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 ...
Mar 21, 2016•33 min
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...
Mar 11, 2016•30 min
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 a...
Mar 07, 2016•16 min
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 Innova...
Feb 28, 2016•29 min
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 profess...
Feb 20, 2016•44 min
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 ga...
Feb 13, 2016•21 min
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 resea...
Feb 08, 2016•57 min
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.
Jan 31, 2016•8 min
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 o...
Jan 27, 2016•35 min
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 obsta...
Jan 24, 2016•7 min
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 c...
Jan 18, 2016•21 min
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 liste...
Jan 11, 2016•27 min
(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.
Dec 28, 2015•15 min
EdSurge had a pleasant surprise last night, so we wrote a poem about it. Merry Christmas!
Dec 24, 2015•3 min
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 wa...
Dec 21, 2015•19 min
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
Dec 11, 2015•56 min
Being a superintendent is anything but easy. Bureaucratic politics, having to work with multiple stakeholders, communicating a 1:1 plan to tens of thousands of students and teachers… heck, that’s not a job that just anyone can do. In fact, that might be why the average district superintendent in America doesn’t last longer than three years in the position. But when it comes to tenure, there’s one notable exception--and that’s Dallas Dance, the current superintendent of Baltimore County Public Sc...
Dec 05, 2015•21 min
We've been hearing all year about the wonderful things students are doing with podcasts. So this week on the show, we showcase a couple of them. First, three 5th graders from the Park School in Brookline, MA share with us an immigrant's journey from Uganda to the United States. Then, in a segment created especially for the EdSurge podcast, three high school students from Oxon Hill High School in Maryland debate whether technology should be used more or less in school.
Nov 26, 2015•16 min
Girls are underrepresented in computer science education and professions. According to the National Science Board’s “Science and Engineering Indicators for 2012,” women make up only 26% of Computer Science and Mathematical Science professionals in the United States. Believing that number begins with computer science education, we dove deep into the challenges girls face when learning and teaching computer science this week.
Nov 23, 2015•29 min
Steve Blank is known by some as “The Startup Whisperer" -- the guy that entrepreneurs turn to when they have questions about how to start or energize their business. He is also a serial entrepreneur, professor and investor who is perhaps best known for his books Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Startup Owner's Manual. Last week Steve stopped by our studio to cast his experienced and critical eye on the business of edtech. In a wide-ranging chat with EdSurge CEO Betsy Corcoran, Steve talks abou...
Nov 16, 2015•26 min
