A family member – who works in a Texas middle school – forwarded this bit of wit and wisdom to me today. A teacher dies and goes to Heaven. When she gets there, she meets Peter at the pearly white gates. Peter says to her, ‘Welcome to Heaven. Let me…
An instructional monoculture is a world where all children are expected to learn the same things, the same way, at the same time. Are we building instructional monocultures in our schools? By we I mean publishers, policy makers, and district level decision makers. The forces of conformity are driving hard…
New York, Texas, California, and Florida have opted out of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and will be abandoning all high stakes testing. It is unclear at this time if other states will follow, although indications from across the political spectrum are clear there is strong interest. In a joint…
Information Overload and Education Publishing Marketing penned (keyed?) by yours truly was published today on the AEP blog. This is a summary of the longer series I did last year on information overload. If you want a quick introduction or need a refresher hop over and take a look. While…
Curious about how Web 2.0 is going to affect education? Steve Hargadon has distilled into one blog post an excellent summary of the trends that are leading us there and what teachers can do to help their students thrive in this new environment. Much of what Steve talks about has…
What is the future of publishing? I moderated a distinguished panel at the IIR Education Industry Investment Forum in Phoenix last week that tackled this question. The general thrust was that publishers need to adapt to a new environment or they will be left behind. Nader Dareshori CEO of Aptius…
Why don’t textbook publishers use more humor? Humor frequently plays a critical role in revealing truth and puncturing pomposity. Textbooks should be a path to the truth – and they are frequently so pompous they could bore a narcoleptic sloth to death. As an example the “You Suck at Photoshop”…
In Japan novels are serialized for cell phone delivery and published as dead tree editions only after they are hits. John Rice has a great post on on this at his Educational Games Research blog. While this works because of Japan’s rather unique commuting environment the central point that any…
What do Web 2.0 and Social Networking mean for Education Publishing? On February 7th I was on a panel at the Association of American Publishers (AAP) in Sacramento that tackled this question. Ann Flynn Director of Education Technology at National School Boards Association (NSBA) reviewed the excellent study they released…
What tools do teachers find useful for learning and teaching? The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies out of the UK conducted a survey in 2007 that asked people to submit their top 10 tools – they then came up with a list of the top 100. If you are…