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Benjamin Riley: AI is another ed tech promise destined to fail
For more than a decade, Benjamin Riley has been at the forefront of efforts to get educators to think more deeply about how we learn. As the founder of Deans for Impact in 2015, he enlisted university education school deans to incorporate findings from cognitive science into teacher preparation. Before that, he spent five years...
By Greg Toppo | July 18, 2024
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Homeschoolers embrace AI, even as many educators keep it at arms’ length
Like many parents who homeschool their children, Jolene Fender helps organize book clubs, inviting students in her Cary, North Carolina, co-op to meet for monthly discussions. But over the years, parents have struggled to find good opening questions. “You’d search [the Internet], you’d go on Pinterest,” she said. “A lot of the work had to...
By Greg Toppo | July 8, 2024
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A Cautionary AI tale: Why IBM’s dazzling Watson supercomputer made a lousy tutor
In the annals of artificial intelligence, Feb. 16, 2011, was a watershed moment. That day, IBM’s Watson supercomputer finished off a three-game shellacking of Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Trailing by over $30,000, Jennings, now the show’s host, wrote out his Final Jeopardy answer in mock resignation: “I, for one, welcome our computer...
By Greg Toppo | April 15, 2024
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SXSW EDU Cheat Sheet: 18 key artificial intelligence workshops & conversations to see in Austin next month
South by Southwest Edu returns to Austin, Texas, running March 3-7. As always, the event offers a wealth of panels, discussions, film screenings and workshops exploring emerging trends in education and innovation. Keynote speakers this year include Geoffrey Canada of Harlem Children’s Zone, Carol Dweck of Stanford University, who popularized the idea of “growth mindset,”...
By Greg Toppo | February 20, 2024
Studies: Pandemic Aid Lifted Scores, But Not Enough To Make Up for Lost Learning
‘Astonishing’ Absenteeism, Trauma Rates Root of Academic Crisis
Reinventing Report Cards: Reading, Writing, Collaboration and Other Work Skills
Older Immigrant Students Say High School Admission Bettered Their Lives in U.S.
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Six hidden (and not-so-hidden) factors driving America’s student absenteeism crisis
As schools continue to recover from the pandemic, there’s one troubling COVID symptom they can’t seem to shake: record-setting absenteeism. In the 2021-22 school year, more than one in four U.S. public school students missed at least 10% of school days. Before the pandemic, it was closer to one in seven, the Associated Press reported, relying...
By Greg Toppo | November 30, 2023
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Survey: AI is here, but only California and Oregon guide schools on its use
Artificial intelligence now has a daily presence in many teachers’ and students’ lives, with chatbots like ChatGPT, Khan Academy’s Khanmigo tutor and AI image generators like Ideogram.ai all freely available. But nearly a year after most of us came face-to-face with the first of these tools, a new survey suggests that few states are offering educators substantial guidance on how to...
By Greg Toppo | November 9, 2023
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Q&A: Rock pioneer Steven Van Zandt on The Beatles, The Stones and challenging our ‘antiquated’ approach to school
Steven Van Zandt is not only one of the busiest men in show business. The composer, arranger, guitarist and longtime Bruce Springsteen sideman is also a transformational educator. A record producer and music historian, Van Zandt has been a member of two well-known rock bands: Springsteen’s legendary E Street Band and the influential Southside Johnny...
By Greg Toppo | September 18, 2023
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Four reasons to be hopeful from latest summer school study
A new working paper could give educators powerful new motivations to invest in summer programs, which seem to stem the tide of learning loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic — at least in math. The paper, from CALDER at the American Institutes for Research, looked at the academic progress of students who attended summer school in 2022...
By Greg Toppo | August 28, 2023
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Choice supporters to Oklahoma backers of Catholic charter schools: ‘Proceed with caution’
Catholic Church leaders in Oklahoma could within weeks get the go-ahead to create the nation’s first explicitly religious, taxpayer-supported charter school. And while a few charter and school choice leaders are quietly supporting the proposed St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, seeing it as a watershed moment for religious freedom, others are saying, in...
By Greg Toppo | May 17, 2023
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The new face of homeschooling: Less religious and conservative, more focused on quality
By the time LaToya Brooks began homeschooling her three daughters last fall, the Atlanta mother had to ask herself: Why didn’t I do this sooner? A former public school band teacher, Brooks said she was largely inspired by the grim pandemic realities of her kids’ schooling: Her 7-year-old, born late in the year, was stuck...
By Greg Toppo | February 13, 2023