Educational Technology: Leaders and Leadership

A couple of days ago, I got into one of those short-ish yet interesting Twitter back and forths with a few folks in my network. In a nutshell, it revolved

Design Thinking is a mindset. Design Thinking is the confidence that everyone can be part of creating a more desirable future, and a process to take action when faced with a difficult challenge. That kind of optimism is well needed in education.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt says mistakes people make when young can haunt them forever. Read this article by Shara Tibken on CNET News.

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The Internet needs a delete button, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said Monday.

Actions someone takes when young can haunt the person forever, Schmidt said, because the information will always be on the Internet. He used the example of a young person who committed a crime that could be expunged from his record when he's an adult. But information about that crime could remain online, preventing the person from finding a job.

"In America, there's a sense of fairness that's culturally true for all of us," Schmidt said. "The lack of a delete button on the Internet is a significant issue. There is a time when erasure is a right thing."

Schmidt made the comments during an event at New York University in Manhattan. He and Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas, spoke with NYU professor Nouriel Roubini about their new book.

Cohen said that in the future, an ecosystem will evolve around protecting and monitoring people's online images.

Meanwhile, Schmidt said that even with the proliferation of wearable devices, people will still have privacy. Each country will make a decision about how to address the issue, he said, and each nation's policy will be different.

Shara Tibken

A leading expert explores the new relationship between man and machine and the challenges that emerge when innovation is decoupled from growth in jobs and incomes. A McKinsey & Company article.

“We’re finally getting at that seminal moment in human history when we can talk to our machines and our machines will understand us in regular, natural language,” says Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Erik Brynjolfsson. In this video, he explores the role of big data in business performance, the rise of robotics, and the decoupling of the historical relationship between gains in productivity, incomes, and jobs. He is the coauthor, with MIT research scientist Andrew McAfee, of Race Against the Machine (Digital Frontier Press, October 2011). This interview was conducted by McKinsey Publishing’s Rik Kirkland. What follows is an edited transcript of Brynjolfsson’s remarks.

From Chalkboards to Tablets: The Digital Conversion of the K-12 Classroomis the first in a two part series to document the key national findings from Speak Up 2012. For the past few years, Project Tomorrow has used the Speak Up survey to diligently document the growth in educators’ access to emerging technology devices, tools and services, and how that increased familiarity has resulted in greater interest in digital learning. The Speak Up survey data has also highlighted the growing expectations of parents each year for interactive and collaborative digital learning environments that they believe are essential for preparing their child to compete in the global information society. And, we have shared information and research over several years about the widespread national interest in enhanced college and career readiness for all K-12 students. Given all of those positive conditions, why is there so much new fervor around digital conversions today? What makes today’s education landscape different than last year, the year before or five years ago? What is different?

“From Chalkboards to Tablets: The Digital Conversion of the K-12 Classroom” takes an in-depth look at the transformative factors that are driving this new digital conversion momentum and the new capacities to build toward to support the process

OET is piloting a new Learning Registry "viewer" to make it easier to find digital resources.  The viewer makes it easier to navigate the ocean of educational resources, but we need your feedback!

Nine in 10 elementary, middle and high school students believe mobile devices will change the way kids learn, Pearson survey finds.

TED’s first-ever original television special features original TED Talks curated exclusively for the PBS show, airing nationally on Tuesday, May 7, 2013.

Darling-Hammond: The reform impulse that gave rise to construction of new learning standards and assessments will only work if we invest in the capacity of educators to work together effectively.

Wikispaces Classroom

Wikispaces Classroom is a social writing platform for education. We make it incredibly easy to create a classroom workspace where you and your students can communicate and work on writing projects alone or in teams. Rich assessment tools give you the power to measure student contribution and engagement in real-time. Wikispaces Classroom works great on modern browsers, tablets, and phones.

Wikispaces Classroom is free for teachers and students. We have over 10 million registered teachers and students on the platform.

Our mission is to help teachers help students. Since 2005 we've been listening closely to the millions of teachers who've used Wikispaces. Wikispaces Classroom is the result of everything we've learned.

Wikispaces has been adopted and loved by so many teachers and students precisely because it has done these things implicitly. Wikispaces Classroom is about doing them explicitly.‍

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DATE: April 24, 2013
TIME: 12 pm PT / 3 pm ET

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What does implementation of 21st century education really look like?

In order to help schools and districts with this work, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and EdLeader21 have teamed up to present an 8-part webinar series, beginning with Step 1: Adopt Your Vision.

In the first webinar of the series, Ken Kay, CEO of EdLeader21, will moderate a panel of district and school leaders discussing their visions for 21st century education.  Join Ken Kay and the panelists for a fascinating discussion of the role of a 21st century vision for education, Step 1, on the path toward 21st century schools and districts.

Located in Stockholm, Sweden, this amazing school is from the Swedish Free School Organization, Vittra. Instead of a classic classroom setup with desks and chairs, a giant iceberg with a cinema, a platform and room for relaxation and recreation now forms the setting of many different types of learning situations.

“We're living in a 21st century knowledge economy, but our schools, our homes, and our culture are still based around 20th century expectations,” said then-Senator Barack Obama in a 2005 speech to the American Library Association.