What happens to teaching when policy meets practice. We write about school systems, assessment regimes, district decisions, and the quiet politics that shape what’s possible inside the classroom.
22 posts
Chris points to pictures of Nigerian students at the first school to receive laptops in the One Laptop Per Child program, sparking thoughts about global access, inequity in US schools, and what it will take for society to prioritize meaningful opportunities for all children.
We reflect on growing resistance to social software in schools, new legislation like state-level DOPA efforts, and troubling media coverage of teens online, arguing that meaningful change requires broader cultural understanding of learning in social networks.
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…
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…
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…