Edsurge On Air

Technology can bring great benefit far outside the ecosystem of a city. Rural schools are often understaffed and underfunded, so digital courses can bring extra faculty in from afar, and inexpensive digital materials can provide much needed resources to students. That said, bringing technology infrastructure to a school far from a city is no easy task. However, one individual in particular knows a lot about how to run a rural school. Daisy Dyer Duerr is a former principal from Arkansas who’s now working with rural schools across the country on technology initiatives and training for teachers and administrators. She transformed her floundering Title I school without any technology into a top-performing school with cutting edge devices for its students. Check out the podcast to hear her story.

There are few people who know teachers and the art of teaching as well as Barnett Berry. He’s the founder and CEO of the Center for Teaching Quality, a national nonprofit that advances a high-quality public education system for all students, driven by the bold ideas and expert practices of teachers. Barnett’s two books, Teaching 2030 and Teacherpreneurs, frame his bold vision for the teaching profession’s future. But is it too bold? Perhaps downright impossible? A few weeks ago, The Center for Teaching Quality put out a new paper commissioned by the Ford Foundation, all about the concept of “deeper learning.” Barnett stopped by EdSurge to share some of the papers’ findings, but we wanted more. Barnett and his team make the argument in the paper that if we want to achieve deeper learning in the classroom, we need to do a better job developing teacher leaders. But does that mean they have to leave the classroom to become administrators? And where does technology play a role in all of this?

This week on the podcast, Betsy Corcoran interviews Eduardo Briceño, founder and CEO of Mindset Works, a company that takes university research and turns it into programs for schools. He's bullish on the growth mindset; that's what his company is named after. It's a concept that's becoming increasingly common in education debates today, and as it does, it becomes vulnerable to more misconceptions. We asked Eduardo to come and clarify somethings for us and talk about his own journey with the concept through the nine years Mindset Works has been around. Don't forget that you can subscribe to the podcast on all of your favorite podcast apps! To follow us on iTunes, just follow this linkinto iTunes and hit "subscribe"—if you have the podcast app on your phone, the show should automatically download the next time you open it. You can follow us on SoundCloud here or search for us on your favorite podcasting site.

With all this talk about candidates for Election 2016, it can be easy to forget that there’s someone else that’s had quite an impact—from a presidential perspective. And no, we’re not talking about Barack Obama. About three years ago, a 9-year-old donned a suit, gave America a pep talk, and became a viral sensation with his fresh take on dancing, politics and joy. That young fellow is Kid President, the central character of a popular YouTube channel produced by SoulPancake. In real life, Kid President is Robby Novak, a current 6th grader from Tennessee whose brother-in-law, Brad Montague, created the concept of Kid President with Robby back in 2013. During the recent CUE conference in Palm Springs, CA, Montague gave the opening keynote on March 17th to an auditorium overflowing with teachers and administrators from up and down the West Coast. His theme? How to be “awesome”—specifically, how Robby’s worked to bring joy into people’s lives, and how some of that joy gets lost when kids turn into adults. EdSur

When the popular children’s television show "Reading Rainbow" graced TV sets across America in the 90s, host LeVar Burton took students through a world of literature and storytelling. Today, he’s back at with the Reading Rainbow app. Back in 2014, LeVar announced that he would be returning to the reading game. Since then, he claims that readers have enjoyed over 20 million books and videos about reading. We spoke with LeVar to see what’s next for the app, what he’s reading and what he’s learned about adults from reading so much children’s literature.

On this week's podcast, Blake Montgomery has some lessons from his first SXSWedu and senior editor Mary Jo Madda interviews Eric Sheninger, a former principal of New Milford High School and current Senior Fellow at the International Center for Leadership in Education. After overcoming serious skepticism of edtech, Sheninger was responsible for implementing highly effective technology programs at New Milford. He’s since moved on to helping other schools do the same at the International Center for Leadership in Education. He emphasizes efficacy, data and accountability. Stay tuned till the end to hear his one essential piece of advice for edtech companies. Enjoy!

Sound the alarm! We’ve got a big, big dose of edtech trends for you, and we’re serving them up on a silver platter. On Wednesday, EdSurge launched the first round of our Edtech Trends 2016 report, sponsored by AT&T. Unlike those trend articles that pop up around December, when people share their guesses about what’ll be big in the new year, we talked to 20 administrators, 17 teachers, 24 companies, 16 investors, and 16 other edtech voices to figure out—what are people thinking and planning around right now? We have technically have eight trends in the report. However, for the sake of this podcast, we’re focusing on one big theme, and one that we hear about a lot. What’s the benefit of free products… vs. freemium? You know, those products where you get a part for free, but have to pay for other features? Listen in to find out.

In Episode 51, we're bringing you the edtech news and a deep dive into sexual assault on college campuses, specifically technology’s role in reporting it. Increasingly, survivors of sexual assault and the federal government are demanding that universities provide more prevention, reporting options and counseling. Can tech create scalable and useful solutions even as some universities sweep accusations and convictions under the rug? We interviewed chief development officer of Sexual Health Innovations (SHI), a company that makes an online reporting tool for survivors of sexual assault in college, and a Stanford student involved with the company. You'll hear their thoughts on tech's current and future role in reporting the crime and the sharp criticisms they face.

Larry Cuban—whose been a teacher, a superintendent, and more—is an academic whose thoughts and feelings about edtech are the ones we’re featuring on the EdSurge podcast today. Cuban’s writings have great impact and reach in the education. Every year, Rick Hess put out an “Edu-Scholar Public Influence ranking.” The metrics recognize university-based scholars in the U.S. who are contributing most substantially to public debates about education. And Larry Cuban, a former Stanford university professor, makes the top ten list every single year. Talking with him in person reveals a whole new light about who he is as a voice and as a teacher. In this interview, we hear his thoughts on venture-backed companies, technology in education, and more.

EdSurge has been all over the place these last few weeks— from the Educon conference in Philadelphia to Washington D.C. for Teach for America’s 25th anniversary Summit. And in each place, the conversations have been anything but boring. When it comes to big themes, one particular conversation caught our attention. Summit Public Schools CEO Diane Tavenner and founder of Deans for Impact Benjamin Riley went head to head on whether “personalized learning” is the answer to solving the achievement gap. We were there to catch a few sound bytes.

The term on everyone's lips these days is “adaptive learning:" Proponents promise the technology has the ability to improve educational experiences in personal, efficient and scalable ways. It's unclear, though, what the inner workings of the technology look like. We called some of our expert friends and asked them to talk about how adaptive learning works in their fields, and they spoke at our recent meetup in San Francisco. We heard from EdSurge's president Tyler McNally about our recent research on adaptive learning and several others: Jennie Dougherty—Associate Director of Innovation, KIPP Bay Area Angela Estrella—Teacher, Instructional Coach and Parent James Harrell—Talent Development Manager, Oakland Unified School District Johann Larusson—Lead, Center for Digital Data, Analytics and Adaptive Learning, Pearson Elena Sanina—Senior Manager of Blended Learning, Aspire Public Schools Esther Tricoche—Associate Partner, New School Venture Fund Missed the meetup? Not to worry. We recorded the talks along wit

We're bringing you the latest in edtech from the week of January 23-30: Pearson and Scholastic's dark and stormy night on the stock market, Coursera's new fees, your weekly Ka'Chings and more.

What’s math got to do with it? Everything, says Dan Meyer, creator of the the popular blog dy/dan. Meyer is one of America’s most popular math educators—he has 43,400 followers on Twitter who are ready at any moment to talk about math—and he’s been through many transformations: Math teacher, math education researcher, now chief academic officer at Desmos. What's changed? What's stayed the same? Are math students in America always doomed? We spoke with him about the stories math can tell, types of instruction and the state of math education today. Tune in for that and the news on this week’s EdSurge On Air. We interviewed Dan about a lot of concepts, and we want your help filling in the details. We didn't have time to ask him about all the granular details of what makes a great math classroom—the tools, the tech, the pedagogy, etc—that make a great math classroom. Tweet us ​@EdSurge and Dan ​@ddmeyer to get the conversation started!

Last week, we interviewed Beth Box, who wanted to reinvigorate waning student interest and boost her students' scores on state tests. This week, we wanted to continue the conversation about educational gams with another maker: An 8-year-old student. Samaira Mehta lives in Mountain View, California, where she goes to school and teaches workshops in coding. She's the creator of the board game Coderbunnyz, which teaches young kids about algorithms as they guide a rabbit down a path and around obstacles. Samaira made the game after spending a great night playing board games with her parents. They didn't want to play any more because she kept winning (or so she says), so she went to do some coding. She got to do her two favorite things in one night, and she wanted to share that excitement with other kids, especially her younger brother. He's four.

Beth Box is a lifelong resident of Okeechobee, Florida. She's also a 7th grade civics teacher at Yearling Middle School. She describes herself as "always in love with the Okeechobee school system." That's not common, nor is it still the case. Standardized testing has limited the freedom Beth used to feel in the classroom. She didn't feel like students could learn at their own pace, and they stopped caring because of it. Some students didn't even care when they got an F. Beth, facing a daunting civics test, took a big risk: She switched her instruction to mastery-based learning and made the whole class into a game. She named it Give Me Liberty, and her students have to find 35 documents—she teaches to 35 test standards—that were essential to the founding of the United States or else risk the whole country falling into a dystopian dictatorship. Tune in to see if they can save their country and improve their scores. This week on the podcast, we've got the news and the story of Beth Box. Check it out.

Salman Khan’s Lab School in Mountain View, CA, has slowly been gaining recognition—but is it really as innovative as people might imagine? EdSurge asked that very question last week. Khan had the idea to open a school long before he started his online platform Khan Academy, and after visiting the Lab School, we at EdSurge were curious about whether he wants to expand to other cities—but before engaging in a Q&A with the man himself, we took to Twitter to get an idea of what our podcast listeners would want to know. Questions came rolling in: Are students actually learning? Is this just an easy way for Khan Academy employees to try out new products on children? After all, the Lab School and Khan Academy are in the same building; the school’s on the first floor, and the nonprofit’s on the second. Check out EdSurge's podcast interview with Khan to see what we found out.

(rerun) What's the biggest edtech deal of 2015? That would, be LinkedIn's acquisition of Lynda.com. On April 9th, the two companies announced that Lynda.com and its 250,000 learning videos would be purchased for $1.5B. The week after the deal was announced, Lynda.com co-founders (and husband and wife) Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin stopped by EdSurge to chat with CEO Betsy Corcoran about their company's history.

EdSurge had a pleasant surprise last night, so we wrote a poem about it. Merry Christmas!

The Maker movement. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, this phrase refers to a recent trend towards, well… making things. AdWeek has a pretty solid definition, saying that the maker movement is an umbrella term for independent inventors, designers and tinkerers. It’s a convergence of computer hackers and traditional artisans, and taps into American admiration for self-reliance and building. With the growth of makerspaces in school systems, the Maker movement has also been making its way into K-12 and other educational spaces across the world. Maker Faires across the country attracted an audience of 1.1 million people this year, and at the heart of the Maker movement, there are a few key players driving its growth. Dale Dougherty, Founder of MAKE Magazine and the creator of Maker Faires, is one of those people. And this week, we got some time to sit down with him and hear about what he predicts is next for making in education.

This week on the podcast, we hear pitches from three brave companies, BloomBoard, edWeb and LessonCast. And when the pitches are done, it's time for our four educators sharks to attack, asking the tough questions of the entrepreneurs. If you'd like to come to our next event in January, you can sign up for information here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1gUdEm_HokqpvSe0erYPrPYimI4q-XZ1sury0KaNRO2s/viewform