Another thing I have found (through literature reviews) is that giving students more freedom in their work ultimately leads to better, more innovative ideas. I think this is partly due to the idea that ownership leads to having more pride in your work, which in turn makes you want to work harder, longer, and smarter on a particular assignment. That's the idea behind the 20% project. This blog that I found outlines how a teacher can implement a 20% project in their classroom. For ...

After today's D&R and some conversations about online learning afterwards, I started to look for any recent articles that address online learning. I came across this article from the Atlantic business section on selling the college experience to students who take classes online. It makes the interesting point that regardless of how improved and effective the content can and will be in the future for online college courses, there will still be a desire fo...

University campuses are becoming incubators for entrepreneurship. Young people can make their dreams come true by taking the encouraging, inspiring, and practice-oriented classes. These classes, which serve as launchpads for startups, train college students who lack experience yet are full of passion to become fresh-faced business leaders. Can entrepreneurship really be taught? There are numerous testimonies from student entrepreneurs who took those classes and developed their first product from scratch. Successful stories include Pulse (media delivery),...

Ten years ago, it might have been true that teaching and tutoring in schools was the only source of income as a teacher. Now, thanks to technology, teachers are able to earn extra pocket money. The idea of “sharing as a business” has helped teachers like Deanna Jump and her education philosophy become popular, as well as brought her a huge extra income (she's currently earning $60K per month on Teachers...

If you were wondering which hour-long academic discussion of America's educational system you were going to watch this weekend, look no further. Charles Murray, the controversial right-wing political scientist, recently gave a provocative and wide-ranging talk at the Fordham Institute on education, class, and social mobility, which you can watch here. In it, he covers issues he raised in The Bell Curve, Coming Apart, and even his little-known Real Education.

The effectiveness of personal devices (e.g., tablets) on learning outcomes is a heatedly debated issue among education professionals. A recent report by Ine Consulting offers some positive insights into the matter. Studying a high school in Kent, UK, whose curriculum was heavily incorporated with iPads, researchers interestingly (yet not all surprisingly) discovered how the iPad assists learning in classroom. Subjects

Students at a Silicon Valley high school have become startup founders at the age of eighteen. Collectively, they have already launched two ideas — an online education venture and a video-sharing app for the iPhone — with more ideas being developed at their "Paly Entrepreneurs Club" lunchtime meetings. These students are the first to admit to their early "failures". But with that said, these young entrepreneurs are resilient for their age, actually appreciating their failing experiences. (Note: Failure is a common theme revealed by Silicon Alley founders, as seen in our

Governor Scott Walker, still confident from his recall victory, has announced a proposal to create the “University of Wisconsin Flexible Degree Program”. Although the public education system is, by and large, no fan of Governor Walker, this proposal is a promising new entry in an increasingly stale and sclerotic higher education system (and, in any event, more threatening to the burgeoning for-profit higher education world).

It's rare to find something new or innovative on the music education front. For the most part, it is an area that remains rather "traditional." For example, rhythm is taught by clapping and counting intervals: "ta ta tee-tee ta." And pitch is taught through clever songs about the major scale, like "Doe A Deer." However, the rising use of technology in the classroom has opened up new ways to enhance music education. Pre-kindergarten Detroit students have been using an interactive whiteboard — the Eno Board — to explore the same concepts of rhythm and pitch described above. According to a