In light of a blog post by Scott K. arguing the value of teaching mathematics in high school, I decided to browse the NY Times Education section, and found this interesting opinion piece .

The writer basically describes that evaluation of teachers and students rely too much on standardized testing. She writes that there should not be such high-stake accountability on tests that are often "erratic" and "inherently unreliable". Instead, she argues that students, teachers, and schools in general should be judged on a variety of different measures, including using student profiles, peer reviews, and evaluating the conditions for an effective learning environment.

I think the writer has a point in this piece, and I think we have seen that standardized testing is not an effective way to evaluate students, especially in the 21st century structure of education. In also leads into the trap of teachers "teaching to the test", which is naturally not inquiry based. However, how can one objectively evaluate student portfolios? And what are the kind of resources would her suggestion require (is it too much)?

Another thing I have found (through literature reviews) is that giving students more freedom in their work ultimately leads to better, more innovative ideas. I think this is partly due to the idea that ownership leads to having more pride in your work, which in turn makes you want to work harder, longer, and smarter on a particular assignment. That's the idea behind the 20% project. This blog that I found outlines how a teacher can implement a 20% project in their classroom.

For those of you who haven't heard of this before, it's the idea (starting with 15% for 3M in the 1950's and Google later on with the 20% projects) of telling employees to use 20% of their time on pet projects that they were personally interested in and were not part of their job description. It has resulted in innovative products such as Gmail, AdSense, Google News, Post-Its, and masking tape!

In education, it would be the equivalent of giving students a project to work on at the beginning of the year, and giving them either complete autonomy or little guidance. Clearly, 20% of their coursework would be focused on this project. The article goes into detail on exactly how it can be implemented in the classroom.

During my weekly sifting of MindShift, I came across this blog (albeit, a bit older) on the increasing trend of educational apps (specifically on the Ipad).

This blog from MindShift details some pretty interesting statistics that I thought I would share. The list below are not all of the stats listed, but ones that I thought were interesting take aways from the blog, and something to keep in mind when developing EdLab educational apps.

• Over 80% of the top selling paid apps in the Education category of the iTunes Store target children.
• In 2009, almost half (47%) of the top selling apps targeted preschool or elementary aged children. That number has increased to almost three-­‐quarters (72%).
• Apps for toddlers/preschoolers are the most popular age category (58%), and experienced the greatest growth (23%).
• General early learning is the most popular subject (47%), and there are signiicantly more general early learning apps than the second most popular subject (math, 13%).

One aspect of education I'm a big fan of is the idea of inquiry-based learning. Moreover, it's the idea that learning material is more than being talked to and remembering facts. It's also about creating your own questions, getting hands-on experience in exploring different solutions, and learning from not only your teacher, but also your peers.

STEMedia, a project and possible mSchool course, is built on this idea. But it turns out there is a nonprofit that is already embracing the idea of "kids teaching kids".

The Upside Down Academy is a nonprofit that is creating short, easily made education videos in order to teach kids, particularly in math and logic. But its not the teachers or mentors who make the videos; the students do (once they master the material)! This help students understand math by giving it a purpose, and if a student is able to explain a topic to someone else, it probably means they know the material in their own right. But the benefits are not just for the students, but the teachers as well. The more of these student-generated videos that are produced, the more teachers can understand how kids are understanding the subject matter, and consequently alter their teaching styles and pedagogy.

After today's D&R and some conversations about online learning afterwards, I started to look for any recent articles that address online learning. I came across this article from the Atlantic business section on selling the college experience to students who take classes online.

It makes the interesting point that regardless of how improved and effective the content can and will be in the future for online college courses, there will still be a desire for students to seek the "college experience". This includes hanging out with and networking with other college students. Additionally, colleges these days really market their schools on the amenities that come with going the college. Things like advanced computer labs, and state-of-the-art exercise equipment at the gyms, and other social platforms that allows students to have fun (intramural sports for example .

So I've blogged about a few articles/blogs from MindShift this summer, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to blog about this great website. Specifically, the website's description is:

"Technology is revolutionizing the world of education – replacing familiar classroom tools and changing the way we learn. MindShift explores the future of learning in all its dimensions – covering cultural and technology trends, groundbreaking research, education policy and more. The site is curated by Tina Barseghian, a journalist and the mother of a grade-schooler."

I encourage everyone at lab to peruse this website to gain some insight into some of the issues out there concerning technology integration to learning in and out of the classrooms.

The New York Times recently published an article outlining a very new and potentially game-changing way of learning online: Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs.

This article does a great job of explaining exactly what MOOCs are, the potential benefits of them, the inherent downsides, and their future role in the college system.

Coursera,a year-old company founded by two Stanford University computer scientists, is leading the way for MOOCs and are expected to launch over 100 free MOOCs, drawing millions of student and adult learners globally!

While I think there are some very great things to come from these online courses, I don't think they are the answer to the increasing costs of college degrees. The downsides they mention in the article are really interesting, and are three-fold:

• Cheating Issues
• Grading Issues

Being a graduate engineering student, I always encourage those going to college to look into the engineering discipline (or any STEM discipline for that matter). One problem that many institutions have when convincing future students to major in engineering is the rigid curriculum that it is often in place. With so many varying interests among students (even within the same major) there needs to be a push for flexible, independent engineering curricula throughout the nation. This will give students a chance to not only gain the core concepts and ideas behind their studies, but explore the different avenues of their major that interest them.

The article, Engineering Your Degree highlights a couple of engineering programs that are flexible in nature. MIT's Course 2-A in Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University's Computer Science, and Cornell's Computer Science are of particular focus. It seems as though both programs have had considerably good feedback.

Earlier I stumbled across this YouTube video detailing some of the statistics of our current education system. It has some very interesting and eye opening numbers, and really provides some legitimate motivation to get involved in the field of education. It also has a good Snow Patrol song playing in the background, in case you're a fan.

It also mentions a grassroots movement called StudentsFirst.Org, led by Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of D.C public schools. It is a pretty good website, with some very interesting blog topics and discussions to be had. A lot of what is wrong with our current system is dictated by public policy, and that is part of the aim of this organization. I just felt like sharing this. Enjoy!

I'm full day into my internship, and I can already tell this is a great company to work for. Between the background reading I was doing on Latent Semantic Analysis and general EdLab stuff, I cam across a blog I found to be quite interesting (and maybe something I/we could get involved in here). It's a blog by Dr. Keith Devlin, a mathematician at Stanford University and the Math Guy on NPR's Weekend Edition. I saw him speak at a seminar at North Carolina State University, and wanted to share some of his thoughts on how we could design video games to support good math learning. The interesting parts of his blog (and his books on this as well) are how he highlights what obstacles need to be overcome in K12 mathematics education. Particularly, he addresses the notion of the "symbol barrier", how this is one of the main obstacles to overcome when teaching our kids math, and how video games can be designed and implemented to overcome this (and other issues as well). Here's the link to the blog. It's a bit lengthy, but each post is very interesting in its own right.