Blog posts from 2010

Are urban superintendents warming to innovative uses of technology? To new roles for teachers? In a recent letter to the Washington Post 16 major superintendents indicate yes. But instead of focusing only on teacher tenure, or adding new technologies to existing classrooms, they could also engage in a complete re-imagining what is possible with schools.

Peter Theil’s grants could provide the inspiration for an innovative high school, modeled after people like Thiel, Zuckerberg, and Gates: Allow for autonomy, accommodate and support entrepreneurialism, and provide an option to start into college courses through online or on-campus courses.

In this guest post LeAnn Binford, director of operations at Big Thought, argues that exposing under served students to expanded forms of learning improves performance. Autonomy and financial support are necessary for this type of re-working of assessment to function well.

As Zuckerberg points at a particular state and calls for start ups, the question raises: Where are the entrepreneurs? There will be people that can come in from the outside, surely. But as with technological innovation, may we assume improvement in schooling can also be driven by the ‘users’?