Innovativeed

Tony, Anika and Isabel are all 8th graders who agreed to talk with us about where they are with their year-long projects. Tony, the novelist, covers the story arc behind his ongoing scifi fantasy series, Anika talks about the many administrative overhead involved in staging a play and Isabel explains why, in her film, you really can't ask teachers what they do after school. (Especially Mrs. Gumbleberry.) Check out how these three students have interpreted project-based learning and creative writing in three very different ways.

We talk with a trio of 7th graders in Essex Junction, Vermont, about their year-long research project to build an eco-machine like the one on the University of Vermont campus. Just.... smaller.

In this episode of the podcast, I talk with local digital artist and educator Rachel Hooper about how she got started learning and teaching how to make stuff with arduinos. Hooper discussed her background in teaching both students and adults how to construct projects using the tiny microcontrollers, her journey from arduino-learner to educator, then schooled me on gender essentialism* in tech-based learning. And did I mention we were locked in a bathroom at the Generator? (Never let your travel microphones out of your sight, people. Never. Do it.)

When your students sign up for that cool new edtech tool, where does their data go? Who's looking at it and what are they doing with it? The Tarrant Institute's Susan Hennessey and Mark Olofson debate how educators can navigate the pitfalls of corporate data-mining in the classroom. Episode image by Kencf0618, licensed under Creative Commons 3.0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_visualization#mediaviewer/File:Kencf0618FacebookNetwork.jpg

2nd half of the extended PLP session at VermontFest 2014, featuring Elizabeth McCarthy, Maggie Eaton, Lauren Parren, Matt Allen and Tim Alderman. Check out Lauren Parren's sample 7th grade PLP here: https://sites.google.com/a/anesu.org/middle-school-sample/

Audio from the first half of the extended PLP session at Vermont Fest 2014, featuring Maggie Eaton, Elizabeth McCarthy, Lauren Parren, Matt Allen and Tom Alderman. Google doc of the presentation can be found at http://goog.gl/jlpzvU

Dan French presented on "Transforming Schooling: A Systems Approach to Personalized Learning" at VTFest 2014. Check out Dan's presentation slides at https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rq5Y3y2mHBZCRzaXjOzAf2QQWaO6W7K0lOm8q7XYqRg/edit#slide=id.p With Dan's permission, I experimented with capturing an audio file of his presentation online with SoundCloud.

Tarrant Institute graduate research fellow Mark Olofson and I take a look at one of the premises of this article on the ill-fated city-wide rollout of iPads in Los Angeles classrooms, “Los Angeles schools need to think outside the iPad”. The article’s author, Nathan Schneider raises an interesting point about how who makes the tech students use on a daily basis can shape their world-view.

In this episode of our podcast, we're going to be hearing from math educator Jared Bailey, who spent his summer vacation building a web app for his students, so they could have their homework assignments, practice drills, schedule and his contact info all in one place. As could their parents. Bailey's ethos was simple: he wanted it to be as simple as possible for students and their families to install the app on their mobile devices, and he didn't want to deal with licensing issues or necessarily learn a ton of code. He just wanted his app to be convenient for students.

NPR recently highlighted a study claiming that students today don't read nearly as much as they used to, so we had Graduate Research Fellow and big-time data/methodology guy Mark Olofson take a closer look at the study in question. The results? Students these days probably read more than you'd think.