Revolutionizing Education – Interview with Sal Khan

Sal Khan of the Khan AcademyOver the past nine months Shawn and I have been involved in a project with the Girard and Pollinate Foundations focusing on how schools can radically transform themselves to improve student learning and teaching methods. It is our belief that the incremental movement that education as a whole experiences, is similar to a snail’s pace and that the world outside is changing and adapting at a far faster pace. This disparity is continuing to increase student’s disconnect between learning and the concept of school. Over the next few weeks, we will share much of our research and provide concrete ideas to help schools radically alter themselves to improve student learning.

Today, I begin with with Sal Khan and his journey to reinvent education. I had the opportunity to visit with Sal, prior to his keynote speech last week, at the 2011 CCSA conference in San Diego. Continue reading

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CCSA Conference 2011

CCSA Conference 2011The California Charter Schools Association 2011 Conference has just concluded. The 2011 conference was the biggest event yet and hosted a wide variety of speakers and events. Here are some brief notes and observations regarding the events (more posts and interviews are on the way). Continue reading

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The Weekly Update: February 14 – 20

Unfettered by Stuff – or “Why I don’t lug stuff home every night”, David Andrade
Understand RSS and make the Web Work for You, Jeff Utecht
Will the Next Revolution be Stroomed?, Ted Grasty Continue reading

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EDBuzz Goes Mobile

EDBuzz Goes MobileOver the last year we have noticed the significant increase in mobile web use. According to Techcrunch mobile consumption of the Internet has increased by 110% in the U.S. and 148% worldwide. With the growing number of mobile users and our desire to meet viewers where it is most convenient, we were unhappy with the browsing experience our site offered on mobile devices. We are happy to announce that EDBuzz has gone Mobile!

Today we finished optimizing our site for use on most popular mobile devices. While traditional browser users will not notice a difference, mobile users will receive a streamlined site that still contains all of the key features. As mentioned earlier, this is an overdue design move. We believe this will provide a better experience for our users that prefer to visit EDBuzz on their favorite mobile device and help us move into the future.

Take a minute to check out the experience and let us know what you think, both good and bad. We’re anxious to get your feedback and suggestions. If you like what we’re doing feel free to friend us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter (Shawn/Daryll).

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App Makes Citations a Snap

Quick Cite AppAn enterprising group of college students have crafted an app that allows users to simplify the often tedious work of creating citations for printed books. Crafted by seven University of Waterloo students, Quick Cite, allows the user to snap a picture of the book’s bar code and have a formatted citation instantly emailed to them. Quick Cite is available on the iOS and Android platforms for $0.99.

According to Hack College, which broke the story, the 7cubed team skipped class and challenged themselves to create seven apps in seven days. Quick Cite took about eight hours to write and is the first app to be released. More are expected to be released in the future. Continue reading

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