Group items tagged

"We can do to schools what PayPal did to banks and do to college networks what Facebook did to friendships. We can now make education affordable and pervasive. All this requires is investment in the right technologies and the type of mentoring and support being provided to students, such as the Thiel fellows. You could impact the lives of billions" - Vivek Wadhwa, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at Duke University's Center for Entrepreneurship.

"Spanish-language resources will be publicly launched in the coming months, to create what will be the largest online learning disabilities resource nationwide."

Isabel, Chris M., Stephen B., and I are at MassCUE today watching Yong Zhao's keynote.  You can find a copy of his presentation here at this website.

I saw Zhao speak yesterday at the MassCUE conference (with James, Chris McEnroe and Isabel Schwartzman). His message was provocative: the United States did not do well on the TIMSS test, but the US has never done well on this type of testing even way back to the 1950s. Therefore, Zhao thinks that these tests are not good indicators of educational quality, but that the things that the US does right are fostering creativity, building in tolerance and forgiveness into the educational system, and stressing problem-solving and collaborative learning.

This relates to part of the discussion in class today. I've seen him speak about the irony that Chinese schools, which are outperforming US schools on PISA and TIMMS, are actually trying to model their systems more on US pedagogy. See his latest book or look for him on TED.

Arne Duncan, Education Secretary, says greater use of technology in teaching may engage students and help prevent dropout rates.

Is it only a matter of time before we will see more fulfillment of major aspects of the Wireless EdTech and National Educational Technology Plan mobile recommendations? I HOPE so! When Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty suggested last September that the time had come for electorate to engage in meaningful debate on the issue of handheld media devices in the province's classrooms, the backlash was swift. The public wanted nothing of it.