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Revolutionizing Education – Interview with Sal Khan

Over 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. It was great to share ideas with and ask question of someone helping to radically impact education. During our conversation, we spoke about the disruption the Khan Academy has presented to traditional education. Sal began with a decidedly low-tech approach to teaching and posted his lessons to Youtube. Since 2004, he has created more than 2,100 videos that receive millions of views each year.

I was able to record a ten minute selection of our conversation. Listen to Sal explain the Khan Academy and his vision for the future of education.

• Sal Khan-Khan Academy (MP3 Audio File)

As always we look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments. You can find us on Twitter (@darylljohnson or @sroner) and Facebook (EDBuzz).

CCSA Conference 2011

The 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).

Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was awarded the Hart Vision Elected Official of the Year Award. Mayor Villaraigosa has been a passionate advocate of the charter school movement. He oversees the Partnership for LA Schools, which runs ten of the lowest-performing schools in the district and is seeing improvement in test scores. Mayor Villaraigosa challenged charter schools to not only build new schools, but to take on the lowest performing schools and turn them around. In addition, he urged the charter school movement to hold itself to a higher standard of performance and shut failing charter schools down. By taking on the lowest performing schools, turning them around, and holding charter schools to the highest standards, Mayor Villaraigosa insisted that charter schools can destroy the myth that they are cherry-picking the best students.

Sal Khan of the Kahn Academy delivered a powerful keynote address that showcased the power of disruptive technology. His Kahn Academy is very reminiscent of what Clayton Christensen speaks of in his book Disrupting Class. From humble beginnings tutoring his niece, Sal has been noticed by Microsoft, Google, and Bill Gates as an educational innovator. In highlighting the future of his non-profit Kahn Academy, Sal pulled back the curtain on what has become an increasingly hot topic, inverting or flipping the traditional teaching model. By making the lecture content available for the student to access outside of class, the teacher is allowed to focus on the critical learning moments in class and once again truly teach.

Much attention has been focused on tracking student learning and providing meaningful data for both teachers and students. Despite the detractors that feel it discourages innovative learning, it is a vital step in truly personalizing a students learning. Several vendors provided a look at how schools can improve this process. Both Illuminate and Scantron show-cased platforms to help this task become easier and more efficient.

The march for schools to more fully integrate cloud resources was readily apparent. CloudConnect, sponsored by the San Diego County Office of Education, is a browser-based platform that incorporates virtual learning environments, single-log-ins, data storage, and curriculum offerings for both schools and individual teachers. It leverages the mobility of cloud resources to provide a dynamic and 24-7 learning option. EduTone is another vendor that provides software-as-a-service and bills itself as connecting all the dots. They provide a single-sign-on gateway for their customers and have leveraged the power of the Google App Marketplace. In addition, they have a marketplace of services that can be added to their customers menu of options. This provides a slick and cost-effective environment for schools looking to save on their IT budgets.

Finally, it was great to meet so many of you that are engaged in making education better. The conversations and ideas that were shared will fuel my own work for quite a while. As always, feel free to share your comments and I look forward to hearing about your experiences.

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
Open Courseware on Every Campus by 2016?, Dennis Carter
Teaching Twitter To Higher Education Colleagues, Ed Cabellon

EDBuzz Goes Mobile

Over 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).

App Makes Citations a Snap

An 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.

The 7cubed team acknowledges that the app isn’t perfect and would like to find time to schedule future revisions. It seems the catch is that it is apparently difficult to schedule the time for them to all skip class. The ability to effectively transfer citations between styles was mentioned as one area to improve. Another challenge may be the issue of bar codes only coming into use in the 1970′s. This may hamper the app’s effectiveness with older books.

As a real-life exercise, the 7cubed team has come up with a remarkably effective app in a short amount of time. Hopefully this will encourage other students and faculty members to develop more useful apps in the near future.

Google Adds New Education Category to App Marketplace

With more than ten million student and faculty users of Google apps, Google is making clear its desire to be a key player in the education market. In recent weeks Google has announced significant additions to its education services. Last week it added additional security features for school administrators. These were aimed at making Google’s cloud-based services more user friendly for schools and addressed several control issues that are unique to the school setting.  Today, Google announced a new Education category for its Apps Marketplace.

The goal of this category is to provide school administrator’s with easier access to school-focused applications. This new offering is aimed at helping solve some of the unique issues faced by education institutions. These include lack of financial resources, security for a customer-base that is under 18, and the ability to access current technology. Google’s new education category is designed to offer cutting edge collaboration tools.

Here’s a quick video explaining the category:

With the creation of the Education category, Google has highlighted two significant benefits for schools.

1. Access to cutting-edge tools
2. Easy Integration

With more schools embracing Google-driven, cloud-based platforms, integration becomes a breeze. GrockIT, Aviary, LearnBoost, BrainPop, and others have lined up to provide innovative tools for teachers and students. For schools usng Gmail for student and faculty accounts, adding these applications makes real sense.

Shawn and I have been working with our IT department to provide a more robust Google apps implementation for our school. We will share more of our experiences along the way, please share yours.

The Weekly Update: January 10 – 16

Innovating Without Permission, Daniel Lemire

Napa New Tech: School of the Future is Here, Tina Barseghian

Pay Attention, T4 – Jordan School District

Math Class Doesn’t Have to Suck, The Innovative Educator

Wikipedia Turns 10: Are we Banning or Boosting?, Doug Johnson

The Weekly Update: January 3 -9

Why Teachers Should Blog, Shelly Blake-Plock

How to Save Money by Migrating to Cloud Computing, Klint Finley

When Passion Drives Instruction No Child Is Left Behind, The Innovative  Educator

Thoughts on Teaching, 2001, Larry Cuban

Google Apps Gives Schools a Better “Walled Garden” for Student E-mail, RWW

Inverting Learning

I came across an interesting article recently on a unique approach to teaching called “inverted learning.” According to the author, Meris Stansbury, this instructional model involves “mak[ing] the students the focus of the class, not the teacher, by having students watch a lecture at home and then apply the lesson with the teacher in the classroom.”

Inverting learning requires shifting certain learning activities traditionally completed in the classroom to home. According to Stansbury,

“Students can absorb the material as homework and then practice what they’ve learned with guided help from the teacher if they need it. This new learning style not only makes class time more productive for both teachers and students, but also increases student engagement, increases achievement, and caters to all forms of personalized learning, say the teachers.”

What makes this instructional approach intriguing is it enables teachers to customize learning to meet individual student needs. By moving certain learning activities out of the classroom (e.g., direct instruction, etc.), teachers free up valuable time during class to be available for students when they could use the teacher’s attention most. Inverted learning provides more opportunities for teachers to monitor, engage, and guide students during the most critical moments of learning.

With the availability of learning management systems like Blackboard and Moodle, teachers are able to effectively transfer core learning tasks, such as watching a lecture and taking notes, away from the classroom. These learning management systems have powerful accountability tools which enable teachers to closely monitor students as they complete learning activities at home.

An inverted model, however, involves more than simply transferring learning activities to home. It requires rethinking the way teachers design curriculum, deliver instruction, and interact with students. The success of this type of learning model hinges on the teacher’s ability to customize learning experiences for each student. As certain learning activities are moved out of the classroom, valuable time is freed up to assess students, prescribe learning interventions, foster critical thinking, and focus on individual student learning needs. This approach involves utilizing a teaching cycle based on real-time data.

Because meaningful educational reform requires customizing learning, this model presents interesting opportunities for educators.

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

The Weekly Update: December 27- January 1

Teachers: What Are Your Intentions for the New Year, Elena Aguilar

21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020, Shelley Blake-Plock

Glogster Video Tutorial, Miguel Guhlin

2010 Retrospective (Part 2): And This Year’s Top 10 Posts, Moodle News

What Mobile Content is Worth Paying For?, Sarah Perez

A Practical Action Plan for Transforming Education, Walter McKenzie

How We Shared Content in 2010, Marshall Kirkpatrick