What’s in Your Head Matters More than What’s in Your Backpack

When we talk about school quality and achievement, we tend to get caught up in funding, teachers, textbooks, and test scores. But what do you really need to learn? An open mind? A quiet opportunity for reflection? The discipline to keep trying? Enough curiosity to ask a question?

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India’s Human Capital and Educational Technology

If you think the U.S. has a drop out problem, India has the world’s largest population of children and 53% of children who start school drop out by 8th grade. The government plans to double annual education expenditures and remake the nation’s schools. A panel led by Dilip Thakore, Publisher and Editor, Education World, at the Milken Institute discussed India’s Human Capital: Educating the World’s Largest Population of Children, the opportunities to reform India’s education system both in terms of curricula and investment opportunities.

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More Ways to Write

At the LA Times Festival of Books, I met Michael Mariani if livescribe, and tried the Pulse Smartpen, the ultimate recording device for learners. As you write notes in a special notebook, the pen records the audio in the room. Later, when you trying to make notes of those scribbles that made so much sense during your lecture, simply tap the page and the recording plays the audio from that moment. You can transfer the notes to your computer, search your handwritten notes, and share them as flash or pdf files. Like the iPhone, the pen has an open API, allowing developers to design programs for capturing rhythms, playing music, and who knows what else.

I’m buying one for my niece today to see what happens at school in the Fall!

Writing for the Web: Is Anyone Reading?

I’m a writer who specializes in writing for the Web and I’m a reader. Lately, I feel like I’m going out of fashion. I feel like my grandmother who lived to be 100 years old and could no longer find comfortable shoes. Her feet had conformed to a certain heel height and shoe width sometime during the first 60 years of her life. Shoe makers stopped making it–no market.

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Social Networking, Trust, and Schools

This morning, I joined a call by Peter Shankman of help a reporter out (HARO) and Chris Brogan, an expert on business strategy and social media. The call was very Twitter focused and as participants tweeted questions, notes, and comments using the hashtag “#broman”, broman became one of the top trends on Twitter. People who were not on the call started tweeting about broman to figure out what it meant and why it was trending.

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