Can Technology Fix Personalized Learning?
This article is part of a series on personalized learning (part 2 of 6). Educational professor Dr. Don Ely once famously asked: “If technology is the answer, what is the question?” With renewed interest in personalized learning, we should be cautious of the techno-centric tendency. In China, billions of dollars are being pumped into various online learning […]
Why Personalized Learning?
This article is part of a series on personalized learning (part 1 of 6). After his daughter’s birth, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced that they would donate 99% of their Facebook shares to charitable work, including the promotion of personalized learning. Of all the learning “revolutions” out there with shinier names, why […]
Without Quality Education, Latin America May Lose Its Demographic Dividend
This article is part of a series on innovative solutions to tackle the main challenges of Latin American education (part 5 of 6). Developed countries are facing a major demographic challenge. From Europe to Japan, their population growth rates are slowing, impacting everything from the solvency of retirement funds to the pace of economic expansion. Latin America, […]
Bolder Giving for Stronger Education Impact
Global business moguls from Ted Turner to Mark Zuckerberg have transformed our daily lives with their brainpower and acumen. But they refuse to confine their entrepreneurial energy to their businesses. Eager to make a lasting impact on people’s lives, they are combining their innovative thinking and the wealth it yields to combat global challenges. I […]
Why Quality Matters More Than Quantity in Education
Teach for America (TFA) has paved the way for quality education in the United States. Currently, TFA teachers are impacting more then 750,000 students in 2,600 schools. The woman behind the vision: Wendy Kopp. The idea for TFA was first proposed in Kopp’s undergraduate thesis for Princeton in 1989. TFA aims to “enlist, develop, and mobilize as […]
The Secret to School Transformation: Emotional Plumbing
Nestled inside a bamboo forest, Supo Elementary School was founded in 1917, and for decades was considered the best school in the lush rural outskirts of Chengdu, the mega-city capital of Sichuan province. That’s to say that rural children recited texts under their voices became coarse, and did test questions until their eyes squinted. In […]
It’s Time To Let Teenagers Sleep The Way They Want—And Start School Later
Over the last few weeks, millions of children across the Northern Hemisphere have headed back to school for the beginning of a new school year. Sadly, for many of them, the beginning of the school year also marks the beginning of a prolonged period of cumulative sleep deprivation that will progressively affect their physical and […]
Afghanistan: Bringing Girls (Back) to School
It’s education, not guns that transform a society, says Dr. Sakena Yacoobi, founder and executive director of the Afghan Institute of Learning, an Afghan women-led NGO. On November 4, 2015, Dr. Yacoobi received the 2015 WISE Prize for Education during the 7th World Innovation Summit for Education in Doha, Qatar. Fondly known as Afghanistan’s mother of […]
The Xingwei Experiment
Xingwei College is a quiet and leafy campus near the bustle and gleam of Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport. I visited the four-year private liberal arts college for a week in November, when its lawns glowed under the creamy sky of the Shanghai winter. A stream cut through the flat sprawling campus on its way to the […]
Innovative Solutions to Tackle the Main Challenges of Latin American Education
In this series of articles, Gabriel Sánchez Zinny explores some of the innovative solutions, as well as the major obstacles, that are redefining Latin American education. The School to Work Transition in Latin America Civil Society and the Skills Gap in Latin America How are Corporations Making a Difference in Providing Middle Skills? Three Ways Governments […]