In an effort to boost achievement and better prepare students for the workforce, President Obama is spearheading a program that will bring high-speed Internet access to 99 percent of America's K-12 schools.
Dubbed ConnectED, the program aims to accomplish its goal in the next five years. In addition to bringing Internet speeds of at least 100 Mbps and as high as 1Gbps, the program will provide comprehensive training to teachers so that they are up-to-speed on best practices for using the Web in class.
A particular focus of ConnectED will be rural schools that have difficulty accessing the Internet. In a statement, Obama was clear that getting students connected and teachers trained is a priority. "We are living in a digital age, and to help our students get ahead, we must make sure they have access to cutting-edge technology," he said. "So today, I'm issuing a new challenge for America -- one that families, businesses, school districts and the federal government can rally around together -- to connect virtually every student in America's classrooms to high-speed broadband Internet within five years, and equip them with the tools to make the most of it."
Distracted students. Technology addiction. Social media onslaught.
Fast-paced living. Increased anxiety. Sounds like a recipe for a breakdown. Welcome to the new classroom.
Societal changes have certainly brought new challenges for teachers. And with new challenges, comes the need to re-examine current approaches to education. What are some of these new challenges? To start, children are spending more and more time on electronic devices. A 2017 report released by Common Sense...
Last year in a faculty meeting, I listened as a senior administrator denied the importance of content as part of a high school education in today’s world. It was August of 2017, only days after the events of Charlottesville, Virginia and the subsequent debates about the meaning of the Confederacy and its leaders in the contemporary era.
This administrator explained how he needed no content base to understand the white nationalist rally or the counter-protestors or the emerging...
One of my favorite aspects of the Internet as a conduit of information is that I can enjoy video lectures made available by varied universities. I regularly take classes via Coursera or consume lectures open sourced by professors. Watching a lecture over a cup of coffee in the morning or listening to one at night when I am making my kids’ school lunches is now an established and beloved part of my routine.
I started using video lectures in my American History classroom two years...

“The teacher’s role in this journey is to ‘model advance learning’. They are there as a mentor, a guide, a coach, and most importantly, a co-learner.” – Glenn Chickering
Our environment should be important to all of us. It is after all where we live.
The Green School in...

“When the viewer looks down, they’ll see their arms are branches, their body is the trunk, and when they move, the tree moves too.” – Winslow Porter
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality Markets are expected to reach US$162 billion by 2020. How can schools use...
Do you remember learning to read? I am a very lucky girl – I don’t.
What I do remember is lying in bed with my Read it yourself Ladybird Book, reading to my mother. I was so intrigued with the images of Cinderella. They were different to the usual ‘soft’ images. They were almost digital (in a pre-digital time!). I grew up in a house full of books and enjoyed reading stories about The Famous Five, Mr Twiddle and The Faraway Tree……
I remember my kindergarten teacher writing a...
One of my favorite parts of history class as a high school student was participating in simulations. Role-playing, mock trials, fake battles – replaying any moment in our nation’s past inspired me as a student and made history come alive. I remember once in AP US History being assigned roles as Confederate and Union leaders in the early 1860s and told to prepare for the oncoming war. We spent a week strategizing troop movements, building economic policy, writing speeches and organizing our...