EdSurge Podcast

Last semester has been described as a kind of limbo—with fewer COVID health restrictions and more in-person classes and activities, but still under the cloud of a stubborn pandemic. We asked students on five campuses around the country to share moments that epitomized this unusual time on college campuses.

Sometime early in elementary school, kids are put on one of two paths: regular or gifted. Where did this idea come from? The answer goes back more than a 100 years, to a once-famous scholar named Lewis Terman. And it turns out his legacy, and the future of gifted programs, are still very much under debate.

Back in 2004 Google made a splash with a plan to scan nearly the entire book collections of some of the world's largest libraries. But soon it became clear the actual plan would turn out to be far more controversial than its organizers probably ever imagined.

Low morale of professors and college leaders is turning out to be one of the biggest issues in higher ed this year. We talked with a college leader who has been writing about educator burnout and demoralization for EdSurge, Kevin McClure, about how higher education can get out of its current funk.

The SAT can feel very different to different students. While it can give any college applicant stress, some low-income and minority students see it as evidence that selective colleges don't want them. Can the rise of test-optional policies lead to a new, more equitable era of college admissions? | Guest reporter: Eric Hoover, of The Chronicle of Higher Education

Khan Academy has grown from a grassroots phenomenon on YouTube to a non-profit with a mission to change education. Its big idea is to promote a notion of mastery learning, where students don't move on until they understand each step through a curriculum. We asked Sal Khan how that broader goal of making mastery learning mainstream is going, and what's next for Khan Academy.

Could the pandemic be a moment that competency-based education catches on more widely. It's an approach where colleges award degrees based on what students can show they know, rather than how long they've spent in a classroom. Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University, talks about his new book about the approach, called Students First: Equity, Access and Opportunity in Higher Education.

Scientists agree that climate change is real and extremely pressing. But many kids in the U.S. aren’t so sure—even ones who have experienced its effects firsthand. The problem may be what’s taught (or isn’t taught) in today’s schools. Climate author Katie Worth takes us through her new book “Miseducation,” and what successful schools are doing to combat misinformation.

Free online courses have become big business in recent years, offered by companies that work to upsell learners to paid products. But that's not how they started out. Stephen Downes, a pioneer of open online education, argues for eliminating things like free registration to get to free course materials, to better spread the ideas.

You’re probably hearing a lot about the crisis in early childhood education these days, as Congress is on the cusp the biggest policy change — and investment — in early childhood in decades. On today’s podcast, we want to step back and look at how we got here -- at what the situation means to educators at all levels and for parents, and at what the Biden Administration’s proposals could mean.