There has always been a chasm between what educational researchers do in their labs and what educational practitioners do in their classrooms. There is no well-defined path for taking an idea from research and putting it into practice. In this week’s post, we discuss the different paths across the chasm that Logo (the programming language) and the graphing calculator took.
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 07/28/15
While educational start-ups are securing record amounts of investment, the percentage of computer science majors going into start-ups of any kind is actually quite small. In this week’s blog post, we argue that fixing the student loan problem would unleash innovation that would boggle the imagination.
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 07/21/15
The “competency learning" movement is gaining serious momentum. But, drawing on decades of research in the psychology of learning, we will argue in this week’s blog post that competency learning appears to be based on a fundamentally flawed model of how learning takes place and how learning needs to be assessed.
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 07/13/15
In this commentary, an instructional technologist compares teacher's fear of allowing students to use mobile devices in class with a parent's fear of giving teenagers the keys to a car.
“Social” as an adjective — as in social gaming, social media and social networks — is everywhere these days, and for good reason! We constantly engage in social learning: learning from and with each other. So is K-12’s current love affair with “personalized learning” a mistake? Hmmm.
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 06/22/15
If collabrified apps are truly going to make a difference in the classroom, then teachers need curriculum that shows them how to use such technology. This week’s post is an open invitation to join our team of writers in creating a new generation of curriculum that explicitly leverages collaboration technology.
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 06/08/15
The mastery/competency learning movement is picking up massive amounts of momentum in K-12, but its reliance on an old method of instruction will, in the end, not result in creating students who can solve “uncharted problems” and learn how to learn.
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 06/02/15
Our legal expert explains why districts (and vendors) would benefit from more robust protection of educational data.
The U.S. Department of Educational Technology has just published an excellent resource for educational software developers. In our review of the guide, we point out that it makes the case that the Rubicon has finally been crossed: Technology is making (and will continue to make) a profound impact on K-12 education.
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 05/18/15
Watching videos is fast becoming a canonized instructional method in K-12. But a young researcher from Australia has some provocative, scientifically based research that ought to give video proponents significant pause. But, all is not lost, as we report in this week’s post.
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 05/06/15