Skype and The Education Foundation Partner to Launch The Learning Lab

Our partnership was solidified this week with the launch of a state-of-the-art, technology-rich professional development center for education professionals and leaders in the heart of London - The Learning Lab. It will be used as a testing ground for new approaches to the curriculum, technology and the world of work.

Most New Graduates Would Take a Pay Cut to Make a Difference

Ask any new college graduate about her immediate goals, and chances are she’ll tell you she wants a job. But it turns out today’s students aren’t going to be satisfied with any job. According to the latest survey from Net Impact, making a difference through their work is essential to young people’s happiness.

photo via flickr:CC | USAG-Humphreys

Geniuses: born or made?

Jack Andraka is a 15-year-old kid from Maryland who just won the world’s largest and most important high school science fair by devising a new way to detect pancreatic cancer in its early stages.

And then there’s Lori Anne Madison, the 6-year-old Virginia girl who is the youngest student ever to qualify for the National Spelling Bee.

It all makes you wonder about the nature of genius…

photo via flickr:CC | mrsdkrebs

Active Friends Key to Combating Childhood Obesity, Study Suggests

A child’s group of friends holds the greatest influence on determining how physically active that child will be, suggests a study published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Want your child to become more physically active? Pair him or her up with a group of physically active friends, the study suggests.

photo via flickr:CC | alfstorm

Are You Enabling ‘Academic Entitlement’ in Students?

Students’ sense of academic entitlement can reduce their effort in class and lead to irritating (or even aggressive) confrontations with teachers, according to research by Tracey E. Zinn, a psychology associate professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. Moreover, teachers may be unintentionally feeding that sense of entitlement, she said at the Association for Psychological Science conference here this weekend.

Zinn and James Madison colleagues Jason P. Kopp, Sara J. Finney and Daniel P. Jurich are researching ways to measure academic entitlement and how it develops. Perhaps not surprisingly, the researchers found the college students they studied were most likely to show “serious instances of incivility” right after academic assessments, be they test results or mid-term grades.

photo via flickr:CC | frotzed2

More High School Students Are Going to College Than Ever Before

Today’s high school students are taking more math and science courses and more are going straight to college after graduation than their peers from a generation ago. That’s the finding of “The Condition of Education 2012” a just-released report from the National Center of Educational Statistics, which covers all aspects of education, from preschool through through college.

photo via flickr:CC | hharryus

Prozac Campus: the Next Generation

What role did medication play on campus now, and what did students’ attitudes toward it augur for the future? With those questions in mind, I decided to return to a college whose size and orientation reminded me a little bit of my own, to look for the change that 15 years had brought…

photo via flickr:CC | Xurxo Martínez

Getting down to facts: five years later

This report commemorates the fifth anniversary of the Getting Down to Facts project, which sought to provide a thorough and reliable analysis of the critical challenges facing California’s education system as the necessary basis for an informed discussion of policy changes aimed at improving the performance of California schools and students. The report focuses on the four key issues that received emphasis in the Getting Down to Facts studies: governance, finance,
personnel, and data systems.

Summary? Budget problems in CA have gotten worse, and in education per-student funding dropped $522 over 4 years. The state’s dismal finances have greatly impacted the other three key issues.

“California’s school finance system is in disrepair to the point that it no longer meets the needs of the state or its students.”

Refraction

I found a great game online that has to do with fractions and spatial reasoning. It’s also very fun. So, for all you gamers, mathematicians and technology enthusiasts, good luck! 

via Ms Lundberg

Coolest jobs in tech: decoding life, touring solar systems

Managing hardware and storage needs; building custom, in-house applications; making information accessible via the Web—such tasks are the mainstays of IT work, so mundane that they’re generally not worth talking about.

But science gives these routine tasks a fascinating twist…

photo via flickr:CC | bandarji