Feed: Steve Kinney - AggScore: 68.2

What if the Secret to Success Is Failure?

Paul Tough for the New York Times quoting Dominic Randolph, headmaster at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx:

People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.”

What’s Blended Learning? Ask Salman Khan Here, Khan uses his...

What’s Blended Learning? Ask Salman Khan

Here, Khan uses his trademark “chalkboard” sketching approach to explain how the idea of blended learning — combining technology like online videos and software with classroom instruction — works.

(via Gwen Mueller)

Dispelling Myths About Blocked Sites

Here are six surprising rules that educators, administrators, parents and students might not know about website filtering in schools.

Forward this to a paranoid bureaucrat you love.

Rethinking Testing in the Age of the iPad

“One of our primary goals was to be able to develop a system that would bring a lot of the data into one place,” says Taylor Auger, a technology-integration teacher in the district who helped incorporate use of the iPads into classrooms. “Previously, the data was processed by hand, and it wasn’t really being put to use effectively. I’m all for data, but that data has to drive instruction.”

A device-agnostic truism.

Joe Moon on What Hacker Apprenticeships Tell Us About the Future of Education

As the historical model of education continues to come into contact with disruptive technologies, those technologies strike increasingly close to the heart of education’s basic value proposition. Institutions like University of Phoenix leverage the internet to provide students with degrees more flexibly and inexpensively. This means lower profit margins per student for Phoenix, but much greater scalability than the traditional university model. Khan Academy and similar online learning programs ignore the degree/certification aspect. Instead, they aim a level deeper—at the actual provision of knowledge and learning—as the target of their technological optimization.

Coding for Success

Andy Young:

We need to teach our kids to code. All of them. This should be compulsory education, a core pillar of modern schooling. Many people are worried about a shortage of trained programmers, but this misses a wider issue – one of the biggest modern threats to our individual and collective success. They will thank us for it, and curse us if we don’t. Stick with me, because I want to show you why.

MITx Opens Their First Course

Taught by Anant Agarwal, with Gerald Sussman and Piotr Mitros, 6.002x (Circuits and Electronics) is an on-line adaption of 6.002, MIT’s first undergraduate analog design course. This prototype course will run, free of charge, for students worldwide from March 5, 2012 through June 8, 2012. Students will be given the opportunity to demonstrate their mastery of the material and earn a certificate from MITx.

So it begins.

The Future of Self-Improvement, Part I: Grit Is More Important Than Talent

Very often when we talk about the skill of ‘productivity’ what we are really talking about is ‘self-control.’

Why Aren't More Students Programming?

Prominent technologist Jacques Mattheij recently blogged an eye-popping salary quote revealed to him by an under-30 programmer at Google: “I’m pushing $250K per year.” So if software engineers at Google and other tech companies are raking in that kind of dough and are in such high demand, why is it so tough to get more students into programming?

What I've Learned About Smart People

Tommy MacWilliam:

Going to Harvard means I have the very unique opportunity to be around a lot of smart people. Now, when I say “smart people,” I don’t mean that guy who always wins trivia night. I mean, blazingly intelligent individuals who are regarded as the pre-eminent scholars in their field. It’s pretty amazing to pass by Turing Award winners and leading political science scholars grabbing a sandwich.

So, what has he learned?

Smart people challenge everything.

Agreed.

A Hacker School That Helps Solve Silicon Valley's Hiring Problem

E.B. Boyd for Fast Company:

Tech companies can’t find enough engineers. So why not train them yourself? For free. And then make $20K a pop on recruiting fees.

I feel really secure giving these people my social security...

I feel really secure giving these people my social security number.

Why Every Educator Should Read Hacker News

Even more interesting is the idea of an education-focused GitHub.

How One Kitchen Table in Brooklyn Became a School for Coders

How One Kitchen Table in Brooklyn Became a School for Coders

You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to...

You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.