Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Education + Technology + Pinterest

By now, everyone has heard of Pinterest - but not everyone may be using it. Turns out, Pinterest is a great resource for finding education technology sources all in one place. Check out this compilation from Edudemic of "The 20 Best Pinterest Boards About Education Technology." This is the perfect starting point to delve into Pinterest - it may even inspire you to start your own Pinterest board that you can share with clients!

  1. Patricia Brown: Patricia showcases a myriad of videos, articles, tutorials, and lots of other resources all about education technology.
  2. Vicki Davis: We love Vicki! The ‘cool cat teacher’ is a rock-star on the blogs but also maintains a wonderful collection of curated resources for anyone looking to enhance their classroom or life.
  3. TeacherVision: A ‘family education network,’ TeacherVision assembles a solid list of resources that are valuable for parents, students, and teachers alike.
  4. Kathy Schrock: Kathy (big fan!) is a big name in edtech. Like Vicki Davis, she’s a wonderful blogger and Pinterest user. She curates helpful tools and supportive information for, in particular, developing top-notch presentations.
  5. Edutopia: The always-helpful Edutopia steps up to the Pinterest plate and hits it out of the park. They update their pinboards every day with a pantload of useful information, infographics, and articles.
  6. Eric Sheninger: Looking to learn about life as a principal? What technology is being used by school admins? Eric has you covered and has built up a solid collection of useful resources.
  7. Edudemic: Might as well share our own stuff on here since we think it’s worthwhile! We like to pin apps, web 2.0 tools, guides, infographics, and interesting edtech news.
  8. TED ED News: From the inspiring videos to the follow-up conversations, TED Ed has you covered here. Their Pinterest boards are worth following simply to try and keep up with everything!
  9. Jennie Hoffmann: Looking for useful web tools for education? Jennie covers the best tools and focuses on activities in particular that can help boost your classroom.
  10. Kristin Brynteson: Kristin loves to pin (judging by the number of pins!) and includes lots of free apps and education resources. We heart free resources!
  11. Samia Wahab: Who knew that Pinterest could be a news outlet? These articles posted by Samia are great reading for anyone interested in edtech news, trends, and more.
  12. Charity Preston: Want a pinboard that focuses on elementary school technology? Charity has an array of pins here that will help you out.
  13. Melissa Alonzo-Dillard: From interactive whiteboards to smart-boards to projectors, this pinboard from Melissa is useful for you. Great for any tech enthusiast too!
  14. Rachel Friedrich: Ever had the Reading Rainbow song in your head? This board has a whole library of tools like that. I dare you not to start singing the theme song now. Double dare.
  15. Education World: Ed world focuses on science and and how it connects with education. In other words, it’s great for any science teacher or student. There are plenty of non-science resources too though!
  16. Shannon Smith: A useful list of resources that is a useful tool for teachers and non-teachers. Focuses on infographics but also lesson plans worth knowing about. Great compilation Shannon!
  17. K S: This board has a focus on Canada thanks to the author (a curriculum consultant) being from there. The pinboard helps promote digital literacy and education technology thanks to many videos and resources.
  18. Debbie Fucoloro: Great for beginners (in edtech), this set of pinboards are useful guides for any teacher looking to amp up their technology!
  19. Shelly Terrell: Like Vicki Davis, Shelly Terrell is a big name in edtech blogging. We’ve even featured her in the Edudemic Magazine! Shelly focuses her boards on digital storytelling which basically gets tech into the hands of students and then makes them find creative uses. What could be better than that?
  20. ISTE: The one and only International Society for Technology in Education (you know, the folks who run the awesome conferences) posts some of their favorite tools and resources here. A great follow and recommendation for all teachers who want to get more tech into their classroom.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

10 Facts About Finland's Schools

I came across this article on Edudemic and found it interesting for a few reasons:
  1. It's easy to assume that there is only one "right" way to do something - obviously there can be more than one!
  2. We need to communicate more with our neighbors - there's a lot we can learn.
  3. We ought to take a step back every now and then to take a look at what we're doing - there might be a simpler way to achieve the same (or better) results.

Finland has the same number of teachers as New York City but nearly half the amount of students. Finland has about 600,000 students while NYC has close to 1.1 million.


Every single teacher in Finland needs to have a master’s degree. That degree is fully subsidized by the state, too.


Students in Finland don’t start school until they’re 7 years old.


Elinag / Shutterstock.com

The only mandatory test is taken when students are 16 years old.


http://snapshotofeurope.blogspot.com

There aren’t any separate classrooms for accelerated learning or special education. All students are taught in the same classroom.

finland classroom
http://ttapmethod.blogspot.com

Compared to the U.S., Finland spends about 30% less per student.

finland money schools

About two-thirds of students in Finland attend college. That’s the highest rate in all of Europe.

Sipoo Upper Secondary School, IT College in Sipoo, Finland
Sipoo Upper Secondary School, IT College in Sipoo, Finland

Only the top 10% of graduates are eligible to become teachers.


The classroom size of science courses is limited to 16 students. This is so students can do actual in-person experiments in the lab.


Elementary school students in the U.S. get about half an hour of recess. Students in Finland get about 75 minutes.

students recess

Thursday, October 18, 2012

What Will Work in New Blended Learning Experiment?

Take a look at the latest entry in the MindShift blog by Katrina Schwartz. It explores the different aspects of blended learning models and how to make teaching more powerful. Read through and let us know what you think in the comments! To read the original post, click here.

As the blended learning movement grows in the U.S., schools will need to experiment with what works best in different types of settings. There’s still a lot to learn about different types of blended learning models, and a new nonprofit called Silicon Schools will raise and invest $25 million toward that effort.

With partial grants from the Bay Area’s Fisher family (owners of Gap), and the advice of board members Michael Horn from the Innosight Institute and Salman Khan of the Khan Academy, the nonprofit, which has raised $12 million so far, aims to fund new and innovative approaches in existing blended learning programs with grants to each school.

The effort is led by Brian Greenberg, who chronicled the successes and challenges of piloting the Khan Academy in Oakland’s Envision Schools on the Blend My Learning blog. During that process Greenberg and his staff were very open about the pros and cons of integrating technology into the classroom, and other educators added their perspectives to what worked and didn’t work on the blog. Greenberg points to the parts of the program that worked well, namely letting the technology do some of the heavy lifting in terms of grading, lesson planning and collecting analytics that free up teacher time to focus on students.

Giving students more responsibility for the learning process was also a significant outcome of the Envision pilot program. “What we’re finding is that if you make the steps clear and make them accountable, the more you put them in charge of the process the more they amaze,” Greenberg said, referring to students. The pilot program also helped move the class toward “proficiency-based learning,” in which a student is responsible for an intended outcome, but not penalized every step along the way.

Greenberg intends to apply one important lesson he learned from the program to the schools funded by the Silicon Valley Fund: Technology in no way replaces the teacher. At some point the usefulness of technology runs out and the educator’s role is crucial. He also says that technology doesn’t preclude the need for a good classroom management systems and positive school culture. Kids can get off track or “fake” work on sophisticated software just as easily as they could in a traditional classroom.

And lastly, Greenberg says it’s hard for schools to navigate the many tools that populate the ed-tech space, especially when each is tailored to a different subject and use. He says the whole field needs to become more integrated, almost like an app store for ed-tech, and one that works across platforms. Schools don’t have access to endless money and as a result, ed-tech entrepreneurs and businesses need to design more precisely with the client in mind.

What’s interesting about the fund’s goal is that very little is proscriptive. Greenberg was clear to recognize that this movement is in its infancy. There is no blended-learning canon that can be taught to teachers. Rather Greenberg says the educators need to write the playbook. They need to be at the table and in the laboratories of innovation. And if all goes according to plan, in five years the various Silicon Schools will be networking with one another, sharing ideas with schools from around the world and thinking about how to scale up and replicate best practices.

The fund sees itself as the infusion of cash that schools need to get these expensive and technology-heavy programs off the ground, but they have no intention of funding them forever. “The schools that we fund, all eventually balance on California public dollars,” Greenberg said. “The hope would be that by finding new models and new ways to meet the needs of each kid that we can still make excellent schools work on California funding rates.”

Greenberg says the fund will focus on schools in Silicon Valley to try and build an “innovation hub” in an area already known for taking risks. The idea is to connect educators interested in integrating technology into the classroom with tech entrepreneurs who can create the software, apps and tools that will be most useful to teachers. “This combination of world class entrepreneurship with front line educational expertise is extremely promising. And if we can’t make that intersection happen here, at the heart of Silicon Valley, then we don’t think it will be easy to make it happen anywhere,” Greenberg said.

HOW IT WILL WORK
Greenberg says the fund is willing to give up to $700,000 to about 25 schools if they can demonstrate a unique idea or way to implement blended learning that pushes the conversation forward. Grantees also must have strong leadership teams, a track record of success and a financially sustainable model. The fund expects schools to be able to offer their innovations on the same budget as a traditional California public school.

The fund isn’t pushing any particular model of blended learning like Rocketship, Khan Academy or the flipped classroom. Rather, they want teachers to evaluate what works and what doesn’t from those “1.0 models” and then collaborate with ed-tech entrepreneurs to develop new tools for the areas that have been neglected or don’t work well. “You start to mix those things together in a real school, with really good educators and really good kids who are bought into this vision and that’s when it starts to get exciting,” said Greenberg.

Blended learning is a relatively new concept with a mixed track record. Integrating certain types of technology into the classroom gives teachers and students real-time feedback so that each student can work at his or her own pace, and can give teachers accurate information that can help them better group students according to comprehension levels on a specific subjects. But educators point out that too often ed-tech focuses on improving test scores rather than on building creative thinking and a passion for learning in students and that schools still need passionate, innovative and dedicated teachers, no matter how kids absorb the content.

Greenberg agrees that it’s too early to expect schools across the country to buy into a blended learning model. But he does hope that some of the strategies that are piloted in schools funded by the Silicon Schools Fund will inspire other teachers and administrators to take elements back to their own schools.

“We see creating new schools that are essentially laboratories of innovation, that are trying many different approaches, all with the idea of making education more powerful for each student and each teacher,” explained Greenberg. In five years, he envisions that the Bay Area will have somewhere close to 25 examples of how blended learning could be done. Some of those schools could be charter schools, others public, some built from the ground up and others a transformed existing schools. He wants to see it all so that lots of new ideas and ways of doing things can be tested.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

USF Academic Advising and Counseling

One Workplace recently completed an installation of DIRTT walls and casework and Steelcase furniture at the USF Academic Advising and Counseling building. This was a beautiful install and a first of its kind! The area is comprised of a student lounge, five private offices, and eleven pods that serve as meeting spaces.

Take a look at the images below and let us know what you think!









Thursday, October 4, 2012

One Workplace and Project Frog


One Workplace and Steelcase are excited to annouce that we are collaborating with Project Frog!  www.projectfrog.com

Frog stands for: Flexible Response to Ongoing Growth. "Project Frog was founded on the notion that there is a smarter way to build. Regular construction, with few exceptions, has remained largely unchanged for centuries. While products may have improved in the last 100 years, the process to deliver a building is nearly identical. Project Frog is changing that.
 
Project Frog's revolutionary approach to building uases an easy to assemble kit-of-parts flexible for a wide range of uses. It’s comprised of a set of proprietary products integrated with best-in-class components from our partners, and results in bright, healthy, and inspiring spaces that are energy efficient, environmentally responsible, faster to build, and cost competitive.

By systematizing the kit, process and product delivery, Frog has introduced a level of precision never before achievable in construction. And this precision unlocks a world of unprecedented possibilities: through advanced performance modeling, we have achieved a level of understanding of how our buildings will perform, in any location. And this in turn allows owners to optimize a building kit to match their desired performance. Through high-tech fabrication of our components, our buildings are easy to install and are delivered on time and on budget" (www.projectfrog.com).

Project Frog has erected a Prototype Classroom Building at Pier 80 in San Francisco. The purpose of this building is to showcase their product and approach to deliver a 21st century learning environment. They asked us to provide our furniture and technology products to support the entire learning/teaching experience.

The products include: Cachet, Node, Groupwork, eno mobile interactive, PolyVision whiteboards and Huddleboards. We are looking forward to adding the new Verb and Vanerum Stelter Opti products in the future.

So far the groups that have been through the space have been extremely excited about  the innovative products that  are showcased!