For those who don't follow me on Twitter or have not checked that lately, here are three articles I have published via major education sites in the last three weeks. They look at various high-level lessons we are learning from the COVID-19 shut down as viewed through the lens of education: COVID-19 and K-12: What [...]
The first step of problem solving is finding a problem to solve. Covid-19 "found" us, so we move on to the next step: finding the right problem to solve. Educators, students, and parents are overwhelmed with a melange of challenges that they never imagined or planned for. How can we sort through all of what [...]
In February, 1943, poorly trained and untested units of the American Army were roundly defeated by German and Italian forces in the Battle of Kasserine Pass in North Africa. Allied forces were pushed back more than 50 miles and suffered large casualties. It was a grim first entrance into the European war theater for the [...]
The new normal you are experiencing is not new, but has been "becoming normal" for many years. I first used the term "cognitosphere" in about 2008 to describe the rapidly-growing global neuro-network that increasingly connects everyone in the world who has access to the internet. Others have called this system the "metaverse" or other made-up [...]
The Covid-19 crisis is shining a huge new spotlight on inequities in K-12 education. Every school and district in America, and many around the world, are racing to figure out how to educate children and prepare adults during long-term closures. The range of problems is enormous, from access to technology, support for students with learning [...]
I have been in several virtual chats over the last few days as edu-leaders think about managing their schools during the shut down, and about the lessons we need to learn for a new-normal long-term outlook. A couple of big takeaways: We are in a war; FINALLY even Washington is starting to "get it". This [...]
No use sugar coating it; most educators have been shoved out of their comfort zone like baby birds from the nest. Uncertainty is scary, and rightfully so. Many of you might not be back in session until the fall, and we have no idea how to answer most of the questions around a return to [...]
Feeling queasy? Cautious, uncertain, even a bit of fear? Many of us have been shouting that we are living in a rapidly changing world, and last week American found out what that really means. For several decades we have myopically believed that "rapidly changing" had something to do with technology, and Moore's Law; that the [...]
If there is a silver lining to Covid-19 (and we won't know either the trajectory of the virus or the potential for a silver lining for quite some time) it might be a smack-in-the-face wake-up call that science is more important than political ideology when it comes to really important things. This is not a [...]
If you have not already done so, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt is a must read for all educators and parents of children between the ages of pregnant and 25. It is a powerful review, with significant quantitative and qualitative data in support, of the realization that the [...]
