Happy New Year 2025!

 

I’m taking a little break from researching and writing blog posts to celebrate the December holidays and the New Year. Hope you have been doing the same (enjoying quality time with family and friends).

 

Here’s a few highlights from 2024 if you’re looking for something to read:

 

·      The 50 Best Education Blogs

·      100 Best E-Learning Blogs and Websites in 2025

·      Top E-Learning Trends of 2024

·      The Top 10 Online Learning Platforms for 2024

·      7 Critical Education Trends That Will Define Learning in 2025

 

 

I’d love to hear what online education topics you, our readers, are interested in learning more about.  Email me your suggestions here, and we’ll see what we can do.

 

Happy New Year!

 

AI Wants to Help You Get Hooked on Phonics … Again …

 

Depending on how old you are, you may have learned to read by sounding out the letters. A teaching method exemplified by the Hooked on Phonics program. The aspiring reader moves from sounding out individual letters, to sounding out words, to sentences, to paragraphs. It’s a highly successful approach, but it does not necessarily inspire a love of reading in its students.

 

At some point, schools starting switching over to a more holistic approach to teaching reading, the “whole language approach.” Kids learn entire words and do not sound out individual letters. The educational focus is on meaning-making, communication and social interaction inherent in the reading process. Young children’s reading scores have been dropping, however, using the whole language approach.  One teacher in LA said: “This is how I learned, but I think it doesn’t work for 95% of kids, in my experience.”

 

More recently, educators have moved back to a more methodical skills-oriented approach, talking about the “science of reading.” The science of reading combines the mechanics of phonics with the whole language focus on reading context and comprehension. The science of reading approach is required in 39 states, plus the District of Columbia. Preliminary study results suggest that the new blended approach to teaching reading is better helping students learn to read.

 

Now, there is an AI-powered reading tutor that helps students with their phonics-based reading practice. EPS Reading Assistant uses voice-recognition technology to provide real-time feedback to a student while they are reading out loud. AI acts as a personal tutor. The Reading Assistant also provides student-specific targeted data to help the teacher work with each student’s individual reading needs. The Iowa Department of Education is offering the program in all the state’s elementary schools.

 

Looks like the old is new again … Hooked on Phonics has been updated with AI and continues to work its magic.

No Need for an Ivy League Degree to Be President of the US

 

A close relative recently got intrigued about the educational background of US presidents. After talking to him about it, I followed the thread with a few more questions.

 

The United States has had 45 individuals serve as President so far (and we’ll be electing another in less than two weeks). Here’s their education back story:

·      26 former presidents graduated from a private undergraduate college. Of those, 12 (almost half) went to Ivy League schools (John F Kennedy transferred from Princeton to Harvard, but he’s only counted once).

·      9 former presidents graduated from a public undergraduate college.

·      12 former presidents did not have an undergraduate college degree; some attended college or professional school, but did not graduate.

·      20 former presidents attended graduate school (including medical school, law school or business school), but only 11 (about half) received a graduate degree. 8 of the graduate schools attended  (less than one-third) were at Ivy League schools.

 

Everyone in President Biden’s cabinet graduated from college, with only 3 individuals having attended Ivy League schools.

 

Moving on to federally elected officials, 99% of current US Senators and 93.8% of US House of Representatives members graduated from college. Over half of the elected officials in both bodies also have a graduate school degree. I was not able to easily find information about which schools these individuals graduated from.

 

 

All to say, you don’t need to go to an Ivy League school to be elected to high office in the United States, nor does an Ivy League degree guarantee that you’ll be elected. That said, I didn’t see any Presidents with degrees from an online institution … yet … 

 

10 Renowned Colleges That Pay You To Attend In 2024

 

I was so thrilled to find this article about US colleges that pay you to go to school, I’m just going to post the link for you to read it directly: 10 Renowned Colleges That Pay You To Attend In 2024.

Spoiler alert, here are the 10 colleges: 

Berea College (Berea, Kentucky) 

 Barclay College (Haviland, Kansas) 

Curtis Institute of Music (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) 

University of Missouri (Columbia, Missouri)

Deep Springs College (Dyer, Nevada) 

Lipscomb University (Nashville, Tennessee) 

 Lewis University (Romeoville, Illinois) 

University of Texas at San Antonio (San Antonio, Texas) 

 Davidson College (Davidson, North Carolina) ·

 University of Wisconsin (Madison, Wisconsin)

Written by Michele Straube- 

Banning Cell Phones in the Classroom

 

Before I retired, I was a mediator and facilitator of large-group collaborations. I started this work many many years ago, before cell phones were as ubiquitous or as essential as they are now. Even so, in working with a particular group of politicians and business executives more than twenty years ago, I noticed that we couldn’t get any work done because so many of the participants were on their phones, not paying attention, and we’d have to catch them up on the conversation when it was their turn to weigh in. I decided for the final meeting to have a box at the front door of the meeting room and to require them to drop their phones into that box for the duration of the meeting. This didn’t go over well … but … they reached agreement by the end of that meeting!

 

About ten years later, my daughter was sitting in the back of my university classroom waiting for me to give her a ride home and had a good peek at what my students were doing during class. Playing computer games, scrolling Facebook, checking their email, texting friends. Often toggling between their note-taking of my lecture, but still not fully focused on learning. I established a policy of no devices in the classroom (laptops, ipads, cellphones) and the class discussions improved immediately. After the initial shock, my students welcomed the new policy, understanding that they couldn’t help themselves from multi-tasking if the device was available for use. In the mid 2010’s, banning devices from higher education classrooms became popular, especially when the devices were used solely for note-taking.

 

Fast forward to 2024, cellphones are a necessity of life and even the youngest children have them. Smart watches often are used in the same way as cellphones. Now K-12 schools are grappling with how to manage the distraction factor of having cellphones and smart watches in the classroom. At least eight states have established policies seeking to limit K-12 students’ phone use at school, whether by enacting laws or issuing orders or establishing rules. One primary issue is the distraction caused by cell phone availability, but some schools are also concerned about the phones being used to bully or otherwise harass fellow students.

 

Schools are trying various approaches to control cell phone use during school hours. None as simple as the cardboard box I used twenty years ago! Some simply require students to keep their cellphones in their school lockers. Some have built cell-phone-specific storage devices in a highly secure location (think how we used to store DVD’s). Some use lockable bags to store the cellphones while not in use. School policies differ on whether to prohibit cellphone use throughout the entire school day, or to allow students to access their phones during breaks.

 

Reaction to the cellphone bans has been mixed. Many parents are opposed, as the bans reduce their 24/7 access to their kids or access in the case of an emergency. In addition to not being able to text their kid at all times, they also can’t monitor their kids’ location if the cellphone is locked away somewhere. Students, predictably, don’t like being told what they cannot do, but the biggest push-back from students has been from those who need to use their phones to make time-sensitive arrangements (e.g., for after-school activities or jobs).

 

I’m not taking a position on whether or not to ban cellphones in the K-12 classroom. But I will point out that mindful cellphone use in professional/educational/social situations is a life skill that many people, young and old, seem not to have learned yet.

Quality Higher Education Can Be Found in the US at Little or No Cost

 

The objective of the Straube Foundation is to show how anyone anywhere can obtain quality education at little or no cost. Our primary focus is online education as the vehicle to meet this goal, but educators and philanthropists are finding many ways to provide a quality post-high school education at little or no cost.

 

Some political jurisdictions are spending tax dollars to offer free education at local community colleges and technical certificate programs.

 

In 2015, the State of Tennessee was the first state to offer free two-year community college education to every in-state high school graduate, without regard to income or GPA. At least twenty other states have followed suit, although each program has differing eligibility requirements and covers different types of post-high-school programs: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington.

 

Local jurisdictions are getting into the act as well. In 2018, the City of Seattle started a similar initiative. In 2023, Seattle Promise received 2,500 applications, with 1,400 high school graduates actually enrolling in one of the three eligible community colleges. To enable low income students to take advantage of this opportunity, Seattle Promise now also offers “equity scholarships,” providing up to $1,000 in living expenses per quarter.

 

Some benefactors are creating very large endowments at professional schools to ensure that any qualified individual can attend medical or law school. In early July 2024, Bloomberg Philanthropies created a $1 billion endowment at Johns Hopkins University to ensure that medical students from low-income families can attend medical school for free (including tuition, living expenses and fees). In February 2024, Ruth Gottesman donated $1 billion to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, intending that all medical students can attend the school tuition-free, regardless of family income. In 2018 and 2023, NYU Grossman School of Medicine received endowments totaling $300 million to provide free tuition for all its medical students. These endowments have dual purposes: (1) to enable all interested individuals to become doctors, regardless of family income; and (2) to encourage medical students to go into less lucrative practice fields such as primary care, mental health, and rural and underserved communities.

 

Law schools are playing catch-up with the growing trend of free tuition at top-ranking medical schools. In February 2024, Harvard Law School announced a tuition-free initiative for students with the highest financial need. Yale Law School has a small endowment that provides free tuition for a few students from economically disadvantaged families each year. And there are at least three international law schools that offer free (or almost free) tuition: University of Bergen (Norway. Master in Law program), Heidelberg University (Germany, $1500 Euro/semester), and Arctic University of Norway (environmental issue focus).

 

 

Turn Books Into Conversations

 

Imagine that you could ask an expert questions about a book of classic literature as you’re reading it. Have that expert help explain difficult concepts, compare your perspective on the book with theirs. Turn reading a book into a conversation. Two philosophy professors have used the wonders of artificial intelligence (AI) to make this possible at Rebind Publishing.

 

This new way to read the classics on an e-reader offers the following enrichment techniques:

·      Choose the classic book you want to read.

·      “Prepare to read with beautifully-produced films, embedded right in the book,” along with a reading guide.

·      “Converse” about the book with experts to gain deeper insight. The experts were interviewed about the book. Their opinions have been expanded and enhanced via AI to be a comprehensive, interactive, analysis of the book in “book club-style conversations.”

·      Take notes while you read and write your own interpretation of the classic book, helping you to get the most out of your reading experience.

 

So, what can you read this new way? For right now, ten books. But more will be added to the library over time.

·      Selections from Buddhism. Converse with Deepak Chopra.

·      Selections from John Muir. Converse with Bill McKibben.

·      Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche. Converse with Clancy Martin.

·      The Dubliners, by James Joyce. Converse with John Banville.

·      Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. Converse with Chloe Cooper Jones.

·      Metamorphosis and Two Other Stories, by Franz Kafka. Converse with Deb Olin Unferth.

·      Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. Converse with Sadie Stein.

·      The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton. Converse with Roxane Gay.

·      The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Converse with Peter Catapano.

·      Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. Converse with John Kaag.

 

If you’re interested in trying out AI-enhanced classic literature for free (for a limited time only), join the waitlist to be a beta reader. “A whole new way to read exists.”

 

 

Revisiting Assumptions: Is Technology in the Classroom Beneficial?

For years, the writers of this blog have started from the assumption that online education, i.e. using technology as the conduit for learning, is beneficial. Is that assumption valid?

 

New York Times opinion writer Jessica Grose recently published a series of articles that challenge that assumption, that question whether the use of technology in the classroom (devices and software) actually helps students learn. What she discovered in her research for the articles is eye-opening, and ultimately hopeful.

 

The series of articles starts with Screens are Everywhere in Schools. Do They Actually Help Kids Learn?, which suggests that “[w]e need to start asking better questions about what kinds [of technology] work for teachers and students.” Poll data confirms that post-Covid, K-12 teachers are relying on laptops and iPads as part of the education environment more and more. Some require students to submit their homework electronically. Some use online content to provide additional challenge or tutoring support to individual students who would benefit for this special attention. Some use computers as a babysitter / behavior management device. Many students are in front of screens all the time they are in school, except when at recess or eating lunch. Grose ends this article with a series of questions for her readers, parents and educators, about their experiences with technology use in the classroom.

 

In Get Tech Out of the Classroom Before It’s Too Late, Grose concludes that “[t]he ubiquity of screens is bad for teachers, students and society.” The author received over 900 responses to her questionnaire, which documented that many students are watching YouTube videos or playing video games rather than paying attention to the lesson while on their school-provided devices, often with age-inappropriate content. She also learned that many K-12 students do all their reading and writing on devices, with no requirement or opportunity to touch actual books or practice handwriting. The method of providing educational content via video often mimics a TV show or YouTube video to capture the students’ attention, making it difficult for the students to pay attention to a teacher giving a talk or to engage in collaborative discussion. It also reduces the need for students to think critically or creatively.

 

The next article in the series, Most Teachers Know They’re Playing With Fire When They Use Tech in the Classroom, moves to a more optimistic perspective, suggesting that “many of them [teachers] know how not to get burned.” She gives examples of ways in which technology in the classroom affirmatively helps the learning process. It allows for individualized teaching and assessment, meeting the student at their level of knowledge and targeting lessons to the skills/content that this student needs to learn. Some teachers have devised strategies to monitor what the students are accessing on their devices, reducing the opportunity to avoid learning by watching videos or playing games.

 

The final article in the series, Every Tech Tool in the Classroom Should Be Ruthlessly Evaluation, supports the benefits of using tech in the classroom, but cautions that “[s]creens in K-12 schools need a ‘hard reset’.” The author suggests that educators should be taking the lead on which tech is available in school and how or when it’s used. This would be a change from the current situation where the tech companies provide the devices and install the software and internet access limitations (if any). The author has three suggestions.

·      At the state and federal levels, ensure that students’ privacy is protected while using technology, and require independent evaluations of digital education product quality.

·      At the school district level, centralize the decision-making about the use of technology in the classroom, perhaps creating a director of information security position.

·      At the classroom level, teachers should do a tech audit of their classroom, evaluate its specific functions and frequency of use, and retain only the tech products that serve the teacher’s educational mission.

 

 

Of course, this series of articles focused on the use of technology in classrooms. Online learning, by definition, requires the use of technology for delivery of the educational content. Maybe we educators need to think more carefully about whether and when to require our online students to step away from the screen and absorb information in a different format?

Using AI to create teaching materials

I watch the PBS News Hour virtually every night. Some evenings they end the show with a Brief But Spectacular segment in which a person doing something to make the world a better place talks about their passion. A few weeks ago, the Brief But Spectacular segment featured Adrian Antao, a NYC high school teacher who developed an AI tool to help his students with their writing revisions. His AI tool is available for others to use on the Playlab.ai website.

 

In Mr. Antao’s own words, the Playlab website “provided an open platform for teachers to create their own AI bots.” His creation, Project Toni, acts as a “teaching assistant for teachers and writing tutor for students. … Toni provides strengths and areas for improvement for each paragraph” and “gives paragraph-by-paragraph suggestions for improvement.” “Toni also provides students with opportunities for interaction with or challenge to Toni’s suggestions. In other words, the AI-generated Toni makes the student think critically about their own writing. Mr. Antao describes the process as a conversation mimicking a professional writer and editor’s conversation.

This episode made me curious about Playlab and what other AI tools they have available. Playlab is a non-profit whose mission is simple yet grand: “We build public AI infrastructure for teaching and learning that deeply empowers those closest to kids to create a better education system for all.” To make its services/platform available to the greatest number of educators possible, they offer Professional Learning Communities through which one can learn AI tool design and prompt engineering. From what I can tell on their website, this skill development opportunity is available at no cost.

 

There are several apps built by educators available for free on the Playlab website in multiple categories, listed below.

·      For teaching support:

o   Monika the NGSS phenomena generator

o   Powerful questions assistant

o   ELI, the SDI guy

o   Teaching for equity coach

o   Holistic learning: social emotional learning

o   NATE: neurodiversity, accessibility, tech, and education

o   Write teacher observations quickly!

·      For student support:

o   Ida B, Cornell notes tutor

o   Carter G, Cornell notes grader

o   Jin, math & science tutot

o   HTML, CSS and Javascript support

o   Find an internship the BPL way

o   Ask University of Oregon

·      For English Language Arts educators:

o   Project Toni: a writing assistant

o   Butler: a personal statement tutor

o   Murrow: a journalism writing coach

o   An argumentative paragraph

o   AP Lang: rhetorical analysis coach

o   AP Lit writing scorer

·      For project-based learning:

o   Project launcher

o   Durable skills evidence co-pilot

o   Driving question builder

o   Duara activity designer

o   Project to career

o   History experience simulator

o   Lincoln-Douglas debate assistant

o   Competency-based project builder

·      Miscellaneous:

o   Instructional observation support bot

o   Fleur the high interest phonics story generator

o   Community engagement assistant

o   Student report generator

o   Living Schools thought partner

o   E! activity designer

 

Go to the Playlab website to play around with things and learn more. I’m guessing there will be more teaching support apps posted by the time you visit the website!

 

 

 

 

Microschools: A Mix of the Benefits of Public School and Homeschool

 

We know that during the years of Covid, alternatives to in-person schooling grew because they had to. Since the reopening of schools post-Covid, many parents have decided to continue homeschooling, rather than sending their children back to large school classes. Another alternative, microschools, has also secured its place in the education landscape.

 

What is a microschool? Sometimes referred to as “outsourced homeschooling” or as a “modern version of the one-room schoolhouse,” and similar to “learning pods” created during Covid, each microschool will look a little different. It involves a small group of students (usually ranging from 12-120 students total), a school coordinator (often an education professional, but sometimes a parent), teachers, and a student-centric curriculum. The classes are often mixed-age, allowing older students to learn more thoroughly by mentoring and tutoring younger students. Teachers are often called “coaches” or “facilitators,” not teaching the students (lecturing) as much as encouraging the students to learn in whatever style works best for them. The curriculum is often a combination of online learning and face-to-face project-based and experiential learning (hands-on activities).

 

How are microschools funded? Microschools are private entities, usually funded by curriculum fees. Some states do provide public funding to qualifying microschools. Utah, for example, has recently decided to give up to $8,000/student in scholarships to low-income families whose children attend microschools that have registered as a business and meet all applicable zoning requirements (e.g., not located next to a liquor store).

 

What are the benefits of microschools? Microschools do not need to satisfy public school curriculum requirements in most cases, especially if they choose not to pursue accreditation. The lesson plans can be designed with the students’ needs and interests in mind. This has both emotional and cognitive benefits. Students build self-confidence and practice soft skills (communication, conflict resolution) as a side effect of a more personalized education experience. Students are more engaged in their learning because of small class sizes and varied curricular approaches. Parents can be much more involved in their children’s education, if they wish. Like students who have been homeschooled (also an unaccredited educational option), the graduates of microschools can qualify for college and university via standardized testing and the qualitative reviews of higher education institutions.

 

 

I wish microschools had been “a thing” when my son was in middle and high school. We did find an alternative school that served him well because it had small classes focused on experiential learning, but a microschool might have been a good option too. It will be interesting to see how this type of schooling sustains and develops over time.

Could a Robot Be Your Child’s Next Best Friend? Meet Moxie.

 

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing in the public arena lately about the evils and dangers to our children of social media and time spent with electronic devices. And there’s a lot of validity to those concerns. Reportedly, children’s mental health is in decline, with more and more children reporting feelings of anxiety and depression all the time.

 

So, I was tickled to learn about an AI robot for children that promotes positive learning outcomes by focusing on emotional learning.

 

The newly-introduced Moxie robot uses play-based conversational activities to support age-appropriate learning for kids ages 5-10. It’s self-described as a “tutor, mentor, friend.” It uses play-based learning to help children regulate emotions, build self-confidence, communicate clearly, develop positive relationships, think creatively, and problem solve. For just one example, watch this video in which Moxie teaches a child about affirmations (positive statements to oneself to build self-confidence and self-motivation).

 

Moxie is expensive, thus will not be a possibility for every family. And user reviews of the robot are mixed, with some parents extremely appreciative of the device’s emotional skill-building capacity, and others complaining that the device’s AI appears simplistic. Nevertheless, I am encouraged by the focus on emotional health in the kids’ robot space.

 

This is not a plug for Moxie. It’s just new and seems different from the rest. The other robots for kids I’m familiar with focus on substantive learning, helping kids learn discrete facts and concrete skills (such as coding). Here and here are listings of some other robots specifically designed for kids.