Edsurge On Air

Lauren Herckis, an anthropologist and research faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, has been exploring the culture of teaching at colleges and what makes professors try new teaching practices or, in some cases, resist them.

What does it mean to report on education technology from a student lens? How does the tech-health discussion impact teachers in the classroom? What are virtual school lobbyists doing to impact the national discussion on school choice and accountability? NPR reporter Anya Kamenetz, joins the EdSurge OnAir Podcast to discuss her new book, “The Art of Screentime: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life,” and offer listeners some answers to challenging questions about the ever-evolving education technology landscape.

In higher ed people often look to a few elite schools for big new ideas. But that might be changing. These days innovation seems just as likely to come from a state school, a small liberal arts college, or even some upstart from outside the traditional system. That’s the argument made by Bernard Bull, vice provost for curriculum and academic innovation at Concordia University Wisconsin. He’s also a blogger, and he runs a podcast of his own, called MoonshotEDU. He’s optimistic about what he sees as a greater diversity of models and teaching practices at colleges and universities. But he’s also concerned about other pressures he sees in edtech, that are pushing toward standardization as colleges experiment with big data and algorithms. EdSurge recently sat down with Bull after his keynote at the Educause Learning Initiative’s annual conference in New Orleans. We talked about what he sees as the most important new edtech trends and why it’s still important to read tech critics.

Social media feeds are lighting up with hashtags such as #WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe and #BlackPantherLive celebrating the release of a Hollywood adaptation of the groundbreaking comic series, Black Panther. Educators are also getting into the fandom, seizing on opportunities the film creates to teach students about empowerment, culture and even the importance of learning science and engineering. Netia McCray, is one of the educators using the Black Panther film as an educational opportunity. She is the founder of a non-profit called Mbadika, which means 'Ideas' in Kimbundu, a language spoken in the northern region of Angola. EdSurge talked with McCray about her new YouTube series where she's working with makers to teach students how to use design software and 3D printers to recreate artifacts from the Black Panther film. McCray also addressed the significance of showcasing this film during Black History Month, why the main actor chose to use an african accent and how a fictional film like this can have re

How do we crack a problem that has existed for decades? Jobs in science, technology, engineering & mathematics (STEM) jobs are projected to grow 17 percent between 2014 and 2024; non-STEM jobs are expected to rise only 12 percent. Even so, minorities, women and people with disabilities are still severely underrepresented in STEM-related fields. And if innovation springs from looking at problems from a very different perspective, then coaxing people who bring diverse perspectives should become a national imperative. As part of Silicon Valley’s Commonwealth Club discussion series, EdSurge CEO and co-founder Betsy Corcoran spoke with three MacArthur Fellows actively involved in helping people from underrepresented populations enter and thrive in STEM careers. Deborah Bial, founder of the Posse Foundation, Jim Fruchterman, founder of Benetech and Dr. Manu Prakash, a physical biologist from Stanford University, bring powerful—and different—perspectives on how to over barriers so many confront when pursuing caree

College professors don’t often talk to each other about the intricacies of their teaching practices, and it often seems a mystery to scholars what goes on in other people’s courses. Bonni Stachowiak has created a forum to spread those stories and techniques with her long-running podcast, Teaching in Higher Ed. Stachowiak says she is still growing as a teacher herself, as director of teaching excellence and digital pedagogy at Vanguard University of Southern California, and her sense of curiosity comes through in her weekly conversations. EdSurge talked with Stachowiak about the biggest lessons she’s learned about teaching from those interviews, and the challenges of teaching in today’s highly partisan political environment.

Larry Singer is a CEO, but not the smug type, who’s likely to engage you in a long-winded conversation about himself, while you sip on your drink and wait for someone more interesting to come along. Singer is different. Last week he pitched EdSurge a story about his nonprofit, Open Up Resources, but, after our conversation, we found a story about a struggling innovator. He, like many of our podcast listeners, is a person who wants to do well, but also do good. In this podcast, we talk about his crazy 30-year journey in education, which took him from Pearson to farming, to the nonprofit work he does now. We hope his story—and its imperfect ending—can motivate those of you who are on your career journeys to find work that makes you happy and taps into your passions. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-01-30-an-education-intrapreneur-on-the-difficulties-innovating-a-conservative-industry

Many colleges these days are experimenting with short-form online degrees to try to reach new audiences and offer new options, often at a lower cost. And new upstart providers are also getting into the mix, including coding bootcamps and startups like Udacity, which offers unaccredited nanodegrees. These trends raise a host of questions about the future of credentialing. To explore some of these questions, EdSurge recently held an hour-long video forum featuring two guests: Sean Gallagher, the founder and executive director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy and author of the book, The Future of University Credentials; and Nicola Soares, vice president and managing director for Kelly Educational Staffing at Kelly Services, who has her finger on the pulse of employment and hiring trends.

Humans living in abject poverty are warring over the few of resources they have left. There’s an energy crisis, and fossil fuels are in low supply. The weather has gone to extremes. This is the setting of Ernest Cline’s science-fiction novel, Ready Player One, where human civilization is in decline, and life in virtual reality beats any day in the real world. This page-turning novel (which is being turned into a film by Steven Spielberg) follows a geeky protagonist named Wade Watts as he undertakes a mission to win billions by finding an egg hidden inside a virtual video-game universe called the OASIS. Among the many rich themes explored in the story is education, painting a picture that could provide lessons for how teachers and school leaders design for education today. EdSurge sat down with two interesting educators who are working to merge ideas from science fiction novels with our reality: Amanda Licastro, an assistant professor of digital rhetoric at Stevenson University, in Maryland. She encourages

When Michael Sorrell took over as president of Paul Quinn College in 2007, the place was nearly broke and faced a possible loss of accreditation. Sorrell wasn’t interested in following the usual playbook for running a college, so he took unusual steps right from the start. He cut the football program, for instance, and turned the playing field into an urban farm. It's part of a model of a "modern work college," which mixes work-readiness with expanding minds, and at a price that more students could afford. EdSurge recently talked with Sorrell his model, and he shared the roundabout way that this college got into farming.

As the old adage goes, time is what we want most but what we use worst. So how do we use it more effectively? That’s the driving theme in the newest book from Dan Pink, the speechwriter, TV producer and acclaimed author of bestsellers “Drive” and “To Sell is Human.” His latest book, “When,” draws on research from psychology, biology and economics to explore how timing impacts every aspect of our lives—including of course, how we teach and learn. For instance, what’s the best time to take a test? Why do kids need more breaks? When the school day is so packed with back-to-back classes and activities, how can students, parents and educators make the best use of time? Pink recently talked with EdSurge about how his insights can help educators, and why everyone—kids and grownups alike—can thrive with less multitasking and more recess breaks.

On this holiday week, we're rebroadcasting our most popular episode of 2017: Barbara Oakley, a professor of engineering at Oakland University, spends a lot of time these days thinking about how people learn. She’s taught more students than just about anyone else on the planet, as one of the instructors of one of the most popular online courses ever, which has had two million registered students over the several times it’s been offered. The title of the course, is Learning How to Learn. EdSurge recently talked with Oakley about what she’s learned teaching all those online students. And she makes the case for why free online courses like hers—which are known as Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs—might still lead to a revolution in higher education, even though the hype around them has died down.

This year, Americans seem to be watching government processes closer than they have in the past. Every week, some policy maker, some legislative vote or confirmation hearing is trending on Twitter and Facebook. However, our guest today, Jeanne Allen, founder of the Center for Education Reform has been closely monitoring and evaluating education policy for over 30 years. She is no rookie. As a staunch education reformist, pushing the school choice movement forward, Allen is no friend to teachers unions and school board associations saying that they maintain the status quo, or change a little too slowly for her taste. But today, we'll talk about the changes that she is seeing in public schools, covering everything from taxes to policy and how those changes are impacting education technology. We'll also try to get her to give us a sneak peek about what she's expecting from New York City's big edtech conference this year.

Art Markman is an expert on what makes people tick. The psychology professor at UT Austin has also become a popular voice working to translate research from the lab into advice for a general audience. In his writings and podcasting, he’s tackled questions big and small, from commenting on the recent wave of mass shootings—to weighing in on why people like cat videos so much. And he’s full of surprising findings. Markman recently talked with EdSurge about how his insights can help educators. He might just change the way you think about things like growth mindset, comprehensive testing, and encouraging students to make mistakes.

What does it really mean to prepare students for a future in coding careers? Clive Thompson, a freelance writer for Wired and The New York Times magazine, thinks the reality is not as rosy as many people think. In a popular Wired article titled, The Next Big Blue-Collar Job is Coding, Thompson criticizes pop culture and some writers, like himself, for overly romanticizing the notion of the ‘lone genius coder’—the Mark Zuckerbergs and Mr. Robots of the world—saying that’s not what every coder looks like and that's not what many coders will be. Thompson recently talked with EdSurge about the future of programming work in the United States and the realities students will face in their future job searches.

For Terik Tidwell, teaching kids to code is not about algorithms or apps—it’s about economic mobility. Tidwell is director of STEM innovation at Johnson C. Smith University, an historically-black college situated in the heart of Charlotte, NC. The city is marked by contradiction: On one hand, the place is booming, home to the headquarters of Bank of America and an emerging start-up scene. But a recent analysis scored Charlotte worst for economic mobility in a survey of the nation’s 50 largest cities, with pockets of concentrated poverty cut off from the rich opportunities just around the corner. Tidwell sees coding as a key bridge—a way to open kids’ eyes to a way of thinking, and a world of job opportunities. “We see a lot of students are not going into computer science—they don't know about computer science,” says Tidwell. “I had one student a year or so ago who gave me feedback. I said why didn't you think about computer science? She's like, ‘I never thought of it. I didn't have it in high school. I

When all the stuffing, sauces, hams, turkeys, and pies are out of the oven, there is often a moment of peace during the holiday season where families sit around the dinner table and remember what they are grateful for. This year, we gathered with a community of educators during EdSurge’s Tech Leader Circle at the MakerDepot in Totowa, New Jersey to pause and have a similar moment of reflection. For this EdSurge OnAir holiday special, we cut through the noise of the 3D printers to ask educators, “What is the one lesson their students taught them, that they are most grateful for?” From advocating for those in need to letting your nerd flag fly, it is no surprise that the lessons shared from these tech leaders will stay with them for many years to come.

It’s a pivotal time for artificial intelligence in higher education. More instructors are experimenting with adaptive-learning systems in their classrooms. College advising systems are trying to use predictive analytics to increase student retention. And the infusion of algorithms is leading to questions—ethical questions and practical questions and philosophical questions—about how far higher education should go in bringing in artificial intelligence, and who decides what the algorithms should look like. To explore the issue, EdSurge invited a panel of experts to discuss their vision of the promises and perils of AI in education, in the first installment of our new series of video town halls called EdSurge Live. On this week's podcast, we bring you highlights from that discussion. We invited three guests: Candace Thille, an assistant professor of education at Stanford Graduate School of Education, Mark Milliron, co-founder and chief learning officer at Civitas Learning, and Kyle Bowen, educational technolo

By the time John Deasy resigned his post as superintendent of the L.A. school district, he had become a polarizing figure. In an article in The New York Times covering his resignation, Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot charter schools, put it this way: "The bitterness that had developed between Mr. Deasy and his critics impeded healthy discussion." Barr went on to ask “can we actually move forward without the extremes dominating the debate?” This year Mr. Deasy is moving forward. And he’s trying to help lead a less bitter debate about education reform, as editor-in-chief of the new publication, The Line. It’s funded by Frontline, a software company for K-12 schools. The second Issue of The Line, released earlier this month, features some of education’s heavy-hitters: Including former Florida governor Jeb Bush, National Education Association president Lilly Garcia, and conservative think-tank writer, Rich Hess debating the polarizing topic of school choice. It has brought both John Deasy, along with and Fron

Large classes pose tough challenges for instructors and colleges. After all, how do you craft a meaningful experience for 250 people (or more)? Rachel Davenport, a senior lecturer at Texas State University, has taught so many large classes that she jokes she has trouble readjusting to a small seminar room. She has been recognized with several awards for hear teaching, and students regularly sing her praises (she was named “Best Professor at Texas State University” in 2013 by readers of Study Break magazine.) EdSurge sat down with Davenport last week during the WCET conference in Denver to talk about her approach to teaching, and what technologies she’s tried—and ones she avoids.