Graham Roberts is the director of immersive platforms storytelling, and leads a team that explores virtual and augmented reality projects, as well as innovation in video and motion-graphics. Marc is joined in this interview by Kimari Rennis of DreamYard Prep High School in the South Bronx , a Gamer and Youth Journalist. Notes from this episode: Experience Graham's work with the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/by/graham-roberts New York Video Game Critic's Circle: https://nygamecritics.com/ Hos...
Feb 22, 2019•50 min•Ep. 52
At the top of the last episode you learned about Mark Guzdial. Mark is a Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. After his talk at Cornell Tech's "To Code and Beyond" I had a chance to sit down with Mark and ask what questions had bubbled up while I listened to his talk live. Probably my most pressing question: what you're saying is great, but we've all seen professors like you on youtube - Mark is a brilliant, animated, ukelele playing Computer Science professor, ...
Feb 06, 2019•43 min•Ep. 51
This is Mark Guzdial : he is a Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan.This is his talk from "To Code and Beyond," a conference about education and computer science, hosted by Cornell Technion. Guzdial is a really important piece of this rubik's cube that is contemporary thought on computer science education. This talk is an important appetizer to the forthcoming episode, where Professor Guzdial and I dig into some of the topics he alludes to here. You'll notice tha...
Feb 04, 2019•38 min•Ep. 50
Research Practice Partnerships, otherwise known as RPPs, are important. Just like in any other field, good researchers are constantly thinking about how to bring relevance and purpose to their research. RPPs make strategic partners out of researchers and practitioners to dig into what the field needs to know in the present, and closely study what’s working and what’s not. Guests from Hive Research Lab, New York University, and UC Irvine discuss the recently-published Toolkit for Brokering Youth ...
Jan 24, 2019•47 min•Ep. 49
Vassiliki Khonsari : Producer & director specializing in interactive storytelling across screens (VR, Games, Documentary, Film) Independent Magazine calls her “One of the top ten filmmakers to watch”. Founding partner of iNK Stories, known for creating impact forward, immersive stories for global audiences. With background in Visual Anthropology, a Sundance fellow and member of Women’s Impact Network (PGA), Khonsari mentors and contributes to many organizations on reframing diversity, emergi...
Jan 14, 2019•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 48
Tasker Smith is a technical instructor at MIT's Pappalardo Lab for Mechanical Engineering. As you'll hear through this interview, his background has a striking resemblance to television's Adam Savage of MythBusters. That is, he's held roles in all sorts of environments: performance, toys, consumer products, and lucky for the young mechanical engineers at MIT he wound up eventually making his way to higher education, cultivating young talent to be as skilled technically and emotionally to enter a...
Jan 02, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 47
In this episode I'm joined by two special guests and we're talking about a recent merger that may have gone unnoticed by many, but to me could be a tiny rumble before a tremendous shift that could rock education in a lot of ways. Here were some of the headlines: New Merger Wants to Create ‘WeWork for Education’ Via Digital Badges and Mini-Campuses Next for SNHU: Game-Based Learning and Digital Badges for Middle Schoolers Southern New Hampshire University and LRNG Merge to Deploy Innovative Commu...
Dec 13, 2018•57 min•Ep. 46
I was extremely honored to be invited by friends at CSTA-NYC to help produce a live episode of the show on the topic of Tech and Ethics. We called the event "Code of Ethics" and my thanks in particular to the kind and hardworking folks in the Audio-Visual department at Microsoft, NY, who hosted the event. Anil Dash is the CEO of Glitch , formerly Fogcreek Software, and host of Vox Media's new show on Tech and Society, Function, and long-time advocate for a more socially-minded technology sector,...
Dec 06, 2018•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 45
I'm cramming for my conversation next week about ethics and tech, and as I prepare I thought it would be a fun way to add some transparency to the process. Usually when I prepare for a big episode I reach out to folks in my network, I dig for sources, I spend a lot of time with the topic in my head. When I thought about who I should reach out to as I think about the roots of some of the issues we'll cover next week, I wondered, who might help me with something of a literature review on the ethic...
Nov 29, 2018•50 min•Ep. 44
At the end of October, the New York Times ran a series of articles on kids, parents, and screentime . It looked at trends among parents, largely around the Silicon Valley in California. When I read Anya Kamenetz's response in the Columbia Journalism Review, titled What the Times Got Wrong About Kids and Phones , I had to reach out and see if she'd be willing to talk. I think her perspective on this issue is extremely important. Anya Kamenetz is NPR's lead education blogger. She joined NPR in 201...
Nov 16, 2018•58 min•Ep. 43
Buckle up for some real talk about solutions to our Math challenges that might sound simple in a lot of cases, but they certainly aren't obvious. If they were, we would've figured out a long time ago that, for example, "school math and real math" as Marvin puts it during this interview, should not and cannot be such very different things. In this episode, Marc interviews researchers from Education Development Center's Center for Children and Technology and Bank Street College of Education , who ...
Oct 19, 2018•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 42
Del Lago Academy is one use case that shows the potential of alternative credentialing (or digital badges) for reforming assessment in the digital age. If you're a K12 professional, a funder, or a education technologist that's been following the conversation on Badges for Learning, you don't want to miss this conversation. Alec Barron is the lead behind Competency X, a project that's already engaged teachers, local industry, and higher ed in a serious conversation about how competency-based prac...
Oct 05, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 41
In this episode I'm talking with Julia Bennett, Director of Learning Strategy at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, along with Dan Rice, Director of Training for an organization called, Answer out of Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Temitayo Fagbenle, Senior, City University of NY, Queens College and soon-to-begin "Fellow" at "Nancy," a production of WNYC Studios. You may remember her from previous episodes of this show on higher education and youth radio. If you've wondered about th...
Sep 19, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 40
This episode is part 2 of an experiment. If you listen to both episodes, it’s two hours of gameplay, and talk about games in learning, play, popular titles, a takedown of the Fortnight franchise by young Game Reviewer, and Rudy Blanco's student, Kimari Rennis - I can’t wait for you to meet Kimari - we talk about diversity in games, we define some terms, sidetrack a bit into mythology, and so so much more. Here’s the bottom line, though. If you’ve never played video games with your students, you ...
Sep 05, 2018•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 39
This episode is another two-parter and it’s something of an experiment. If you listen to both episodes, it’s two hours of gameplay, and talk about games in learning, play, popular titles, a takedown of the Fortnight franchise by young Game Reviewer, and Rudy Blanco's student, Kimari Rennis - I can’t wait for you to meet Kimari - we talk about diversity in games, we define some terms, sidetrack a bit into mythology, and so so much more. Here’s the bottom line, though. If you’ve never played video...
Aug 28, 2018•54 min•Ep. 38
The organization Games for Change is hard to describe as being just one thing: they throw a Festival that happens every year in NYC, and that's been the backbone of the organization, but around that has grown a really important community of artists and activists, educators, computer scientists, developers, funders, and game studios who believe deeply in the power of games for improving the human experience. Sometimes that's about empathy for other humans, sometimes it's about zooming in on somet...
Aug 02, 2018•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 37
Dr. Gretchen Givens Generett , is a researcher / educator on issues of teacher professional development, educational leadership, and cultural diversity. An associate professor in the School of Education at Duquesne University, Gretchen is the Director of the University Council for Educational Administration Center for Educational Leadership and Social Justice. Her teaching and research are designed to enhance the skills and habits of mind necessary for educators to effectively teach students fro...
Jul 20, 2018•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 36
If you're getting to this episode without having given a listen to Episode 34 on MakerEd and Autism, hit pause and back up one episode. This one won't land without its predecessor. In fact, when I recorded this interview, it was intended as a segment that I would drop into 34, but the more I tried to make it work, the less I liked it. I didn't want to interrupt the previous conversation, and I didn't want to give short shrift to Dave Wells, who's a critical piece of the Maker Educator puzzle in ...
Jul 11, 2018•22 min•Ep. 35
Kristie Patten Koenig is an occupational therapist, with a PhD in Educational Psychology. From her bio: She examines the efficacy of interventions utilized in public schools for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. She's the Department Chair for Occupational Therapy at New York University and a leading researcher on K12 interventions related to Autism Spectrum Disorder. Dr. Wendy Martin leads research that deepens understanding of how key components of educational programs in...
Jul 03, 2018•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 34
This is part two of a couple of episodes on "Broadening Participation." Dr. Sunshine Menezes, has served as executive director of the Metcalf Institute at the University of Rhode Island since 2006. She became a Clinical Associate Professor of Environmental Communication in the URI Department of Natural Resources Science in 2017. She'd spent more than a decade before that as specialist in Science Communication and science policy. Menezes received a B.S. in zoology from Michigan State University, ...
Jun 22, 2018•37 min•Ep. 33
This episode is important groundwork for understanding some of the nuance of broadening participation . This interview is with experts like Jaime Bell , Cecilia Garabay , Christine Reich , and Dale McCreedy , and together we dive into the issue. I taped these interviews after a two-day convening of the task force in Washington DC. Every step of this experience has been an honor and a priviledge to be a part of, and I'm really grateful for the chance to contribute and, of course, learn a lot myse...
Jun 15, 2018•1 hr 6 min
Amil Cook is a teacher at Propel Andrew Street Charter School in Pittsburgh, and he sees educators as DJs for learning. Part of his mantra... "break all the rules" My conversation with Amil Cook highlights some opportunities that excited me when I first heard about them because they were totally novel instances where an educator was consciously pairing these specific technologies - crypto currency and 360 cameras - with learning experiences at the high school level. Amil and I, along with nearly...
Jun 07, 2018•1 hr 23 min
This episode is about Maker Education, but also about the high stakes of designing high quality professional experiences for educators. There are still too many professional experiences meant to hone craft, build skills, and excite that are way too dull. Manhattan Make-A-Thon is something different. And for that, it deserves a lot of credit. Earlier in the year, Lori Stahl Van-Brackle, Director of Instructional Technology for the Manhattan Field Support Center at the NYC DOE, challenged 20 schoo...
May 30, 2018•1 hr 15 min
Today's interview is a live taping of the show from the annual Facutly Symposium at Borough of Manhattan Community College. The daylong symposium was called Techno Cultures in the 21st Century. Marc and Becca Lewis from Data & Society , explore the report titled, "Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online" widening its scope to include her further research on the "Online Far-Right" as content creators. If you're someone who spends time advocating for a creative and collaborative culture o...
May 09, 2018•1 hr 19 min
Marc talks with distinguished learning scientists Katie Davis from University of Washington , and Barry Fishman of University of Michigan about "badges," also known as digital, micro, and alternative credentials. The group discusses the potential for technology to reframe the experience for learners of demonstrating "achievement" throughout their education and development. If you like this episode, subscribe to No Such Thing on iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play. If it's not available on your fav...
Apr 25, 2018•1 hr 23 min
This is Part 2 of a 2-Part Episode. Akbar Cooke is a vice principal at West Side High School in Newark NJ, he's one in nearly 1mm K12 administrators in the country, but at West Side he's a giant. Kids call him "coach" or "Cooke" and straighten up when they see him. Not out of fear, but respect - the kind that if you've ever worked with teens, you know only comes when things are reciprocal, mutual - it's clear that his heart is as intimidating, in a way, as his physical presence. Everyone should ...
Apr 19, 2018•56 min
This is Part 1 of a 2-Part Episode. Akbar Cooke is a vice principal at West Side High School in Newark NJ, he's one in nearly 1mm K12 administrators in the country, but at West Side he's a giant. Kids call him "coach" or "Cooke" and straighten up when they see him. Not out of fear, but respect - the kind that if you've ever worked with teens, you know only comes when things are reciprocal, mutual - it's clear that his heart is as intimidating, in a way, as his physical presence. Everyone should ...
Apr 12, 2018•1 hr
Dov is back, chatting with Marc about the process of "school choice" in NYC, and how he's dealing with the prospect of his non-high-tech options. Joining with her sage advice is Geneva Hayward, recently admitted to NYU's Game Center for a BFA, Geneva offers her ideas about how to blaze your own high tech path when school doesn't offer it. Both students are generally happy with their schooling, but weigh in on where to find ways to supplement the experience, and what's lacking about the process o...
Apr 04, 2018•51 min
Three members of the Emoti-Con, NYC, Steering Committee join the show to talk about the event's anniversary. Amanda Perales, Christin Velasquez, and Meredith Summs talk about NYC's biggest showcase for young designers, makers, technologists, and tinkerers who believe in digital innovation as a tool for positive change in the world around them. 2018 will be Emoti-Con's 10th year! If you like this episode, subscribe to No Such Thing on iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play. If it's not available on yo...
Mar 28, 2018•1 hr 20 min
Kalani Leifer is a former high school history teacher and the founder of COOP , a fast-growing non-profit that supports cohorts of 1st generation undergrads entering the workforce. Together, he and Monica Guzman, Program Manager and alum of Cohort 1, are evolving a model aimed at supplementing skills that prepare students for high tech jobs. Who knew that basic software remediation might be what stands in the way for many. But the biggest difference for 1st gen students they say? "Literacies" th...
Mar 19, 2018•1 hr 6 min
