This Week with EdSurge
This Week with EdSurge is a weekly podcast that explores the human stories behind education, covering topics like artificial intelligence in classrooms, student well-being, policy changes, and the future of teaching. Hosted by Ira Apfel and EdSurge contributors, the show provides rigorous and empathetic journalism for educators, leaders, and curious listeners.
Episodes
Who Gets to Build AI Infrastructure for Schools?
AI tools can generate a lesson in seconds, but educators still lack a shared way to check whether that lesson is evidence-based and aligned to state standards. Learning Commons, a nonprofit backed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, launched an open platform to address this gap. Ira Apfel sits down with Learning Commons President Sandra Liu Huang about how the platform works and who gets to build t
4 Small Fixes for the October Blues
A few weeks into the school year, the adrenaline wears off and many teachers hit a wall that has a name: the October Blues. Ira Apfel sits down with author Mike Anderson, who crashed hard as a rookie teacher and swim coach working more than 100 hours a week. Together they explore why the slump hits new teachers hardest, how teacher stress can spill over to students, and what one year-long experime
Can Schools Trust AI Features in Edtech Products?
From tutoring tools to grading platforms, edtech vendors are frequently adding AI features to new and existing instructional materials. Almost every company selling these products says the features are educationally effective, so EdReports went looking for the evidence behind those claims. EdReports CEO Dr. Lewis Ferebee and Chief Academic Officer Courtney Allison join Ira Apfel to unpack what the
Unchecked Assumptions: Fewer Male Teachers and More Baby Slop
A new workforce survey finds that men now make up less than a quarter of public schoolteachers, and the ones who do stay often walk into assumptions before they even introduce themselves. Meanwhile, a flood of AI generated videos aimed at toddlers is teaching young kids things that are not true, sometimes in unsettling ways. This week, Ed Finkel and Adam Stone join Ira Apfel to look at two very di
The Reading Reforms That Stopped at Third Grade
The lowest-performing middle school readers aren't just behind, they're falling further behind every year, even as reading scores recover elsewhere.On This Week with EdSurge, NWEA's Megan Kuhfeld shares new research that explains why the K-3 literacy laws that fixed early reading aren't reaching the middle school.Then Dacia Toll, who spent years running schools before co-founding the AI literacy p
Two Student Questions, Two Teacher Responses
Two Voices of Change Fellows had the same kind of moment this year, when a student comment that could have been brushed off as attitude turned out to be a warning sign. On This Week with EdSurge, Melinda Medina explains what happened when a student answered a literature question with "I use ChatGPT, how am I supposed to know that?" and what it revealed about students quietly outsourcing their own
Two New Rules, Two Teacher Workarounds
New guidance was supposed to help teachers make sense of screen time. New laws were supposed to keep phones out of the way. On This Week with EdSurge we look at what happens when teachers are left to make sense of rules that were never built with their classrooms in mind. Adam Stone talks with pre-K and kindergarten teachers about the guidance that excludes them, and civics teacher Dan Clark expla
Does New Federal Edtech Guidance Go Far Enough?
The Department of Education just issued its first major classroom technology guidance in years, urging schools to judge tools by outcomes rather than screen time. Digital Promise president and CEO Jean-Claude Brizard and outcomes-based contracting expert Brittany Miller join This Week with EdSurge to break down what the new Dear Colleague Letter gets right, what it leaves out, and what happens now
Assignments, Invoices, and the AI Fix
This week, two guests trace the true cost of AI, one in the classroom and one behind the scenes. Michael Hernandez explains how he taught himself to code so he could build a free tool that flags weak assignments before students ever think about cheating. Mi Aniefuna follows the electricity powering that same technology, tracing the invoice that lands on a district's desk long after the contract is
Supporting Early Childhood Educators
What does it actually take to support the adults who shape our youngest learners? Nicol Russell, chief academic officer at Teaching Strategies, argues that early educators deserve the same intentional investment as engineers, not treatment as replaceable hires. Dr. Nneka McGee, founder of Muon Global, brings that same philosophy to how five year olds encounter AI, starting with conversation instea
Is AI Policy Just Guesswork?
Today on This Week with EdSurge, we look at AI policy from two very different vantage points. One guest spent a year coding AI policy from more than 100 school districts across the country. The other helped write her own district's policy from the ground up. Listen as they both explore what happens when a policy leaves the page and is applied in an actual classroom.WHAT YOU'LL LEARNDistrict AI pol
Vinyl, Pencils, and Life Without AI
This week, two educators arrive at the same question from very different directions. Nathan Kraai, Director of Innovation and Design Thinking at The Fenn School, explains what a trip to the record store taught him about artificial intelligence and learning. Court Shuller, a middle school English teacher and EdSurge Voices of Change fellow, joins from ISTELive in Orlando to talk about what their cl
AI Cannot Fake This Kind of Learning
Every few months, another headline declares the college degree dead. This Week with EdSurge puts that claim to the test with two guests defending something slow against something fast. Rita Finkel of the Armory Foundation argues that a four-year degree still holds value at a moment when artificial intelligence can produce a credential adjacent skill in minutes. Then Cobretti Williams of the EdSurg
3 Gaps Stalling AI in Classrooms
Microsoft just released the third edition of its global AI in Education report, and the numbers raise more questions than they answer. Ira Apfel sits down with Pat Yongpradit, General Manager of Global Education and Workforce Policy at Microsoft, on the floor at the ISTELive and ASCD Annual in Orlando. They dig into the delta between daily use and overall adoption of AI, a sharp drop in student op
ISTELive 26: Bans, Microdosing, and the Future of AI
Ira Apfel wraps up a whirlwind week at ISTELive 26 in Orlando with Sarah McKibben, Editor-in-Chief of EdSurge. Together they unpack the buzziest ideas to come out of the conference, including why so many educators are pushing back on AI bans, and what one surprising theory about AI slop means for the future of student writing. From burnout to breakthroughs, this recap captures everything that stuc
Can an Algorithm Replace a Teacher’s Instinct?
This week, two teachers take a hard look at what happens when you hand a problem to a tool and trust it to solve that problem. David Webb, a school teacher based in Jakarta, India, spent a year vibe coding an AI-powered library app called LibraryAid and discovered exactly where the algorithm ends and the educator begins. Then, California high school teacher Gabe Nitro makes a counterintuitive argu
Is TikTok Now a Teacher Training Tool?
Two educators are reckoning with who is really in charge: technology or the teacher. First, a teacher notices her students are quietly forming their professional knowledge on TikTok and decides to lean in rather than fight it. Then a high school engineering teacher builds an AI grading tool so efficient that it sent feedback to students without him ever reading it, and confronts what that actually
Your Kids Know More About AI Than You Do
Schools are racing to write AI policies, but what if the policy is not the first step? This week, we hear from Aleta Margolis, founder and president of the Center for Inspired Teaching, who argues that real progress starts with a conversation, not a rule. Then EdSurge editor-in-chief Sarah McKibben brings it home with what AI actually looks like at her kitchen table, with two middle schoolers navi
Recess, Screens, and Absenteeism
Schools have been quietly chipping away at recess for nearly a decade, and a sweeping new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics says it is time to stop. Meanwhile, the federal government has issued a formal advisory on screen time and children, raising urgent questions about how schools, parents, and tech companies should respond. This week, EdSurge reporters Lauren Coffey and Nadia Tamez
AI Is in Schools. Teachers Are Not Ready.
Three-quarters of school districts now have AI guidelines, up sharply from just a year ago, yet 82 percent of teachers say they have never received formal guidance on how to use AI in their work. EdSurge reporter Lauren Coffey breaks down the 2026 CoSN State of Ed Tech report and what it reveals about AI adoption, cybersecurity gaps, and edtech vetting inside K-12 districts. Then host Ira Apfel ta
How a Vacant School Building Became a Symbol of Loss, and Then Hope, for a Dying Small Town
When the only school in Donora, Pennsylvania, closed a few years ago, it hit the town’s residents hard. Now the building may be the town’s best hope, as a community college considers setting up in the former school. A University of Pittsburgh professor spent three years documenting life in this fading town for an unusual podcast series that ran late last year. Education was a key theme.
On this w
How AI Has Changed Student Cheating — And How to Respond
One long-time expert on preventing student cheating argues that understanding why students cheat is key to making adjustments in teaching to prevent cheating with AI. It's the argument of Tricia Bertram Gallant, a longtime expert in academic integrity who is director of the Academic Integrity Office at the University of California San Diego who co-wrote a new book, “The Opposite of Cheating: Teach
Inside the Push to Bring AI Literacy to Schools and Colleges (Encore Episode)
There’s a growing push to add AI literacy as a subject in schools and colleges. But what exactly is AI literacy, and can educators promote curiosity about the subject amid their own concerns, and in some cases fear, around ChatGPT and other generative AI? This episode originally ran in January 2024, and was the most-listened-to episode of the year.
What We Learned About Teaching and Creativity By Commissioning a New Podcast Theme Song
We found the theme song for the EdSurge Podcast on a free music library years ago, after spending hours clicking around searching for the right sound. The music turns out to have an unusual origin story, as we learned when we tracked down the artist this week for a conversation about the intersection of music, creativity and teaching.
Want To Find Highly-Engaged Students at 4-Year Colleges? Look At Transfer Students.
When students transfer from community colleges to four-year universities, there’s often culture shock. But those transfers are often more motivated and engaged in the classroom than students who arrive straight from high school, experts say. Hear firsthand from a student in his 30s who recently transferred from a two-year college to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Should Students Chat With AI Versions of Historical Figures?
A new documentary project about Sacagawea, the young woman from the Shoshone tribe who helped guide the Lewis and Clark Expedition back in 1804, lets students chat with an animated chatbot of her. Some educators worry about how faithfully such chatbots can represent history, or whether they might keep students from digging into documents to form their own analysis.
The Effects of Smartwatches on Kids, Schools and Families
Should kids wear smartwatches? Companies market the wearable devices to kids as young as 4 years old, while digital media experts and educators worry about potential downsides of what some see as an “electronic umbilical cord.” On the EdSurge Podcast this week, we talk with our reporter who spent months researching the issue, Emily Tate Sullivan, and hear her read the full story.
What Can AI Chatbots Teach Us About How Humans Learn?
ChatGPT and other chatbots are modeled after how the human brain works. And one of the pioneers of the technology, Terrence Sejnowski, says that what AI has made clear is that we don’t really understand what it means for the human brain to “understand” something.
How Are School Smartphone Bans Going?
Many school districts and states have enacted new restrictions on smartphones in classrooms during instructional time, in the name of increasing student engagement and counteracting the negative effects that social media has on youth mental health. We checked in with two teachers and an administrator to hear how the new rules are playing out.
How the Job Market Has Changed for College Grads
College grads are facing a tough job market these days, with experts saying the college degree holds less of a premium in getting hired than in the past. And as it gets easier to apply to jobs online, applicants say they are getting ghosted by employers or applying to hundreds of jobs with little return. How can colleges respond?
Looking Back on the Long, Bumpy Rise of Online College Courses
When the web was new back in the late 1990s, Robert Ubell was among those pushing for its adoption to help students who couldn’t get to a campus — over the objections of professors who thought it would always be sub-par. The online learning pioneer says the history of online’s growth offers lessons for those trying teaching innovations today.
Inside an Effort to Build an AI Assistant for Designing Course Materials
Over the past few months, a group of educators has been designing and testing a system that uses ChatGPT to serve as an assistant to instructors as they build courses for students. One key point of the series of design workshops is to learn how educators can make the most effective uses of AI, and where it’s less helpful.
Rebooting Internet Access Programs to Address the ‘Homework Gap’
As pandemic relief funds run out — which helped many students connect to the internet to keep up with their studies — there’s a danger that the “homework gap” could suddenly widen, argues Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, in a new book.
How Rising Higher Ed Costs Change Student Choices. (Doubting College, Ep. 6)
The high cost of college is changing how high schoolers think about whether or not to go. A new book, “Rethinking College,” argues for changing the narrative around higher education to be more welcoming to gap years, apprenticeships and other alternatives to college at a time where a degree is so expensive that students worry about its value.
How a Returning College Student Advocated to Improve a Fledgling Online Program
A student who was just a few classes shy of graduating from Morehouse College was excited to try its new online program designed for students trying to finish their degrees. It turned out to be a more challenging process than he expected. Here’s how he helped to improve the program for himself and future students.
AI Chatbots Reflect Cultural Biases. Can They Become Tools to Alleviate Them?
A professor has been running an unusual experiment looking for signs of racial and gender bias in AI chatbots. And he has an idea for developing new guardrails that can check against such bias and remove it before it is shown to users.
See show notes and links here: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-09-03-ai-chatbots-reflect-cultural-biases-can-they-become-tools-to-alleviate-them
When the Teaching Assistant Is an AI ‘Twin’ of the Professor
Two instructors made AI chatbot versions of themselves to help teach their classes, and they say class discussion improved as a result. But some teaching experts worry about the long-term implications of bringing in robot teaching assistants.
The Power of the 'Grit' Narrative in Education. Bootstraps Ep. 7 (Encore Episode)
It’s still popular to prize students who have “grit,” who overcome tough odds to succeed. A book by Alissa Quart called “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream,” looks at why this narrative is so hard to shake — and proposes more community-minded alternatives that could improve equity. This episode first ran in 2022, as the final installment of our Bootstraps series on who gets
Power, Prestige and the World's Most Famous Scholarship. Bootstraps, Ep. 6 (Encore Episode)
The Rhodes Scholarship was designed to forge a network of people who would go on to rule the world. So who gets this opportunity? And how is the oldest and best-known graduate scholarship dealing with the legacy of its founder, who used ruthless and racist practices to build the diamond empire that funded the effort? This originally ran in 2022, as part of our Bootstraps series on who gets what ed
Breaking Up With the SAT. Bootstraps, Ep. 5 (Encore Episode)
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 | This originally ran in late 2021
The Tyranny of Letter Grades. Bootstraps Ep. 4 (Encore Episode)
Our current grading system can be a way for kids to prove themselves and win college scholarships, or admission to selective colleges. It can also be a barrier, in sometimes surprising ways. What might a world without letter grades and GPAs look like? This first ran in 2021.
The Strange Past and Messy Future of 'Gifted and Talented.' Bootstraps, Ep. 3 (Encore Episode)
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. This first ran in 2021.
Who Deserves a Seat at the Nation’s 'Best' High School? Bootstraps, Ep. 2 (Encore Episode)
What a debate about the admissions process at one of the best public high schools in the country says about who should get what in education. This first ran in 2021.
Find out more on this episode and the rest of the series at: https://www.edsurge.com/research/guides/bootstraps-a-podcast-series
Can You Really Just 'Pull Yourself Up' in Education? Bootstraps, Ep. 1 (Encore Episode)
What the odd and surprising history of 'pulling yourself up by your bootstraps' says about educational equity. This is the first episode in our Bootstraps podcast series on merit, myths and education. This first ran in 2021.
What If Banning Smartphones in Schools Is Just the Beginning?
As momentum grows to limit smartphone use in schools, some educators say that the education system can do even more to counter the negative health effects of social media. One award-winning teacher has changed his lessons and the way he teaches to try to help students learn to better focus — even reserving class time for quiet reading away from the distraction of phones.
Should College Become Part of High School? (Doubting College, Ep. 5)
As more students question the value of college, more high schools are bringing college options into their walls. In the latest installment of our Doubting College series, we visit a high school where students can earn a two-year degree without leaving the building, and where students can also get a jump on other career options that don’t require higher education.
Should Chatbots Tutor? Dissecting That Viral AI Demo With Sal Khan and His Son
Should AI chatbots be used as tutors? Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, has become one of the most vocal proponents of the idea, and he and his son are featured in a recent demo of ChatGPT’s latest version. But some teaching experts say tutoring should be reserved for humans who can motivate and understand the students they work with. For this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we talked with Khan to hear m
How Instructors Are Adapting to a Rise in Student Disengagement (Encore Episode)
Professors are finding that they can’t just go back to teaching as they did before the pandemic and expect the same result. It takes more these days to hold student attention, and convince them to show up. This week we’re rebroadcasting this episode that was reported from the back of large lecture classes to see how teaching is changing. The episode recently won a national award from the American
What Brain Science Says About How to Better Teach Teenagers
One author who spent years researching what brain science says about adolescent learners says their behavior shouldn’t be seen as “deviant” or “immature,” but as a “time of possibility.” And this researcher, Ellen Galinsky, has strong feelings about how to address phones and social media in schools.
Read a partial transcript and see show notes at EdSurge: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-05-21-w
High School Students Want Answers Before Heading to Campus (Doubting College, Ep. 4)
Today’s high school students are asking more skeptical questions about whether to go to college, or when to go. For this week’s podcast, we visited a career fair at one public high school to ask about the changing ways that high school counselors and education leaders are presenting those choices, and what these students think about their options.
Can ‘Linguistic Fingerprinting’ Guard Against AI Cheating?
Some educators are trying a different approach to guarding against AI cheating — a “linguistic fingerprinting” technique that borrows a page from the playbook of criminal investigations.
A Scholar Hopes to Diversify the Narrative Around Undocumented Students
Felecia Russell was born in Jamaica but moved to Los Angeles as a kid. It wasn’t until she started to apply for college that she learned that she was undocumented, which she worried could derail her dreams. She tells her story in a new book, “Amplifying Black Undocumented Student Voices in Higher Education,” which she hopes will help “diversify the narrative” about immigration and education.
Why a New Teaching Approach is Going Viral on Social Media (Encore Episode)
When a professor’s research showed that standard methods of teaching problem-solving weren’t working, he set out to figure out what led to more student thinking. His resulting approach is spreading through classrooms, helped by teachers sharing examples on social media. This is a reissue of an episode that first ran in November.
Whatever Happened to Building a Metaverse for Education?
Two years ago the metaverse was getting all the buzz in education circles (and hardly anyone was talking about AI). We checked back in with two educators at the forefront of building a virtual realm for education to see where they see things going now that the hype has faded.
How VR Can Be an ‘Empathy Machine’ for Education
The biggest reason to use VR in education is to tap into a student’s emotional response through immersive experiences, argues Maya Georgieva, director of The New School’s Innovation Center and a leading voice about where VR is headed. Hear her insights in this new interview.
Find more details and show notes at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-04-05-how-vr-can-be-an-empathy-machine-for-educatio
Is It Time for a National Conversation About Eliminating Letter Grades?
There’s a growing movement to drop letter grades in favor of new systems that focus on mastery of material rather than chasing points. But opponents worry about losing rigor. A new book hopes to start a national conversation about the issue.
More details and show notes at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-04-02-is-it-time-for-a-national-conversation-about-eliminating-letter-grades
Could AI Give Civics Education a Boost?
Social studies has been ‘deprioritized’ for decades, in favor of STEM fields, according to some educators. Could AI essay grading help improve the quality of civics and social studies education in schools?
What New Research Says About Fostering a ‘Sense of Belonging’ in Classrooms
There are key junctures in education that are especially important for helping students feel they belong in school or college. And new research points to better ways to strengthen student-teacher relationships and a sense of belonging, argues Greg Walton, a psychology professor at Stanford University.
See show notes and partial transcript at EdSurge: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-03-19-what-n
How Is the ‘College Is a Scam’ Narrative Influencing Who Goes to Campus? (Doubting College, Ep. 3)
There’s growing skepticism of higher education, complete with popular memes on social media that “college is a scam.” Experts in policy and marketing have some suggestions on how to counter that narrative.
An Educator’s Podcast Aims to Be an Antidote to School Culture Wars
A longtime educator worries that the raging culture wars in education create toxic environments that hurt academic learning. He’s started a podcast that brings together people with deeply different views on issues that are most dividing school communities these days and uses depolarizing techniques to try to model repairing such breaches.
Can VR Help Preserve and Teach Indigenous Culture?
Could virtual reality be the key to teaching indigenous ways of knowing to a broad population of students? Jared Ten Brink, a doctoral student in education, is trying to record and teach some key practices of his tribal elders using VR video.
How Growing Skepticism of College Is Making Students Savvier Edu Shoppers (Doubting College, Ep. 2)
In part two of our podcast series Doubting College, which explores the growing skepticism of higher ed, we talk to students and counselors at a public high school about how students are thinking through their choices after graduation.
AI Is Disrupting Professions That Require College Degrees. How Should Higher Ed Respond?
A recent study ranked the top professions that are likely to be disrupted by ChatGPT and other new AI technologies, and most of them require college degrees. How does higher ed need to change what it teaches to respond?
What If Myths, Metaphors and Riddles Are the Key to Reshaping K-12 Education?
Did the education theories that drive today’s schools and teaching practices get off track and do they need a reset — one that gets back to earlier days of oral storytelling? That was the argument of philosopher Kieran Egan, whose educational writings have recently gotten attention.
How Classroom Technology Has Changed the Parent-Teacher Relationship
It can be harder than ever for teachers to manage their relationships with parents, even though digital tools make interactions more frequent. This week’s EdSurge podcast looks at why.
Inside the Push to Bring AI Literacy to Schools and Colleges
There’s a growing push to add AI literacy as a subject in schools and colleges. But what exactly is AI literacy, and can educators promote curiosity about the subject amid their own concerns, and in some cases fear, around ChatGPT and other generative AI?
How Smartphones Have Changed Student Attention, Even When They’re Removed
Holding student attention may be harder than ever. Even if educators make students put away their smartphones, internet-connected devices have changed the way people relate to others and made it harder for people to be present, argues a Georgetown University professor.
Lessons From This 'Golden Age' of Learning Science (Encore Episode)
Experts have described this as a 'golden age' of discovery in the area of learning science, with new insights emerging regularly on how humans learn. So what can educators, policymakers and any lifelong learner gain from these new insights? This is a rebroadcast of one of our most popular episodes of 2023.
Looking Back at the Biggest Education Trends of 2023
What were the biggest surprises and trends in education in 2023? Hear from five EdSurge reporters as they give their highlights and analysis and also talk about what they’re digging into in the coming year.
Why Do Some Schools Get Better Quickly and Others Get Stuck? (Encore Episode)
“Why do some schools get better quickly, and others get stuck?” That question drove MIT professor of digital media Justin Reich to write a new book about what he’s learned as a teacher, edtech consultant and professor about making small regular improvements. This episode originally ran this summer.
After Transforming a College With Online Offerings, a President Steps Down to Tackle AI
Paul LeBlanc grew Southern New Hampshire University to an online education powerhouse with more than 200,000 students. This month he announced that he’ll step down as president after the academic year, and he talks to EdSurge about online education, about how he responds to critics who worry that the university has borrowed too much from for-profit universities, and about why his next project invo
How a Billionaire’s Fellowship Spread Skepticism About College’s Value (Doubting College, Ep. 1)
When the libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel started a fellowship 13 years ago that pays young people $100,000 each to not go to college for two years, it made a splash and drew criticism. These days that sort of skepticism of college is far more mainstream. We dive into the history and impact of the program on the first episode of our new podcast series about changing public views of higher ed, c
Can Kids Grow Up If They're Constantly Tracked and Monitored?
Students these days are under constant watch with digital tools — whether it’s friends posting pictures on social media, or learning management systems sending parents alerts about missed assignments. And that can make it hard for students to learn to solve their own problems, argues Devorah Heitner, an author who advises schools on social media issues.
The Growing Push to Recruit New Teachers
Schools of education are working harder at recruiting these days, in response to enrollment declines. Can more people — and more people from a variety of backgrounds — be convinced to join the teaching profession in this particularly trying time?
Why Schools Should Teach Philosophy, Even to Little Kids (Encore Episode)
It’s important to nurture philosophical thinking in kids throughout school and college. So argues a philosophy professor who wrote a book that highlights the natural tendencies of kids to think like philosophers. When big, important questions arise, he says, parents and educators should treat kids like conversational equals. This is a rerun of an episode that first ran in June.
How AI Could Spark Fundamental Shifts in Education
The rise of generative AI technology such as ChatGPT could rapidly reshape knowledge work in the next few years. A trio of education researchers recently sat down to map out what those changes could mean for education — and what steps should be taken to bring out the best of the tech while avoiding pitfalls.
Why a New Teaching Approach is Going Viral on Social Media
When a professor’s research showed that standard methods of teaching problem-solving weren’t working, he set out to figure out what led to more student thinking. His resulting approach is spreading through classrooms, helped by teachers sharing examples on social media.
Is It Time to Rethink the Traditional Grading System? (Encore Episode)
More educators are wondering whether the grading system hinders many students rather than helps them learn. For this week’s podcast, we’re rebroadcasting an episode from this summer diving into alternative methods of marking papers in ways that encourage students to continually revise their work rather than quibble over which letter grade they deserve.
What a Popular TikTok Channel Reveals About the Stress of College Admissions
It’s statistically harder to get into a selective college these days, and who gets in and why can feel like a mystery. So students are turning to TikTok and other social media platforms to fill the void, in what some admissions folks call a “toxic” trend. We talked to a TikToker and an admissions counselor on how to help.
How Teaching Should Change, According to a Nobel-Prize-Winning Physicist
Since winning the Nobel Prize for physics in 2001, Carl Wieman has devoted the bulk of his energies to trying to improve teaching. That has led him to promote active learning – and to look for better ways to evaluate teaching. Will they catch on?
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