5 ways to ensure SEL is an instrument for equity of opportunity
Though developing SEL skills are important, students also need access to a range of supportive connections who can help them get by and get ahead.
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2 books reveal a shocking lack of supports for high-needs students
High schools and colleges must start to ensure that students have a web of support that is responsive to their circumstances.
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The next decade of disruption in education? Unlocking networks
The last decade witnessed the meteoric rise of online learning. The next decade will be about edtech that expands connections.
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Why this former school principal is igniting new social networks across Boston neighborhoods
How a new community-based model is leveraging tech and financial incentives to cultivate relationships among Boston residents.
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Indebted to your mentors? One company’s business model tests repaying connections that paid off
Pelion is trying to source virtual career mentors and tying the outcome of those connections to a financing model called income share agreements (ISAs)
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Micro-internships: Just a gig or a promising gateway?
How a new model that scales access to micro-internships could tackle stubborn network gaps.
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Tackling graduation gaps by combining tech with human supports
One high-tech, high-touch model scaling access to student supports.
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Using virtual mentors to expand offline networks and grow career aspirations
Read how one online mentoring program helps students build self-efficacy and offline networks.
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How to take online mentoring to the bright side
Online mentoring has a unique ability to fill gaps in students’ networks.
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Why your school’s next hire should be an Opportunity Wrangler
New roles involve coordinating additional student services inside of school and connecting students to more opportunities beyond schools.
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5 big ideas for education innovation in 2018
Looking ahead to 2018, here are five key topics that stand to make–or break–education innovation.
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Disrupting opportunity gaps will hinge on networks
Society is passing up entire reservoirs of latent innovation potential in the next generation. Luckily there are new tools that can help disrupt opportunity gaps.
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How could a world that is technically more connected than ever be so socially disconnected and divided? Have disruptive technologies brought us closer together or further apart?
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My Brother’s Keeper turns to tech
My Brother’s Keeper and Sprint Corp. are bringing tablets, smartphones, and four years of data service to students who lack internet access at home. But it will take much more than tech to transform student lives.
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The hidden goal that XQ winners share: relationships
This month, U.S. high schools got a healthy dose of innovation investment—the XQ Super School project announced 10 winners, each of which will receive $10 million to support their efforts to reinvent high school. Although the winners are pursuing a pretty dazzling array of approaches, all 10 are exploring ways to personalize high school in an effort […]
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3 reasons edtech ignores social capital
Edtech entrepreneurs around the world have keyed into the enormous potential for edtech to disrupt the traditional content and assessment market. But with a laser-like focus on academic tools, entrepreneurs and school systems alike risk losing sight of how technology can also enhance students’ relationships with adults and one another. In addition to dramatically shifting how we […]
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Are schools doing too much?
A recent U.S. News & World Report article by Andy Rotherham made a bold claim: school districts do too much. His piece very convincingly argues that school systems spend inordinate resources and mental energy on providing student services, like food and transportation, to the determinant of focusing on their most valuable job: instruction. If we […]
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Can Facebook’s founder get full service education right?
Late last year, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced they are starting a private PK–8 school in East Palo Alto, Calif. Chan will serve as CEO of the new school, called The Primary School, set to open this coming fall. The effort builds on a number of investments that the couple has made […]
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Mentoring 2.0 tackles college access
This is the fifth post in the #WhoYouKnow blog series on the overlap of social capital, EdTech, and innovation. Today’s high school students interact with their guidance counselors an average of 38 minutes per year. Even more troubling are the profound gaps between rich and poor students’ access to mentors in general: according to Harvard […]
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Who are your teachers? New technology for humanity
For those adults working on, writing about, or generally pondering the fate of our education system, “teachers” are thought of as a stakeholder group, a fulcrum for change. But most of us are likewise bought into the idea of lifelong learning—that is, formal schooling may end, but we continue to be students of life. As […]
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