Bang for the Public Buck

Like all massive disasters, this has to take place in New York City.  ARIS, the Achievement Reporting and Innovation System, is New York City’s web-based portal for NYC school teachers and students.  It is a case study that unfortunately typifies the experience of public education in technology.  While I generally encourage educational institutions to move [...]

Apple is the Sleeping Giant

Little did we know, Apple has great resources for teaching that are completely under the radar.  Sure, we all know about I Tunes U.  But did we know about Apple Learning Interchange?  It blows Yahoo! Teachers out of the water in terms of content sharing. 
iTunes U is also very silently moving towards being the [...]

Content Knowledge is Dead

I heard Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” on the radio the other day using meaningless statistics about teenagers (and adults) ignorant of basic bits of content knowledge. Sure, it’s a little offensive that people can’t point out Iraq on a map when we’ve talked about it for six years. [...]

Get Your Fetus Ready For College.

 I made this post at CollegeRedi
 I found the No Excuses University Network, which is a set of schools at the K-8 levels determined to help students get ready for college.  That’s right, there are elementary schools that are a part of this.  This stems from the culture that’s been created in the wake of the [...]

Standards-Based Report Cards

The New York Times Opinion Page had a piece (which I seem to have misplaced) describing new report cards featuring state mandated standards from a parents perspective. They found the several page document bewildering, and this is coming from a member of the New York Times Editorial Staff. Imagine how the average mom [...]

Best Practices for Educators Using Facebook

I gave a presentation at Classroom 2.0 Live this past weekend about best practices for educators using facebook. Here’s the presentation, Driving Engagement and Belonging with Facebook, if you want to have a look.
Driving Engagement and Belonging with Facebook
Right click the link above and open it in a different window.  The presentation uses the [...]

Data Interoperability Framework

So, in an earlier post I was proposing that schools use their Student Information Systems to make their data readable in XML. It turns out that SIS makers have been working on this, as usual in an overly-complicated, clunky, and proprietary way. But, they seem to have given it some serious thought. [...]

Classroom 2.0 Live Reflections

The most helpful part of Classroom 2.0 Live in San Francisco this past weekend was the lightning rounds and the product demos. The ones who did have an hour, including myself, probably would have been better off staying within fifteen minutes. Here are some products in the order of my personal preference:
1. [...]