This Week with EdSurge

We've been hearing all year about the wonderful things students are doing with podcasts. So this week on the show, we showcase a couple of them.

First, three 5th graders from the Park School in Brookline, MA share with us an immigrant's journey from Uganda to the United States. Then, in a segment created especially for the EdSurge podcast, three high school students from Oxon Hill High School in Maryland debate whether technology should be used more or less in school.

Girls are underrepresented in computer science education and professions. According to the National Science Board’s “Science and Engineering Indicators for 2012,” women make up only 26% of Computer Science and Mathematical Science professionals in the United States.

Believing that number begins with computer science education, we dove deep into the challenges girls face when learning and teaching computer science this week.

Steve Blank is known by some as “The Startup Whisperer" -- the guy that entrepreneurs turn to when they have questions about how to start or energize their business. He is also a serial entrepreneur, professor and investor who is perhaps best known for his books Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Startup Owner's Manual.

Last week Steve stopped by our studio to cast his experienced and critical eye on the business of edtech. In a wide-ranging chat with EdSurge CEO Betsy Corcoran, Steve talks about about the history of Silicon Valley, edtech’s commercialization problem, and whether entrepreneurship in edtech is really any different than regular tech.

This year's annual iNACOL symposium began and concluded this week in Orlando, Florida. The event featured over 180 sessions and workshops on everything from new school models to data privacy in blended learning to examining student outcomes.

EdSurge's Senior Editor (and podcast co-host) Mary Jo Madda, and Director of R&D Christina Quattrocchi attended the conference, and stopped by the podcast studio to share their reflections on this year's conference.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-11-13-what-stood-out-at-inacol

Ever wonder about all the hype about using Minecraft in the Classroom? This week, we explore how real teachers from all over the US are using the popular game to enhance their students' learning. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-11-06-minecraft-is-coming-to-a-school-near-you

This week on the podcast, we invite you on an international field trip to our northern neighbours. On our trip we’ll explore how edtech has changed in Canada over the past couple years; discuss how union-district relations mirror those in the US; and hear arguments for which country is the best place to start a new edtech company.

Do high-income communities, which enjoy the resources and flexibility to experiment with bold ideas, offer the most ideal test-beds for innovation? Or do the most viable—and practical—ideas come from low-income neighborhoods where the challenges and needs are visible everyday?

EdSurge welcome two entrepreneurs to the debate: Alejandro Gac-Artigas, the founder of Philadelphia-based Springboard Collaborative, which seeks to close the achievement gap and end summer reading loss by engaging parents and training teachers, and Max Ventilla, the mastermind and founder of AltSchool, a Bay Area-based network of “microschools” that currently charges more than $20,000 a year in tuition.

It’s not every day that we receive visits from entrepreneurs or nonprofits leads who can site as viral of growth as the EdCamp movement. For those of you wondering if that the name for some educational type of summer camp, let me help you out. Edcamps, or “unconferences,” bring together teachers, tech experts, entrepreneurs, and anyone else interested in the education landscape, to talk about, well, whatever they want. They involve very little planning, and the schedule is entirely decided by participants only once they’ve showed up to an EdCamp. Sound a little unconventional? Well, this novelty has become, dare we say, a viral movement since the very first gathering back in May 2010. In fact, there have been more than 250 Edcamps around the world in the last year alone.

The Executive Director of the EdCamp Foundation, Hadley Ferguson, stopped by the EdSurge Office on October 19 because we were curious to learn more about just what caused this viral growth. But we didn’t stop there. Are there too many EdCamps? Are entrepreneurs starting to use them as a marketing opportunity, which affects the sacred space that is EdCamp? Are these worries becoming a reality? Hadley answered all those questions and more in this EdSurge Extra.

Privacy. What a buzzword, but also a major point of contention for the past twelve months. Parents, companies, educators… everyone’s been jumping into the conversation on this topic. The proliferation of education technology has led to many questions about what, and how, student data is collected, analyzed and used. As student privacy and security concerns grow, how do we respond?

Last week, EdSurge conducted a panel in partnership with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, a global law firm that’s got its eye on the privacy debate. Panelists included Dan Carroll, co-founder of edtech company Clever, and Reach Capital partner Shauntel Poulson. EdSurge CEO Betsy Corcoran dove into how edtech leaders should address privacy issues while still advancing learning opportunities. Do companies need to yield to the demands and whims of privacy critics? Or can we all somehow reach a Kum-ba-ya understanding around the edtech campfire? Listen to the podcast to find out.

Sometimes educators and edtech companies break up. Three educators discuss their experiences when relationships with companies end and share lessons for other educators as well as companies.