Schools & Policy

So here’s a concept. Teach the kids how to use Google images instead of blocking it so that the elementary school teachers can actually find pictures of doves to supplement their lessons.

We explore how the Read/Write Web is disrupting traditional models in journalism, music, business, and politics, and ask when similar forces—especially open educational content and changing teacher-learner relationships—will finally trigger a radical re-envisioning of K12 education.

New York City’s proposed cell phone lockers highlight how schools may be missing an opportunity: instead of banning and charging students to stow phones, we could be teaching them to use mobile devices as learning tools. As mobile social networking grows and phones become powerful platforms worldwide, especially through SMS, schools need to experiment with ways to leverage the devices already in students’ pockets.

This e-mail showed up in our inbox today: A few weeks ago, our school began to block Wikipedia. When we asked why, we were told that a student searched how to make pipe bombs. When we asked what they did to him, we were told nothing because they don’t know who did it. [We are … Read more

One of the reasons why we feel very lucky these days is because we actually get some chances to get outside of the US and see firsthand what others are doing. This is our third trip to the UK this year and we get more and more impressed each time we come by what they are trying to do.

So the dopey House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed DOPA, and we’ve got to get our acts together to make sure Senators have more of a clue about what’s happening with technology out here in the “real” world. We wonder how many of them come even close to “getting” everything that’s shifting and changing, the way … Read more

We get the chance to address 49 Superintendents in Upstate NY and want to show them the power and potential of the Read/Write Web, what teachers and students are already doing, and the obstacles we need to discuss. If you had 90 minutes with this group, what one key challenge or message would you focus on?

So here we go…let’s REALLY get around this messy job of educating our kids by just legislating away school access to not only MySpace but to any …commercial Web sites that let users create public “Web pages or profiles” and also offer a discussion board, chat room, or e-mail service. Including blogs, wikis, online gaming… … Read more

Dear Tess and Tucker, For most of your young lives, you’ve heard your mom and we occasionally talk about your futures by saying that someday you’ll travel off to college and get this thing called a degree that will show everyone that you are an expert in something and that will lead you to getting … Read more

Yesterday as we were driving our seven-year old daughter home from her gymnastics class she ominously announced that she wasn’t going back to school. “It’s so boring, daddy,” she said, and then proceeded to sing the word “boring” about 157 times to make sure we got the point. Now we know Tess is pretty smart, … Read more