Trending In Ed with Mike Palmer

Mike Palmer and Melissa Griffith sit down with Aaron Dignan to talk about his new book, Brave New Work. Aaron walks us his story of writing the book before focusing in on what isn't working in current organizational environments and how anyone within any organization can help bring about the type of change that is so desperately needed. Aaron discusses getting to the heart of organizational, department, or team issues and working on change by focusing on the people. What's the difference between complicated and complex systems? What parallels can be drawn to world of learning and education? Why is Aldous Huxley so important to all of this? Aaron, Melissa, and Mike have an engaging, entertaining, and illuminating discussion around all of this and more. Listen in to enjoy!

We take you to our live presentation of our podcast at SXSWEdu 2019. Mike and Brandon were joined on stage by Ashley Mannka-Suydam, Director, Learning Products at ACT to talk about the top trends at the conference. We also discussed through our brand new March Madness bracket. After our live show, you'll hear two interviews from the Expo floor. Dan talks to a company called In My Shoes. They are looking to use video and in-person mentors to help at-risk and minority students visualize themselves as successful in the business world. Mike then catches up with Vincent Routhier, CEO of LU Interactive, to discuss their interactive physical education technology. Can a re-imagined gymnasium help keep kids get active and reinforce classroom concepts? Tune in for a sense of what’s emerging at SXSW EDU. 

We had the great pleasure of sitting down with Ron Reed, Founder and Executive Producer, and Greg Rosenbaum, General Manager, of the learning conference SXSW EDU. Ron and Greg share the origin story of SXSWEdu and explore the emerging trends they've seen over the first nine years of the conference. We talk about community building, the power of convergence zones, and the ways in which innovation in learning and education is evolving. We also touch on mindfulness, social and emotional learning, and the whole teacher movement as core parts of the emergent zeitgeist of the festival. If you made it to SXSW EDU this year, this is a wonderful capstone conversation for the experience. If you didn't make it, listening is a fantastic way to get a sense of what Greg and Ron are trying to accomplish and how it feels to be a part of it.If you like what you’re hearing, follow us at TrendinginEducation.com and wherever you get your podcasts!

It's time for our 2019 Learning and Education March Madness! Mike and Brandon draft eight topics each to go head to head in round one of this year's tournament. Which of our best episodes made this year's field? What didn't make the cut? Tune in to find out how we break down the field for this year's tourney! Join in the fun by entering your predictions.

After much ado, fanfare, and aplomb, it's finally time for our hosts to put forth their own predictions for trends in learning and education for 2019. What important topics do we see on the horizon that will change the way students and lifelong learners acquire knowledge and skills in the year ahead? Brandon shares his thoughts on Education2020 and how politics, the presidential race, and education will all intertwine throughout this year into next. Mike hypes the rising importance of the Whole Teacher Movement as well as Mindful Learning as the key trends he's tracking this year. And Dan shares his thoughts on the new MA (M&A) in higher education, merger and acquisitions as his key trend to track this year. All this and more on a great look forward to prognosticate what is on the horizon for the upcoming year in learning and education. Tune in to hear where we think things are heading on this week's episode!

In this week's extra, Mike catches up with new author Logan Thompson on his book Beyond the Content: Unlocking the Other Half of Test Prep with a Tailored Mindfulness Approach. Logan talks about his own path to becoming more mindful and self-aware and how good mindfulness practices have helped to shape who he is as a teacher and a person. Logan discusses how performing on a standardized test doesn't just involve understanding the content and the strategies, it also involves managing one's cognitive and emotional states. Throughout the conversation, Mike and Logan explore the analogy of consciousness as both a Driver and Passengers. Logan provides techniques to manage the presence of the interruptive, distracting, or self-limiting thoughts, aka Passengers, without giving them too much power or attention, while empowering the Driver to get to where she wants to go. We also discuss how Logan's focus on mindfulness and being present connects to social and emotional learning, cognitive and emotional empathy, and the Whole Child and Whole Teacher movements. Listen in and enjoy! 

We dive into learning and education trends to watch in 2019. Using two Forbes.com articles as our jumping off point, we talk trends in STEM, K-12, and higher education. How will teacher shortages influence the learning and education landscape? Does STEM help lead the way on the whole child learning experience? Can national and local legislation help change the higher education space in the US? Are income-share agreements a viable solution to ballooning student-debt? We discuss all of these topics and more. Listen in and enjoy!

Just in time for Valentines Day, we're joined by KS Wiswell, author of Full Frontal Nerdity - Lessons on Loving and Living With Your Brain. In addition to being an author, KS is also a screenwriter, an improv performer, and also a Kaplan instructor. We dive into the thought process behind her launching a blog and how that grew into publishing her first book. How did a background in improv help her connect topics that few others see as common? What is it like to share personal stories about love and life for everyone to see? How is improv like teaching and how can we use surprise, narrative, and relevance to make instruction more entertaining and compelling. KS walks us through all this and much more with plenty of laughs along the way.

We take a look at some of the emerging media trends to watch for in 2019. Mike dives into the Gimlet and Anchor acquisitions by Spotify and how audio will continue to be a focal point for advertisers. We also take a look at how small a portion of advertising podcasts currently garner. Does the in-house content creation Spotify is paying for mirror a Netflix and it's approach to video content? Brandon dives into Super Bowl commercials and #RoboChild. How are robots, or maybe even our fear of robots, shaping the commercials and media we are consuming? It's getting Zeitgeisty, to be sure. Mike and Dan close with some late-breaking insights into the recent news around Jeff Bezos and the parent company of the National Enquirer and the recent scandal and its implications for media. We talk about all this and more media trends to keep an eye out for in the coming year. Enjoy! 

We tackle a recent article from BuzzFeedNews.com that explores Millennials as the 'Burnout Generation'. Does Anne Helen Peterson's work paint with too broad a brush or do younger generations face a tougher road? How does burnout change the way we might be open to learning? Brandon discusses how every generation faces tough decisions about where their careers might go as they enter college. Mike explores how burnout and pressure around visual identity and online social comparison may be leading to new problems for teens and young people as it relates to their mental health and well-being. We close with Dan and Mike digging into the growing prevalence of mindfulness and social emotional learning as a potential way to provide coping mechanisms to counter some of the more negative aspects of these trends. It's an important discussion we hope to continue to explore in future episodes.