A new website!

To say that your website is your calling card in the digital age is to use a metaphor that’s either archaic or very deeply retro. But it’s true. Whether it’s the people who do business with you every day or the ones who are just trying to figure out if they’d like to get to […]

The cover of…Failure Magazine?

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all-in which case, you fail by default.” — JK Rowling, in a speech to Harvard graduates A whole lot of years ago, when I was a junior in college studying sociology, I […]

Rich Crandall Wants to Help You Discover Your Inner Innovator

It’s not often that you’re told to embrace mistakes, but that’s one message that Rich Crandall likes to give everyone he meets. Rich is the K-12 Lab Director at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (aka the d.school), where courses and classes are based on a process called “design thinking.” According to fans of this […]

The innovation mismatch: “Smart capital” and education innovation

One of the most poignant summaries of the market for innovative technology solutions in education is that it is forever in its infancy. That statement was true 30 years ago, when the Apple II was introduced into schools and I first started working in education technology, and it is true today.

Education reform: Getting personal

I felt a lot less melancholy about the future of US public education after having coffee a few days ago with Joel Rose, the founder of the path-breaking New York City experiment called School of One.

Keep subgroup mandates in ESEA, civil rights groups urge

No one seems to have much love for the No Child Left Behind Act these days. But everyone seems to agree on the best feature of the law: Schools now have to show how student subgroups that historically were ignored (English-language learners, racial minorities, economically disadvantaged students) are doing relative to their peers.

Early Bird Catches the Worm

With Summit 2011 two months away, we’d like to remind all invited guests to register before this early-bird (seagull!) special flies away on March 25th!  This year’s Summit offers participants  more opportunities to connect one-on-one and in small groups. That’s just one of the ways Summit 2011 will look different from past events.  Here are […]

Waiting for Superman pledge turns up $5M for change in schools

Waiting for Superman, a popular documentary about America’s public school woes which drew particular attention from Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial class, comes out on DVD today, February 15. In September, Paramount Pictures announced that NewSchools Venture Fund had committed to investing $5 million in entrepreneurial education organizations if over 150,000 pledged to watch the film.

Future schools: Blending face-to-face and online learning

The way the 1st graders hurtle toward their computer workstations, you’d think they were headed out to recess. It’s an unseasonably warm winter morning in San Jose, California, and the two dozen students at Rocketship Mateo Sheedy Elementary School get situated quickly in the computer lab, donning headphones and peering into monitors displaying their names.