No Such Thing: Education in the Digital Age

Gael Aitor is the creator and a host of the “Teenager Therapy” podcast, a teen mental health podcast with over 700,000 followers. At 19 years old, he has five years of experience in the podcasting space and is an expert at growing engaged Gen Z audiences on social media. Previous guests of “Teenager Therapy” include Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Adam Mosseri, and Loren Gray. Aitor is a fellow at On Deck, an educational and accelerator community, and was a contract community specialist at Pearpop, a creator collaboration platform. Additionally, he’s on the advisory council of the UCLA Center for Scholars & Storytellers. He has been featured in The New York Times, Teen Vogue, and the TIME100 Talks for his work at “Teenager Therapy.” He graduated from high school in 2021. From https://www.aspenideas.org/speakers/gael-aitorTeenagerTherapy on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUkviaHlWmRWTICxNBMAxpA/featuredBio: https://www.aspenideas.org/speakers/gael-aitorhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/style/teenager-therapy-podcast.htmlhttps://twitter.com/okaygaelhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicagold/2020/10/20/heres-what-five-teenage-podcasters-want-parents-to-know-about-mental-health/?sh=7c95cfdb73d4https://medium.com/@pineapplelabs/gen-z-leader-gael-aitor-from-teenager-therapy-341e7ecc484d Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonathan Finkelstein is founder and CEO of Credly, a leading digital credential service provider which enables organizations to recognize, reward and market skills, competencies and certifications. Previously, as founder of LearningTimes, Jonathan helped mission-driven organizations produce and launch innovative online programs, products and platforms that impacted the lives of millions of learners. Previously, Jonathan was a co-founder and led product strategy at HorizonLive (acquired by Blackboard). He is author of Learning in Real Time (Wiley), co-author of a report for the US Department of Education on the potential for digital badges, and a frequent speaker on digital credentials and the future of learning and workforce development. The son of New York City public school teachers, Jonathan graduated with honors from Harvard University.Credly, a Pearson business, is helping the world speak a common language about people’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. Thousands of employers, training organizations, associations, certification programs, and workforce development initiatives use Credly to help individuals translate their learning experiences into professional opportunities using trusted, portable, digital credentials. Credly empowers organizations to attract, engage, develop, and retain talent with enterprise-class tools that generate data-driven insights to address skills gaps and highlight opportunities through an unmatched global network of credential issuers.Previously, as founder of LearningTimes and before that as co-founder of HorizonLive (acquired by Blackboard), Jonathan worked with thousands of organizations to launch online workforce development programs and learning platforms at global scale. His work helped bring about a digital transformation in how people develop skills that lead to in-demand jobs and careers that did not exist just years ago.He is author of Learning in Real Time (Wiley), a frequent contributor and speaker on HR and learning technology, a former board member of the American Alliance of Museums Media & Technology Committee, and producer or host of thousands of online events and programs for talent development, learning and HR audiences. Jonathan co-authored a report for the US Department of Education on the impact of alternative forms of credentialing. He is a frequent keynote speaker and sought-after advocate for more accessible forms of credentialing, digital transformation and up-skilling, and workforce equity. The son of two New York City public school teachers, Jonathan graduated with honors from Harvard University.Bio: https://members.educause.edu/jonathan-finkelsteinDo digital badges really provide value to businesses?IBM Case Study: Exec SummaryIBM awards its three millionth digital badge (and disrupts the labor market in five big ways)Learning During Lockdown: IBM Case Study Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Redefining Geek takes a new and surprising look at what it means to be good with technology at a time when technologies are rapidly changing. Based on empirical evidence from a decade-long study with a diverse group of students across the country, Cassidy Puckett shows that being tech-savvy in the digital age isn’t about having a natural ability, but instead is a process of continual learning that requires five simple habits."Cassidy Puckett is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Emory University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University. She is the author of Redefining Geek: Bias and the Five Hidden Habits of Tech-Savvy Teens (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Her research has also appeared in sociological and interdisciplinary journals, including Harvard Educational Review, Qualitative Sociology, Social Science Computer Review, and Social Science & Medicine.Cassidy’s research focuses on the relationship between technological change and inequality. More specifically, she uses a mixed-methods approach to explain differences in adolescents’ ability to learn new technologies—what she calls their “digital adaptability” and measures on a 15-item Digital Adaptability Scale—and looks at how differences in digital adaptability influence educational, occupational, and health inequalities.Links from the episode:Her Website: https://cassidypuckett.com/Order: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo137270726.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Joel Breakstone directs the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG). He leads the group’s efforts to research, develop, and disseminate free curriculum and assessments. His award-winning research has been covered by outlets ranging from the Washington Post to NPR.  Breakstone has conducted professional development workshops for school districts and professional organizations across the country. He received a Ph.D. from the Stanford Graduate School of Education. He previously taught high school history in Vermont.Links from the episode:Stanford History Education Group: https://sheg.stanford.edu/Students’ Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait, Breakstone et. al: https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/WNGEUNNHYYWWPAVKS37M/full#abstract or https://purl.stanford.edu/cz440cm8408Civix, Control - F: https://ctrl-f.ca/Teaching Systems Lab, MIT: https://tsl.mit.edu/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Game-based assessments (GBAs) have been shown to be a powerful context to measure students’ 21st century skills. By eliciting evidence of skills in an embedded, authentic and playful environment, they present the potential for assessments to go beyond measuring outcomes of content knowledge to shed light on thought processes.Yoon Jeon (YJ) Kim is an Assistant Professor of Design, Creative, and Informal Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at UW–Madison. Before joining UW-Madison, she was the founder and director of MIT Playful Journey Lab where she led an interdisciplinary team of game designers, developers, and researchers to create playful assessment tools. Her work centers on the topic of innovative assessment and application of playful activity design to challenge what and how we are measuring learning. YJ’s playful assessment research ranges from a computer game using evidence-centered design and analytics techniques to paper-based embedded assessment tools for making. The core of her work is close Louisa Rosenheck is a thought leader in the ed tech field, with a passion for game-based learning and playful pedagogies. She works to promote deeper learning through designing playful experiences, developing creative ways to assess learning, and building capacity in other organizations to implement innovative digital learning and curriculum in their own contexts. She is a co-author of the book Resonant Games and teaches a graduate course on ed tech design at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She spent over a decade doing research on digital games and creative learning at MIT, and is now the Director of Pedagogy for the Kahoot! Group.Nancy Tsai is a 4th year postdoctoral research fellow at McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT where she collaborates with cross-functional teams to translate cognitive neuroscience research to inform the development of learning products/programs. Her expertise is on the effects of stress on prefrontal development and function (e.g. Executive Functions). She teaches graduate level coursework at Harvard Graduate School of Education and at MIT, and collaborates with outside organizations such as Accenture and UNICEF to translate cutting edge cognitive neuroscience research to real world application. Links from this episode:https://fielddaylab.wisc.edu/play/shadowspect/https://playful.mit.edu/About NSF programs including Cyberlearning: https://beta.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/research-emerging-technologies-teaching-and-learningGame-Based Assessment: The Past Ten Years and Moving Forward: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337038333_Game-Based_Assessment_The_Past_Ten_Years_and_Moving_Forward Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Risher is the CEO and co-founder of Worldreader. After a career as a general manager at Microsoft and an early stage executive at Amazon, David recognized early on how e-readers and digital books could give kids in under-served parts of the world better access to the life-changing experience of reading. Since co-founding Worldreader in 2010, David and the Worldreader team have expanded the organization to have impact in more than 46 countries, delivering high-quality books in 52 languages to over 19 million children. Together, they’ve demonstrated how digital technology–combined with high-quality books, smart programming, strong partnerships–can accelerate reading around the globe and unlock the potential of the world’s next scientists, teachers, innovators, and explorers.David has degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Business School is a Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year Awardee, a Draper Richards Kaplan social entrepreneur, an invited member of the Clinton Global Initiative, and a Microsoft Alumni Foundation Integral Fellow. He has two daughters and lives in San Francisco, California, with his wife– author Jennifer Risher.In my conversation today I'm chatting with David Risher, a guy who helped grow Amazon from a 15 million dollar company to what it is today, and founder of the non-profit, Worldreader who as a team have opened those new doors through reading that i mentioned to more than 19 million kids globally. Since we talked I've been thinking about what a privilege it is - reading, I mean. I've been reading authors and genres that are pretty new to me lately but it all started with access and David and I talk about how, in spite of the digital age, accessing books is still an issue. According to UNESCO, in 2021 over 100 million kids and 700 million adults are non-literate.Links from this episode:Read David’s full bio here.Twitter: @davidrisherWRhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Risherhttps://www.worldreader.org/https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/ild-2021-fact-sheet.pdfUNESCO, International Literacy Day 2021 - Literacy for a human centred recovery: Narrowing thedigital divide https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/ild-2021-fact-sheet.pdf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My favorite conversations are the ones where people whose ideas I admire get comfortable enough in a conversation to share beyond what you might've already heard from them. Jaime's a great example. If you work in or around K12 education chances are you've bumped into Jaime at some point. As a 15+ year Google'r as Chief Education Evangelist, Jaime's keynoted and shared on more stages than I can count. But at this, an important transition for Jaime from a role at Google where he had a hand in launching arguably the most consequential hardware and software for educators of the last decade, I was honored to chat with him completely free of an organizational role with Google, to pull from him some of his experience and ideas about where we're headed that you might not have heard. I hope you'll hear from our chat that, while he's moved on from the role at Google, his title as an Evangalist seems like a lot more - I think you'll hear from what he has to say that he cares deeply about this topic and talking about it isn't so much a choice as a way of being. I feel really lucky to have people like that accessible through this show, and I hope you do to. I hope you'll consider, in honor of our 100th Episode Milestone, heading back to wherever you downloaded the show and give us a rating and review. IF you really want to go above and beyond, share the show with a friend over social media and let me know so I can say thanks personally. Links from the episode:Jaime's Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/JaimeCasapFront Lines of Justice: https://frontlinesofjustice.com/Gems Education: https://www.gemseducation.com/Follow Jaime on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jcasapAbout Jaime:Education Evangelist, Ghetto People ProductionsJaime Casap served as the Chief Education Evangelist at Google for more than 14 years and was the second member of the Google for Education team. In that time, Jaime launched Google’s GSuite tools into higher education and K12. He also launched Chromebooks into education and was the creator of the Google for Education Transformation Framework, a holistic approach to education transformation. Jaime is now partnering and collaborating with higher education institutions, school systems, and businesses around the world, helping them build transformational policies and practices to elevate education and bring equity, diversity, and inclusion into their policies and practices.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Al Kingsley has over 30 years’ experience in the technology sector predominantly with his work on IT Asset Management, educational and Instructional technology and digital safeguarding.He started his career with Barclays Bank then Unilever, working within finance and management accounting before focusing on the early adoption of new IT technologies in the early 90s.For the last 25 years Al has been the Group Managing Director of NetSupport, an international software company developing market-leading software solutions used by over 18 million customers, designed to support the effective use of instructional technology in classrooms alongside eSafety technologies to safeguard students online.Al has a broad knowledge of international business from spending time living in the US whilst establishing overseas offices. During this time Al has worked with Partners and Ministries of Education from around the world.Links: Al's website: https://alkingsley.com/My Secret EdTech Diary on Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Secret-EdTech-Diary-Educational-Technology/dp/1913622630 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Jenny NashUS Head, Education Impact, Lego EducationDr. Jenny Nash serves as the Head of Education Impact Team for LEGO Education in the US, where she provides direction and leadership in delivering meaningful education opportunities for students. With previous experiences as a professional development provider and STEM teacher, Jenny is an advocate for hands-on, inquiry-based learning for students and building confidence in teachers to provide this type of learning.Links from the episode:Spike Essential: https://education.lego.com/en-us/products/lego-education-spike-essential-set/45345#spike%E2%84%A2-essentialAbout Seymour Papert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_PapertIntro reference material: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-29992974LEGO Group, History: https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/lego-group/the-lego-group-history/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're talking today about the bold risks that innovators in K12 education choose to make toward the goal of educational equity - this time a project from a company called Prisms VR using the tech of virtual reality to make algebra the experience it should be for learners, who when engaging with it through the right context might actually have good cause to consider themselves "math people" in a system that too often inadvertently fosters the math caste system of those who "get it" and those who don't. Dr. Luvelle BrownSuperintendent of Schools, Ithaca, NYLuvelle Brown is an experienced educator who has held positions as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, school CIO, and Superintendent of Schools. Currently, Dr. Brown is serving as the Superintendent of the Ithaca City School District (ICSD) in Ithaca, New York. During his tenure in Ithaca, the Ithaca City School District has experienced unprecedented levels of success.Dr. Brown has facilitated conversations in multiple communities that have resulted in transformative shifts in culture and achievement. Using systems thinking in schools, Dr. Brown’s leadership has led to innovative programs, redesigned learning spaces, numerous technology initiatives.Anurupa GangulyFounder and CEO, Prisms VRAnurupa's entry point to Education began as a Physics and Math teacher in the Boston Public Schools. For 10+ years since then, Anurupa has led STEM curriculum and teacher preparation across the largest educational systems in the US including the NYC DOE, Boston Public Schools and Success Academy Charter Schools. Through her experience as a district and charter administrator, she found that she did not have the learning tools to deliver the outcomes her leaders and teachers were accountable for, and the personal sense-making journeys that students deserve while developing foundational mathematical reasoning & proficiencies.She was awarded a National Science Foundation SBIR grant to build a scalable learning platform that actualizes pedagogies that we know work best, but weren't possible until recent advances in IVR and AI technologies. Her mission is to rapidly improve student performance and  engagement in the mathematical sciences while crafting the instructor aids and training required to operationalize innovative technologies in the classroom. Anurupa holds a BS & M.Eng in electrical engineering from MIT and an EdM in Curriculum & Teaching from Boston University.Thumbnail image by https://unsplash.com/@shaikhuludLinks from this show:PrismsVR Home: https://www.prismsvr.com/Luvelle Brown: https://luvellebrown.com/Ithaca City School District: https://www.ithacacityschools.org/Announcements from PrismsVR: https://www.prismsvr.com/blog Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.