Pioneer Street

Pioneerstreet.com (established 1998.)

–> Political Polemics Promote Punitive Policies, Preventing Progress in Proficiency.

I recently had the opportunity to write a guest editorial in the Lewiston Sun Journal, and I gave myself the ridiculous challenge of trying to provide the big picture on education reform for a general audience in 700 words.  Here is the director’s cut (yes, a little longer…) US public schools are working to improve,… Continue reading Saying it all in 700 words….

The concept of  learning styles  pushes a lot of buttons for me.  A lot of valuable work has been done to show that people learn in different ways, and we certainly need to offer learning experiences that reflect this, especially in high schools, where an increase in experiential or “hands on” learning is long overdue.… Continue reading Learning Styles, misconception alert

During the early days, K-12 technology was about “buying the next thing,” and the cool factor weighed heavily with decision-makers who often had more buying authority than knowledge. Today it is more often an urgent research process by a team of leaders with complicated requirements and piles of new demands for very sophisticated features, especially… Continue reading 5 Essential Practices for Ed-Tech Startups

This short animation of a talk by Ken Robinson does a fairly good encapsulation of the challenges of K-12 education. What’s interesting to me is that, for many years people who believed this way mostly spoke and wrote books for, well… each other.  Mainstream policy makers would see a guy like Ken  as a gadfly… Continue reading Will change really happen this time?

Rural Maine Telemedicine…. Trauma surgeon on IPod Touch…

I found this TED talk presentation a better way to understand Kahn Academy, and its progress as a tool for schools.  I think some educators have been hesitant to support Kahn, partly because students would be consuming, rather than producing the videos (which would not technically be consistent with constructivist ideology.) This presentation shows how… Continue reading Kahn Academy Described

I often receive an email from a teacher to the effect of “I saw a student defeat our firewall and go to a blocked site.  What is the technology department going to do about it?”  In nearly every case, the teacher had a responsibility to deal with the student, but saw it as a technical… Continue reading News flash: students use technology to break the rules