Edsurge On Air

Technology can do a lot of things in the classroom, but can it help educators be more empathetic towards their students? This week on the EdSurge podcast, we talk to Dr. Jason Okonofua, a postdoc at Stanford University, about just that. Okonofua is interested in how the effects of one person’s stereotyping and another person’s threat reverberate and escalate over time. He currently researches this interest in the context of education and criminal justice, and recently completed a white paper hypothesizing that an empathetic mindset will eliminate school suspensions. According to his research findings, published in a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, training teachers to have more empathy towards their students lowers suspension numbers by 50%, an incredibly high number when you consider that Jason’s trainings only include one 45-minute online session in the fall, and a 25-minute online session in the winter. Why are they so successful? And empathy something that can be taught t

This week, we're talking to Yuta Tonegawa, founder of the Japanese equivalent of the Hour of Code. He's passionate about engaging young Japanese students with coding, but the barriers he faces are distinctly different obstacles that face his American counterpart, the Hour of Code.

The life of a district superintendent isn’t easy. You have to juggle a lot, from managing big of groups of administrators and teachers, to pushing a district forward. So, what is the hardest part of a superintendent's job, and is it related to technology? In a series of interviews that EdSurge conducted at the ISTE conference in late June, EdSurge podcasters Mary Jo Madda and Michael Winters had the opportunity to interview Dr. Greg Goins, superintendent of Frankfort Community Unit School District 168 in Illinois. The man has made some pretty strong movements with edtech in his district, and EdSurge wanted to get to know his methods. Does Goins think Smartboards are effective? What are the edtech products he’s tired of hearing about? Listen to this episode to find the answers to those questions and more.

With Amazon making its first big education platform debut in years, we were wondering: how are other blue chip companies—Microsoft, Apple, Google—reacting to this news? While at ISTE, Mary Jo and former EdSurge podcaster Michael Winters hosted an in-person taping of the EdSurge On Air podcast with a live audience and two Google leaders, Jonathan Rochelle and Jaime Casap. Rochelle and Casap both have a long history with the Google for Education team. Casap is a Google Education evangelist, and Rochelle is a Google Education Product Manager, not to mention a co-founder of Google Drive. Between the two of them, they have more than 20 years of experience with the search company. We asked both Casap and Rochelle about their thoughts on Amazon Inspire, where Google Education plans to grow, and why conferences seem so homogenous. By the way, in each of our interviews, we decided to play a little game. Since edtech buzzwords drive us crazy, we had a secret word that the interviewees didn’t know about, and if they s

Alan November is a big-name educational consultant who was once a champion of technology in the classroom. But after EdSurge talked to him at ISTE, it seems that his message has slightly changed: technology isn’t having the impact we hoped for in schools. Expectations were high for edtech. People said it would solve every problem in education, and some venture capitalists agreed. Now, November says, we’re facing a more sober reality as we see what technology can and, more importantly, cannot do. EdSurge caught up briefly with November and Mike Dorsey, Director of Secondary Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for the Houston Independent School District, for this week's podcast.

Long before competency-based learning was trending, Southern New Hampshire University gave it a shot, largely driven by the vision of its president, Paul LeBlanc. Today SNHU is seen as a leader in closing the gap between what students learn and what the workforce wants. LeBlanc sat down with EdSurge CEO Betsy Corcoran and 1776 Partner Rusty Greiff to share his thoughts on “blowing up the delivery models” for higher ed.

It’s not easy being a game designer in college—but it sure teaches lessons about collaboration and tough decision-making. At the College Gaming Competition at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), we talked to two game creators—one technical designer and one artist—about how their game came to be and what they’ve learned from it.

Last week, I ventured down to LA for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, more commonly known as E3, the biggest videogames convention in the country. I was in search of educational video games. I found assassins and Lil Wayne, but not a whole lot of educational games. LEGO made an appearance, as did Sid Meier’s Civilization, but for a multibillion dollar industry, there wasn’t much in the way of direct educational material. I did, however, find one thing: the College Gaming Competition. It’s a game design contest where university students submit their games to a panel of industry veterans for evaluations. The experts select six finalists and one winner. All the finalists receive the honor of exhibiting their games on the main floor of E3 alongside giants like Microsoft and Sony. To get a better look inside how the game came together, I interviewed both leaders of the Savannah College’s team. Their game is called Brobot Beatdown. It’s a virtual reality game where the player is seated inside a giant robot and d

When should students specialize their learning? Does doing so narrow their futures or allow them to follow their passion to a strong portfolio? Peter Warburton, co-founder and production manager of Rizing Games, believes that kids who like video games should start building their own as early as 10. The reason? By the time they graduate from university, he argues, they’ll be near-professional quality video game makers. They’ll also have an impressive portfolio, as gaming is a heavily project-based pursuit. Rizing Games, a two-year game design academy attached to Cambridge Regional College, instructs 16 to 18-year-old British students on how to design games and run a gaming company as they train towards their A-level exams. It started in 2011 with 15 students in each class; it now takes 65. This year, Warburton took his second year students to E3, the gaming industry’s largest gathering, to present their games and see industry professionals at their best. We sat down with him amidst the chaos of the conventio

Virtual reality a technology of potential. So much potential, in fact, that in many ways it seems to be only potential. We’ve all seen pictures of rapt viewers in Oculus headsets or Google cardboard, but widespread distribution is still a distant prospect. In many cases, it's not clear why a teacher would use virtual reality in the classroom even if it seems like a fun addition. So today, we talked to a person using VR with a great deal of thought. Global Nomads is a nonprofit that facilitates virtual exchanges between students in the US and other countries, and it's about to launch a new VR initiative where students can digitally relocate. Grace Lau, the nonprofit's director of virtual reality,believes, as many do, in the power of VR to create empathy. Also, if you haven’t taken our survey (https://bit.ly/edsurgeonair) yet, we’d love it if you would.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your edtech startup grow? In our very own homage to the Startup Podcast, we're examining EdSurge's recent expansion. We've doubled in size in the past year, and a lot of things are changing. How can we keep what was good about the past while remaining open to the possibilities of the future? We interviewed our VP of Sales, our CTO, the product manager of the EdSurge Index and one guy who does a bit of everything about what they've seen and what they're hoping for. Edited by Blake Montgomery.

Here’s a four letter word that’s been in the news and education articles a fair amount over the past years. The word is “grit,” and it’s something that Paul Tough, the author of "How Children Succeed" and "Whatever It Takes," addresses in his most recent book, "Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why." Tough is a frequent commentator on school reform, low-income communities, parenting and politics, but in this particular book, he takes on the concept of “grit” and asks a crucial question: Is grit something that can be taught in the classroom? A few weeks ago, Paul Tough made his way to the NewSchools Venture Fund Summit in California, and EdSurge’s own Tony Wan got the chance to sit down with him to get the story behind the book, and what it’ll really take to help children succeed—whether grit can be taught, or not.

THE US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY was out in force at Maker Faire Bay Area. The Department hopes to demystify the goings-on at its various national labs in the Bay Area by portraying its scientists as makers. Those scientists also hope to excite kids about the advanced technology they get to use. We spoke to three scientists about sensors, supercomputers and cybersecurity to learn more.

THE US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY was out in force at Maker Faire Bay Area. The Department hopes to demystify the goings-on at its various national labs in the Bay Area by portraying its scientists as makers. Those scientists also hope to excite kids about the advanced technology they get to use. We spoke to three scientists about sensors, supercomputers and cybersecurity to learn more:

THE US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY was out in force at Maker Faire Bay Area. The Department hopes to demystify the goings-on at its various national labs in the Bay Area by portraying its scientists as makers. Those scientists also hope to excite kids about the advanced technology they get to use. We spoke to three scientists about sensors, supercomputers and cybersecurity to learn more.

DEMOS APLENTY: One of the most crowded tents at Maker Faire was the “Learn to Solder” tent, which allowed young makers to learn what holds circuit boards together. Would-be makers were tasked with soldering a circuit that would allow a Makerbot pin to light up. We spoke to one volunteer in the tent to learn why it’s important for makers to learn how to solder.

“IT’S LIKE THE STATE FAIR FOR NERDS:” Many families return to Maker Faire year after year. We spoke to one family that’s been attending Maker Faire for many years to find out what keeps them coming back. Meet the Bakers from Menlo Atherton, CA:

Mitchel Resnick (or Mitch, for short) knows his making—from a lot of different angles. And he’s not too bought into the whole “electronics and gadgets” side of the maker movement. Resnick has been in this business for more than 30 years, and it’s safe to say that he’s seen the maker movement—and the state of STEM education, in general—go through its phases, its ups and downs. He’s currently the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research and head of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, where he and his team have developed products familiar to many a science educator: the "programmable brick" technology that inspired the LEGO Mindstorms robotics kit, and Scratch, an online computing environment for students to learn about computer science. Is making something that every school should be doing—and are all interpretations of “making” of equitable value? EdSurge sat down with Resnick in his office at the MIT Media Lab to learn more, and to find out how he and his team are working to bring more c

The question on everyone's mind at NewSchools Venture Fund's 2016 Summit: How will we know when education has become more equitable?We interviewed Dreambox CEO Jessie Woolley-Wilson and Democrats for Education Reform President Shaver Jeffries for their takes on the most contested issue in education.

In addition to this week's regularly scheduled podcast programming, we're bringing you an exclusive conversation between executives. At the NewSchools Venture Fund Summit, EdSurge's own CEO Betsy Corcoran interviewed Edgenuity CEO Sari Factor about Edgenuity's rapid expansion to 17,000 schools, Factor's definition of blended learning and what makes a good implementation. Edgenuity, formerly known as Education2020, was originally created, as Factor put it, for students who "couldn't be in the classroom, for one reason or another." Now, after five years of rapid growth, the company is expanding its products, services and focus this fall; tune in to hear more.