The pandemic has sparked more-nuanced conversations about kids and tech, getting away from simple questions of how much screen time to allow. Now, one researcher argues, it’s time to provide better guidance on how to match tech to what children need, and can reasonably handle, at each stage of their development.

Today’s Kids Are Inundated With Tech. When Does it Help — and Hurt?

Since winning the Nobel Prize for physics in 2001, Carl Wieman has devoted the bulk of his energies to trying to improve teaching. That has led him to promote active learning – and to look for better ways to evaluate teaching. Will they catch on?

How Teaching Should Change, According to a Nobel-Prize-Winning Physicist

More educators are wondering whether the grading system hinders many students rather than helps them learn. For this week’s podcast, we’re rebroadcasting an episode from this summer diving into alternative methods of marking papers in ways that encourage students to continually revise their work rather than quibble over which letter grade they deserve.

Is It Time to Rethink the Traditional Grading System? (Encore Episode)

When a professor’s research showed that standard methods of teaching problem-solving weren’t working, he set out to figure out what led to more student thinking. His resulting approach is spreading through classrooms, helped by teachers sharing examples on social media.

Why a New Teaching Approach is Going Viral on Social Media

The rise of generative AI technology such as ChatGPT could rapidly reshape knowledge work in the next few years. A trio of education researchers recently sat down to map out what those changes could mean for education — and what steps should be taken to bring out the best of the tech while avoiding pitfalls.

How AI Could Spark Fundamental Shifts in Education

It’s important to nurture philosophical thinking in kids throughout school and college. So argues a philosophy professor who wrote a book that highlights the natural tendencies of kids to think like philosophers. When big, important questions arise, he says, parents and educators should treat kids like conversational equals. This is a rerun of an episode that first ran in June.

EdSuge Podcast

Why Schools Should Teach Philosophy, Even to Little Kids (Encore Episode)

Schools of education are working harder at recruiting these days, in response to enrollment declines. Can more people — and more people from a variety of backgrounds — be convinced to join the teaching profession in this particularly trying time?

The Growing Push to Recruit New Teachers

Students these days are under constant watch with digital tools — whether it’s friends posting pictures on social media, or learning management systems sending parents alerts about missed assignments. And that can make it hard for students to learn to solve their own problems, argues Devorah Heitner, an author who advises schools on social media issues.

Can Kids Grow Up If They're Constantly Tracked and Monitored?

When the libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel started a fellowship 13 years ago that pays young people $100,000 each to not go to college for two years, it made a splash and drew criticism. These days that sort of skepticism of college is far more mainstream. We dive into the history and impact of the program on the first episode of our new podcast series about changing public views of higher ed, called Doubting College.

How a Billionaire’s Fellowship Spread Skepticism About College’s Value (Doubting College, Ep. 1)

Paul LeBlanc grew Southern New Hampshire University to an online education powerhouse with more than 200,000 students. This month he announced that he’ll step down as president after the academic year, and he talks to EdSurge about online education, about how he responds to critics who worry that the university has borrowed too much from for-profit universities, and about why his next project involves rethinking teaching with AI.

After Transforming a College With Online Offerings, a President Steps Down to Tackle AI

What were the biggest surprises and trends in education in 2023? Hear from five EdSurge reporters as they give their highlights and analysis and also talk about what they’re digging into in the coming year.

Looking Back at the Biggest Education Trends of 2023

“Why do some schools get better quickly, and others get stuck?” That question drove MIT professor of digital media Justin Reich to write a new book about what he’s learned as a teacher, edtech consultant and professor about making small regular improvements. This episode originally ran this summer.

Why Do Some Schools Get Better Quickly and Others Get Stuck? (Encore Episode)

Experts have described this as a 'golden age' of discovery in the area of learning science, with new insights emerging regularly on how humans learn. So what can educators, policymakers and any lifelong learner gain from these new insights? This is a rebroadcast of one of our most popular episodes of 2023.

Lessons From This 'Golden Age' of Learning Science (Encore Episode)

Holding student attention may be harder than ever. Even if educators make students put away their smartphones, internet-connected devices have changed the way people relate to others and made it harder for people to be present, argues a Georgetown University professor.

How Smartphones Have Changed Student Attention, Even When They’re Removed

There’s a growing push to add AI literacy as a subject in schools and colleges. But what exactly is AI literacy, and can educators promote curiosity about the subject amid their own concerns, and in some cases fear, around ChatGPT and other generative AI?

Inside the Push to Bring AI Literacy to Schools and Colleges

It can be harder than ever for teachers to manage their relationships with parents, even though digital tools make interactions more frequent. This week’s EdSurge podcast looks at why.

How Classroom Technology Has Changed the Parent-Teacher Relationship

Did the education theories that drive today’s schools and teaching practices get off track and do they need a reset — one that gets back to earlier days of oral storytelling? That was the argument of philosopher Kieran Egan, whose educational writings have recently gotten attention.

What If Myths, Metaphors and Riddles Are the Key to Reshaping K-12 Education?

A recent study ranked the top professions that are likely to be disrupted by ChatGPT and other new AI technologies, and most of them require college degrees. How does higher ed need to change what it teaches to respond?

AI Is Disrupting Professions That Require College Degrees. How Should Higher Ed Respond?

In part two of our podcast series Doubting College, which explores the growing skepticism of higher ed, we talk to students and counselors at a public high school about how students are thinking through their choices after graduation.

How Growing Skepticism of College Is Making Students Savvier Edu Shoppers (Doubting College, Ep. 2)

Could virtual reality be the key to teaching indigenous ways of knowing to a broad population of students? Jared Ten Brink, a doctoral student in education, is trying to record and teach some key practices of his tribal elders using VR video.

Can VR Help Preserve and Teach Indigenous Culture?

A longtime educator worries that the raging culture wars in education create toxic environments that hurt academic learning. He’s started a podcast that brings together people with deeply different views on issues that are most dividing school communities these days and uses depolarizing techniques to try to model repairing such breaches.

An Educator’s Podcast Aims to Be an Antidote to School Culture Wars

There’s growing skepticism of higher education, complete with popular memes on social media that “college is a scam.” Experts in policy and marketing have some suggestions on how to counter that narrative.

How Is the ‘College Is a Scam’ Narrative Influencing Who Goes to Campus? (Doubting College, Ep. 3)

There are key junctures in education that are especially important for helping students feel they belong in school or college. And new research points to better ways to strengthen student-teacher relationships and a sense of belonging, argues Greg Walton, a psychology professor at Stanford University.

See show notes and partial transcript at EdSurge: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-03-19-what-new-research-says-about-fostering-a-sense-of-belonging-in-classrooms

What New Research Says About Fostering a ‘Sense of Belonging’ in Classrooms

Social studies has been ‘deprioritized’ for decades, in favor of STEM fields, according to some educators. Could AI essay grading help improve the quality of civics and social studies education in schools?

Could AI Give Civics Education a Boost?

There’s a growing movement to drop letter grades in favor of new systems that focus on mastery of material rather than chasing points. But opponents worry about losing rigor. A new book hopes to start a national conversation about the issue.

More details and show notes at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-04-02-is-it-time-for-a-national-conversation-about-eliminating-letter-grades

Is It Time for a National Conversation About Eliminating Letter Grades?

The biggest reason to use VR in education is to tap into a student’s emotional response through immersive experiences, argues Maya Georgieva, director of The New School’s Innovation Center and a leading voice about where VR is headed. Hear her insights in this new interview. 

Find more details and show notes at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-04-05-how-vr-can-be-an-empathy-machine-for-education

How VR Can Be an ‘Empathy Machine’ for Education

Two years ago the metaverse was getting all the buzz in education circles (and hardly anyone was talking about AI). We checked back in with two educators at the forefront of building a virtual realm for education to see where they see things going now that the hype has faded.

Whatever Happened to Building a Metaverse for Education?

When a professor’s research showed that standard methods of teaching problem-solving weren’t working, he set out to figure out what led to more student thinking. His resulting approach is spreading through classrooms, helped by teachers sharing examples on social media. This is a reissue of an episode that first ran in November.

Why a New Teaching Approach is Going Viral on Social Media (Encore Episode)

Felecia Russell was born in Jamaica but moved to Los Angeles as a kid. It wasn’t until she started to apply for college that she learned that she was undocumented, which she worried could derail her dreams. She tells her story in a new book, “Amplifying Black Undocumented Student Voices in Higher Education,” which she hopes will help “diversify the narrative” about immigration and education.

A Scholar Hopes to Diversify the Narrative Around Undocumented Students

Some educators are trying a different approach to guarding against AI cheating — a “linguistic fingerprinting” technique that borrows a page from the playbook of criminal investigations.

Can ‘Linguistic Fingerprinting’ Guard Against AI Cheating?

A weekly podcast about the future of learning. Join host Jeff Young and other EdSurge reporters as they sit down with educators, innovators and scholars for frank and in-depth conversations.

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