I think civic engagement in general fails to capture Americans' interest if you look at voting demographics and overall participation in local government.
Another article about the bubble in edtech:
"Most of today's education technology startups are doomed to fail. "But wait!" you say. "It's 2012 and edtech startups are sprouting up everywhere, pushing real innovation into a slow-moving yet vitally important market, gaining traction, getting funded!" True. Yet they are still doomed to fail."
They define success in edtech as building a sustainable company that improves student outcomes, empower teachers, and increases the reach and efficiency of educational institutions.
""No one's got the model that's going to work yet," said James Grimmelmann, a New York Law School professor who specializes in computer and Internet law. "I expect all the current ventures to fail, because the expectations are too high. People think something will catch on like wildfire. But more likely, it's maybe a decade later that somebody figures out how to do it and make money." "
In Goldman's view, the very popularity of the site stands in tension with its goal of radical openness. The freely editable nature of Wikipedia has made it a canvas upon which vandals, spammers, and pranksters can paint at will.--Goldman
Clay Shirky (Here Comes Everybody) argues the oppositte: that enough people care about wikipedia to prevent it from devolving into chaos, which is what would happen if nobody cared.
"CANCER is deadly because it comes from within and evades the body's natural defences. Attempts to train the immune system to recognise and attack cancers have so far failed. But a new technique that uses doped implants is showing promise."
His resume is among the most popular resumes online. However, he failed to secure a job. Is it a right way for job seekers to show themselves and seek opportunities online?
While this article does not address technology directly, I think this is the type of school community that could so benefit from emerging educational technologies. The traditional school model has been failing them, and they are prime for redesign. I'd be interested to see even how something like ecoMUVE could begin to change the classroom atmosphere.
In this video, IBM outlines what a smarter school, district, and city would look like. However, I feel that the video fail to say exactly what IBM is doing to hep schools, districts, and cities to become "smarter."As a side note, I find it interesting that IBM uses individuals with different accents - and wonder if this is a marketing tool.
Seems to be getting some coverage on this topic lately.
Interesting comment here. Probably reactions many disruptive innovation driver will face. Doesnt mean they are failing though. Reactions from their users seem to be relatively muted. It is the skeptics and traditional players who is making big deal out of it.
'Obviously, the company does not want to say that its free content is cannibalizing the revenue generated from charging students and institutions for premium features and content, but it's clear that the company didn't quite get the balance right.'
'Unfortunately, although Flat World would never admit it, this announcement certainly serves as validation of the doubt over Open Educational Resources (OER) as a business concept.'
Whatever you do though, the business model should be sustainable..
The article uses EdX's flaws to discredit online education in general and makes some valuable points about what is not working using statistics from MIT's online courses from last year to provide evidence of online education failing.
Uh oh- How would this float in the US political climate- the government is responsible for creating a just society. It would be nice if we could articulate a working premise like that.
The internet facility has made it possible for the students to access and submit assignments online from wherever they wish.
This article discusses ways to use mobile technology in a higher education setting, including uses to increase engagement among students and to provide safety and emergency information. The author fails to include any uses that actually involve learning or improved communication and transparency between students and teachers, which I believe is an oversight that many schools have when considering implementing mobile technology in their schools.
Jeff Kirchick is Director of Universities at SCVNGR, the popular mobile game about going places, doing challenges and earning points. He presents regularly about the future of mobile and location-based services in education. You can follow Jeff on Twitter @JeffreyKirchick or e-mail him at jeff@scvngr.com.
In the beginning, they had a great environment in the classroom using the online software. Later, as more classrooms/users began using online program simultaneously the network failed.
Every school is different!
This is about healthcare.gov / Obamacare, and the federal government, but it's thought-provoking about educational technology, much of which is purchased by government agencies (i.e., school districts). How can school districts avoid these problems? (I'm a pro-government liberal, let's be clear!)
Note the author characterizes the National Educational Technology Plan as a "manifesto."
Quoting this article, "... in March, Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, released a draft National Educational Technology Plan that reads a bit like a manifesto for change, proposing among other things that the full force of technology be leveraged to meet "aggressive goals" and "grand" challenges, including increasing the percentage of the population that graduates from college to 60 percent from 39 percent in the next 10 years. What it takes to get there, the report suggests, is a "new kind of R.& D."
A bunch of especially interesting quotes toward the end: "This concept is something that Will Wright, who is best known for designing the Sims game franchise...refers to as 'failure-based learning,' in which failure is brief, surmountable, often exciting and therefore not scary... According to Ntiedo Etuk, the chief executive of Tabula Digita...children who persist in playing a game are demonstrating a valuable educational ideal.... 'They'll fail until they win.' He adds: 'Failure in an academic environment is depressing. Failure in a video game is pleasant. It's completely aspirational.' It is also, says James Paul Gee, antithetical to the governing reality of today's public schools. 'If you think about kids in school - especially in our testing regime - both the teacher and the student think that failure will lead to disaster,' he says. 'That's pretty much a guarantee that you'll never get to truly deep learning.'"