Startup Weekend EDU took over Florida International University and brought together one of the most diverse group of people to hack away at problems in education and learn how to take any idea from concept to creation. The weekend was nothing short of magical!
Imagine a classroom where IBM’s Watson or another artificial intelligence system served as a co-teacher, capturing data, conducting classroom management tasks, and intelligently making suggestions to the teacher.
Complicated problems often have multiple variables that behave in many different ways and at times, unpredictably. When we look for a silver bullet, we run the risk of investing significant sums of money in an unrealistic solution that will never deliver the expected returns. In this post I discuss a case in education where over $1 billion was spent on an silver bullet that did not work.
A tool is only useful if you have the understanding and underlying know-how to use it adequately. Furthermore, you have to have a purpose first, then a strategy/model/plan to achieve your goal, and finally can you then begin to consider the appropriate tools to employ. Then and only then do tools take on a clear meaning, become easier to learn, and stand the chance of delivering results.
What if school opened at 5am and closed at midnight? What if student participated in activities other than class? What if local entrepreneurs also used the space at night as a collaborative working space? What if they became mentors to high school students? What if they became collaborators? What if they became partners? What if working together they started new businesses? And what if along the way, all of this inspired and motivated students to master all of the state-mandated content because in comparison it just seemed so easy? In this post, I discuss all of this and pose other questions.
In this blog post, I explore how goals might actually distract you from success and where you should place your focus instead. I apply this to relationships, careers, education, and sports.
Mistakes are often penalized in our current educational system. For instance, you raise your hand with a wrong answer and it’s often followed by “wrong, anyone else?” Or you receive a grade on a test without ever exploring your mistakes in depth to learn what was done incorrectly and how it could have been approached […]
A new service in development by a professor at Harvard attempts to redefine the way the classroom space is used. Let’s face it, information is cheap. I can find any information by searching for it on google or in a book. The classroom needs to do better than that and engage students in a higher […]
If you have ever put together a piece of furniture or completed a do-it-yourself project at home you have probably pulled out a toolbox and used your tools on an as needed basis. Perhaps you had to hammer a nail into a wall and located your hammer to do so. Every now and then though, you cannot […]
Over the last few days, I have had several discussions about the use of technology in education. Every time I discuss it, I form my argument around one central question, how can technology enhance the learning experience? I think it is important to look at it this way versus how technology might make the delivery […]