looks like teachers' jobs, particularly to those on the receiving end of pink slips. Granted, we haven't implemented a robot army of teachers to replace those expensive human salaries yet (South Korea is working on the robot teacher technology. I'll keep you posted.). But we are laying off teachers in mass numbers. Teachers know their jobs are on the line, something that's incredibly demoralizing for a profession already struggles mightily to retain qualified people.

it's hard not to see that wealth as having political not just economic impact. Indeed, the same week that Bill Gates spoke to the Council of Chief State School Officers about ending pay increases for graduate degrees in teaching, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued almost the very same statement. What does all of this have to do with Sal Khan? Well, nothing... and everything.

One of education historian Diane Ravitch's oft-uttered complaints is that we now have a bunch of billionaires like Gates dictating education policy and education reform, without ever having been classroom teachers themselves (or without having attended public school). But the skepticism about Khan Academy isn't just a matter of wealth or credentials of Khan or his backers. It's a matter of pedagogy.

The standard model for asynchronous conversations is discussion forum software like vBulletin.  I've talked before about the significant value that can be obtained as part of Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank and how that translates in a Success Formula for Discussion Forums in Financial Services.  I also looked at Making Intranet Discussion Groups Effective.

However, I've struggled with the problem of destinations vs. social networks and the spread of conversation (see Forums vs. Social Networks). 

Talkwheel  is made to handle real-time group conversations and asynchronous ones.  It can act as an instant messaging service a bit like Yammer, HipChat for companies and other groups, but the layout is designed to make these discussions easier to see, archive, and work asynchronously.

The students have already changed. The learning trends of 2012 have changed, too. They’re now approaching the trends of 2020, and here we are today curious about what engages students and what their interests are and how they tend to use the tools they love. That’s reactive design

While education struggles to agree on what needs changing and how to make it happen—and why, it should be asked, should we have to agree?—things around us have all exploded, detonated by technology.