EdSurge Podcast

Southern New Hampshire University is known as a place trying new things, and one thing they hope to do is create a culture of change on campus. To do that, they've created a sandbox--an innovation lab called the Sandbox Collaborative. We sat down with the executive director of the sandbox, Michelle Weise, to get a tour of this unusual lab and hear why she thinks colleges need to change.

A few weeks back, EdSurge traveled to SXSWedu to hear talks about technology and chat with educators and entrepreneurs. But while there, we met someone who spoke about how edtech could better serve students with learning differences in a manner we’d never heard before. In fact, that individual, Ben Gurewitz, is a student with learning differences himself. Gurewitz is a Bay Area native and currently a freshman at the University of California, Davis—but that represents only a small fraction of how he spends his time. As cofounder of the Diverse Learners Coalition and an active participant in Student Voice, Gurewitz seeks to use his own experiences with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and slow processing disorder as a platform to create change both inside education organizations and amongst the greater populations. Gurewitz came to the EdSurge offices in Burlingame, California to speak about his own learning experiences in K-12, where the education system is failing to reach students, and whether or not technology is the most important component of serving all students.

Students at the University of Central Florida are busy, and it’s not always with classes. They have sports to play, student organizations to run, even parties to go to. So to keep class schedules as flexible as possible, and to offer more sections without putting up new buildings, UCF leaders have turned to offering more online courses for students on campus. But are those students missing out? On this week’s EdSurge On Air podcast, we talked to Dale Whittaker, provost and executive vice president at the University of Central Florida. He’s currently leading another evolution in online teaching, as the institution moves into adaptive learning. They hope that the future of campus learning is for students teaming up to teach each other as they work through online exercises in campus coffee shops.

It’s pretty clear that very few people in education enjoy those typical sit-and-get professional development sessions. And when blended learning gets thrown into the mix, the situation gets even more complicated—what happens when educators seem afraid of products? Who should deliver PD, the administrators or the teachers? Talk to administrators, and they have some answers to these questions—as well as thoughts about what parts of PD should be left far, far behind. At the EdSurge Tech for Schools Summit in Riverside, EdSurge’s own Michelle Spencer led a panel with Steve Kong (instructional services specialist for Riverside Unified School District), Stepan Mekhitarian (blended learning coordinator for Local District Northwest in Los Angeles USD), Brad Hellickson (student advisor for online learning in Corona Norco Unified) and Michelle Clavijo-Diaz (Global Education Solutions Product Line Manager, HP Inc.) to get their thoughts.

Cal State Channel Islands offers a two-week online training course for professors at the university called Humanizing Online Learning, with tips and strategies for forging personal connections with remote students. The course's creator and instructor, Michelle Pacansky-Brock, and the university's vice president for technology and innovation, Michael Berman, talk about the effort, and about how online education can involve a surprising amount of passion—and even some tears.

Jacob Allen was the first-ever youth president for the NAACP in Wisconsin and a Teach for America corps member in Chicago. But it wasn’t either of those roles that landed him on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list this past January. Rather, it was his efforts to bring an important topic back into K-12 schools—the idea of a student’s self-identity. In 2013, Allen and his cofounder Marie Dandie created pilotED Schools, an afterschool program that has a three-tiered curriculum, specifically focusing on developing students in the realms of academic success, civic engagement and social identity. Over the last few years, pilotED has worked with more than 100 school students and families on Chicago’s South and West Sides. But pilotED isn’t just about helping existing schools anymore. Allen and Dandie will soon be launching the first pilotED brick-and-mortar school—a daunting but unique opportunity. EdSurge sat down with Allen last week to discover how his new school model is tackling themes of trauma and citizenship in the classroom—the stuff that can really impact students’ academic success.

An unusual coding school called 42 opened a campus just outside of Silicon Valley last year. It's free -- for those who pass a month-long coding challenge -- and it focuses on peer-to-peer learning, meaning there are no professors. Brittany Bir, chief operating officer of 42 USA, explains how it works, and whether there are any lessons for traditional educational institutions.

In Tennessee, the education system made headlines a few years back when the state announced the “Tennessee Promise”—an initiative granting thousands of high school students the opportunity to attend two years of free community college. After Governor Bill Haslam announced the scholarship program amongst a flurry of news, students immediately began applying to receive funds to put towards tuition at one of the state’s 13 community colleges, 27 colleges of applied technology, or other eligible institutions offering an associate’s degree program. (And now, adults can get in on the action, too.) But in order for the program to succeed, it wasn’t just about the community and technical colleges agreeing to be a part of the plan. School districts across the state began to see themselves as an integral piece of the equation. And one district in particular, the Putnam County School System in Cookeville, decided to push student ownership over higher education learning even further—with an extensive, dual enrollment college credit program for high schoolers. Sam Brooks, Personal Learning Coordinator for the district, sat down with EdSurge this week to discuss the program, how his team has translated it into even lower levels (think middle school), and what he recommends other schools and districts can do to make their students more college and career-ready.

As more colleges dive deeper into their own completion and retention data, they don't always like what they see. Karen Stout, president of Achieving the Dream, talks about how community colleges can face their own internal report cards, and take action.

A few years back, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) found itself in the news for the rollout of iPads districtwide, which some ilsteners out there might remember. Since then, what’s going on with technology in Southern California’s biggest public school district? Well, in one region—the local Northwest sector of the district—administrators, schools and teachers have been busy expanding efforts for blended learning implementation in collaboration with Stepan Mekhitarian. Mekhitarian is currently the Blended Learning Coordinator for that LAUSD sector, but that’s not the only education role on his resume. He’s been a math teacher, an administrator and conducted a doctoral research study on the skills and training needed to implement blended learning effectively and as such, he’s got advice for district admins on how to connect with all of those respective groups. Mekhitarian is the first to admit that it can be challenging for administrators to lead blended learning initiatives when they themselves don’t have classroom experience or haven’t use blended tools before. But there’s hope, he adds. EdSurge caught up with Mekhitarian to hear about his best practices for leading edtech professional development and what advice he has for schools new to blended learning.

Last year, the U. of Michigan launched a major campus-wide effort to encourage a culture of continual improvement in teaching. The university's president, Mark Schlissel, explains why, and weighs in on the MOOC craze, fake news, and the value of higher education.

This week, we take you to Auckland. A few months back, our own Betsy Corcoran traveled to New Zealand, where she sat down with Pete Hall. Right now, Pete is the newest principal of the Taupaki School, but he also has a background in entrepreneurship and teaching. Back during this interview, he served as the Educator Engagement Lead for Network for Learning (N4L), and principal at Upper Harbour Primary School. Betsy spoke with Pete about New Zealand’s schools, and discovered a few unique facts--including the reality that standards aren’t the be-all, end-all of schooling in New Zealand. In fact, the schools place a huge emphasis on bringing the community into the running of programs like makerspaces, and offer students a sense of autonomy that you don’t always see in standards-obsessed systems. What can the U.S. borrow from New Zealand's schooling system?

Donald Trump is about to take office, and one of the many places where change is coming will be the education department. To find out what that could mean, we checked in with Richard Culatta, who served as director of the education department’s Office of Educational Technology in the Obama Administration and is now Chief Innovation Officer for the state of Rhode Island.

The classroom. Since the 1950s, the setup of your average second, sixth or tenth grade classroom hasn’t changed all that much. Desks lined up, students facing forward, teacher up at the front giving a lecture. The same can be said for higher education oftentimes, as well. What gives? In early October, EdSurge hosted the Austin Tech for Schools Summit in Texas, and while there, heard a bit about what administrators and entrepreneurs are doing to actively create the “modern classroom.” How do educators redefine what classrooms look like? Blow up the design entirely? Bring in more project-based learning? In this podcast, you’ll hear from Superintendent Royce Avery and CTO Angela Matthews of Manor ISD, Director of Technology Erin Bown-Anderson of Austin ISD, assistant principal Kris Waugh of Ann Richards School, and Jon Phillips of DELL, who looks after worldwide education strategy. What will it take to propel the “modern classroom” forward?

It’s here, it’s here! Once again, we’ve come upon that week in December when we celebrate all things programming. December 5 kicks off national Computer Science Week, and what better way to start the celebrations than with a perfectly-themed interview? Today, we’ve got Jeffrey Martin on the EdSurge podcast. The founder of an organization called "honorCode" recently won the $500,000 Global Change the World competition for nonprofit entrepreneurs as part of the Forbes Under 30 Summit held in Boston in October. HonorCode is a nonprofit that provides curriculum and training to schools to help prep teachers to educate K-12 kids on coding. That’s right people—it’s not just about the kids, you have to educate the adults, too!

Want to hear the full interview with Sandy? Check out the EdSurge On Air podcast. For those who are familiar with the global design firm IDEO, a few words might come to mind. Consulting. Design thinking. K-12 and higher education? Yes, IDEO has indeed carved out a space for itself in the education market. At the center of it? Sandy Speicher, the Executive Director of the Education practice and a designer by trade. She’s worked with organizations across the public, private, and social sectors. For example, recently, she and her team finished up a project with the San Francisco Unified School District centered around redefining the school lunch program. Recently, Speicher spoke with EdSurge about the genesis of the Education Studio at IDEO, the role that design thinking plays in improving K-12 education, and where she sees the biggest opportunities for growth and improvement in schools.

Jim Shelton, President of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), provided one of the keynotes this past Thursday at the iNACOL conference in San Antonio, Texas. Jim has played a number of roles in the edtech space—-he was most recently President & Chief Impact Officer of 2U, Inc. Previously, he was the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education and the Program Director for Education at the Gates Foundation. So, it's safe to say he’s seen a lot in the education space. Is personalized learning the real key to solving equity issues? Shelton is optimistic, and spoke to the concept of unlocking human potential and promoting equity through transformative personalized learning.

If you could create a college from scratch today what would it look like? Minerva Schools at KGI has done just that, building an accredited, four-year undergraduate program that has an inaugural class in its sophomore year. Hear Jonathan Katzman, chief product officer at Minerva, explain how students use the latest video technology to actively learn from all around the world.

Today, we’re actually bringing back an old favorite while we generate some new content for you. Back in 2015, in Davis California, we brought superintendents from across California together at an EdSurge event to chat about data and assessment, and how it gets best used in the classroom. How can we use data to make sure that we’re improving student achievement? How does one even define “student achievement”? We talked to Bryant Wong CTO, Summit Public Schools Devin Dillon CAO, Oakland USD Gregory Firn Superintendent in Residence & Director of Strategic Partnerships,, Dreambox Learning; and Alix Guerrier President/Co-Founder, LearnZillion, on a panel to answer these questions and more. We’ll get to that in a second, but first, the news.

Thirty-two. That’s how many years John Deasy has spent in education as a teacher, high school principal, and superintendent in four different districts across three states. Of all these roles, his stint at the Los Angeles Unified School District may be the most memorable—and controversial. As superintendent, he led one of the largest and most highly-critiqued 1:1 device deployments in the country—one that that led to a frenzy of media reporting, and a number of columnists from L.A.-based and national publications alike asking, “Where did it all go so wrong?” After leaving LAUSD in October 2014, Deasy joined the Broad Center as a Superintendent-in-Residence, where he’s been working to develop school district leaders from across the country. But now, he’s gearing up for the next chapter: creating an organization to address juvenile incarceration and, eventually, reduce juvenile recidivism by 50 percent. EdSurge caught up with Deasy to chat about the up’s and down’s of superintendencies, where he made mistakes, and whether technology is adding to issues of inequity.

Many faculty see introductory science courses as "gateway" classes to weed out students. Not Marco Molinaro. The assistant vice provost at the University of California, Davis, is leading the school's efforts to overhaul these classes and make them more accessible to students. Hear how UC Davis is using adaptive-learning tools and active-learning techniques to improve pass rates in these notoriously tough classes.

Blake Montgomery, one-half of the EdSurge On Air podcast team, is bidding EdSurge adieu to take on a role as a Tech Reporter at Buzzfeed. But before he leaves, he's got some thoughts about what he's noticed from his year at EdSurge. Specifically, what is he optimistic about? What was his biggest scoop of the year? Why has he become distrustful of edtech company pitches? Catch all that and more in Blake's farewell EdSurge On Air podcast.

Bridget Burns sees plenty of "superheroes"—26-year-old Silicon Valley types with good intentions, yet little understanding, for how to change higher education. Burns is executive director of the University Innovation Alliance, a coalition of 11 public research universities focused on making quality college degrees accessible to a diverse body of students. The UIA serves 400,000 students, more than a quarter of whom receive Pell grants. In this recording from an EdSurge Meetup, Burns shares what she wishes product developers understood about the challenges higher-ed institutions face.

Unity is one of the most widely used game development engines, but what does that have to do with education? We sat down with Megan Stewart, Unity's Head of Global Education, at her new office to find out.

A few weeks back, EdSurge published a podcast interview with education consultant and commentator Alan November, and Director of Secondary Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for the Houston Independent School District Mike Dorsey, after chatting with the two education experts at ISTE. The interview got quite a number of listens, likely because November said that the edtech industry had created a “mess” at one point in the interview. However, November was only able to be with us for about ten minutes in that interview, so we really didn’t get a chance to delve into what he meant by “a mess.” Hence, EdSurge decided to enter back into that conversation with November, this time in a Q&A covering his thoughts on the “$1000 pencil,” whether Khan Academy is or is not pushing the envelope, and how any change in the classroom has to start with the teacher. How has the edtech industry created a “mess”—and more importantly, whose responsibility is it to clean up that message, according to November?

Our guest today is Gretchen Shipley, a partner at the law firm Fagen, Friedman, and Fulfrost, who often works with schools on data privacy regulations. We interviewed her for a recent article on the student privacy issues of Pokemon Go, and at the end of our interview, she started talking about some new laws that could mean big problems for schools. Compliance complaints related to the Americans with Disabilities Act are on the rise. California Teachers' access to student devices has gotten much more complicated. We sat down with Shipley at our California Superintendents’ Summit to get a fuller picture of the biggest legal issues schools will face in the upcoming year.

Jahana Hayes, the 2016 National Teacher of the Year, knows what it takes to be a good teacher. In fact, she’s been in the game for twelve years, currently serving as a history teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Waterbury, Connecticut. But she also believes that not everyone is cut out for the profession, especially if they aren’t willing to change with the times—times that have brought an onslaught of new technologies and practices into the classroom. What does it mean, then, for the teaching profession to prepare for 2020? Last week, EdSurge had the opportunity to sit down with Hayes to hear about her thoughts on what the profession is missing, why there’s a dearth of minority educators in the field, and how her own district struggles with “antiquated ideas” about social media and the like.

Technology can do a lot of things in the classroom, but can it help educators be more empathetic towards their students? This week on the EdSurge podcast, we talk to Dr. Jason Okonofua, a postdoc at Stanford University, about just that. Okonofua is interested in how the effects of one person’s stereotyping and another person’s threat reverberate and escalate over time. He currently researches this interest in the context of education and criminal justice, and recently completed a white paper hypothesizing that an empathetic mindset will eliminate school suspensions. According to his research findings, published in a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, training teachers to have more empathy towards their students lowers suspension numbers by 50%, an incredibly high number when you consider that Jason’s trainings only include one 45-minute online session in the fall, and a 25-minute online session in the winter. Why are they so successful? And empathy something that can be taught through technology, or does it rely on that in-person element?​

This week, we're talking to Yuta Tonegawa, founder of the Japanese equivalent of the Hour of Code. He's passionate about engaging young Japanese students with coding, but the barriers he faces are distinctly different obstacles that face his American counterpart, the Hour of Code.

The life of a district superintendent isn’t easy. You have to juggle a lot, from managing big of groups of administrators and teachers, to pushing a district forward. So, what is the hardest part of a superintendent's job, and is it related to technology? In a series of interviews that EdSurge conducted at the ISTE conference in late June, EdSurge podcasters Mary Jo Madda and Michael Winters had the opportunity to interview Dr. Greg Goins, superintendent of Frankfort Community Unit School District 168 in Illinois. The man has made some pretty strong movements with edtech in his district, and EdSurge wanted to get to know his methods. Does Goins think Smartboards are effective? What are the edtech products he’s tired of hearing about? Listen to this episode to find the answers to those questions and more.

With Amazon making its first big education platform debut in years, we were wondering: how are other blue chip companies—Microsoft, Apple, Google—reacting to this news? While at ISTE, Mary Jo and former EdSurge podcaster Michael Winters hosted an in-person taping of the EdSurge On Air podcast with a live audience and two Google leaders, Jonathan Rochelle and Jaime Casap. Rochelle and Casap both have a long history with the Google for Education team. Casap is a Google Education evangelist, and Rochelle is a Google Education Product Manager, not to mention a co-founder of Google Drive. Between the two of them, they have more than 20 years of experience with the search company. We asked both Casap and Rochelle about their thoughts on Amazon Inspire, where Google Education plans to grow, and why conferences seem so homogenous. By the way, in each of our interviews, we decided to play a little game. Since edtech buzzwords drive us crazy, we had a secret word that the interviewees didn’t know about, and if they said it out loud, our audience hit the buzzer. See if you can hear when it gets said during this interview!

Alan November is a big-name educational consultant who was once a champion of technology in the classroom. But after EdSurge talked to him at ISTE, it seems that his message has slightly changed: technology isn’t having the impact we hoped for in schools. Expectations were high for edtech. People said it would solve every problem in education, and some venture capitalists agreed. Now, November says, we’re facing a more sober reality as we see what technology can and, more importantly, cannot do. EdSurge caught up briefly with November and Mike Dorsey, Director of Secondary Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for the Houston Independent School District, for this week's podcast.

Long before competency-based learning was trending, Southern New Hampshire University gave it a shot, largely driven by the vision of its president, Paul LeBlanc. Today SNHU is seen as a leader in closing the gap between what students learn and what the workforce wants. LeBlanc sat down with EdSurge CEO Betsy Corcoran and 1776 Partner Rusty Greiff to share his thoughts on “blowing up the delivery models” for higher ed.

It’s not easy being a game designer in college—but it sure teaches lessons about collaboration and tough decision-making. At the College Gaming Competition at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), we talked to two game creators—one technical designer and one artist—about how their game came to be and what they’ve learned from it.

Last week, I ventured down to LA for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, more commonly known as E3, the biggest videogames convention in the country. I was in search of educational video games. I found assassins and Lil Wayne, but not a whole lot of educational games. LEGO made an appearance, as did Sid Meier’s Civilization, but for a multibillion dollar industry, there wasn’t much in the way of direct educational material. I did, however, find one thing: the College Gaming Competition. It’s a game design contest where university students submit their games to a panel of industry veterans for evaluations. The experts select six finalists and one winner. All the finalists receive the honor of exhibiting their games on the main floor of E3 alongside giants like Microsoft and Sony. To get a better look inside how the game came together, I interviewed both leaders of the Savannah College’s team. Their game is called Brobot Beatdown. It’s a virtual reality game where the player is seated inside a giant robot and does his best to destroy other players’ robots in arena combat. I played it, and I liked it! What's even more impressive is that the small Savannah College team of students created an online multiplayer game in virtual reality, something no other college even attempted. Major studios, by contrast, have hundreds of staff on one game. I got to talk to the winning team from the Savannah College of Art and Design just before and immediately after they won. I interviewed Justin Coushot and Spencer Humphries, Brobot Beatdown's lead game designers, about how their school supported them, the "crunch" just before the competition and what they've learned from creating such a technically demanding game. Tune in! —EdSurge Reporter Blake Montgomery

When should students specialize their learning? Does doing so narrow their futures or allow them to follow their passion to a strong portfolio? Peter Warburton, co-founder and production manager of Rizing Games, believes that kids who like video games should start building their own as early as 10. The reason? By the time they graduate from university, he argues, they’ll be near-professional quality video game makers. They’ll also have an impressive portfolio, as gaming is a heavily project-based pursuit. Rizing Games, a two-year game design academy attached to Cambridge Regional College, instructs 16 to 18-year-old British students on how to design games and run a gaming company as they train towards their A-level exams. It started in 2011 with 15 students in each class; it now takes 65. This year, Warburton took his second year students to E3, the gaming industry’s largest gathering, to present their games and see industry professionals at their best. We sat down with him amidst the chaos of the convention to hear his thoughts on the benefits of learning game design, the British government’s support and how terrible he is at video games.

Virtual reality a technology of potential. So much potential, in fact, that in many ways it seems to be only potential. We’ve all seen pictures of rapt viewers in Oculus headsets or Google cardboard, but widespread distribution is still a distant prospect. In many cases, it's not clear why a teacher would use virtual reality in the classroom even if it seems like a fun addition. So today, we talked to a person using VR with a great deal of thought. Global Nomads is a nonprofit that facilitates virtual exchanges between students in the US and other countries, and it's about to launch a new VR initiative where students can digitally relocate. Grace Lau, the nonprofit's director of virtual reality,believes, as many do, in the power of VR to create empathy. Also, if you haven’t taken our survey (https://bit.ly/edsurgeonair) yet, we’d love it if you would.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your edtech startup grow? In our very own homage to the Startup Podcast, we're examining EdSurge's recent expansion. We've doubled in size in the past year, and a lot of things are changing. How can we keep what was good about the past while remaining open to the possibilities of the future? We interviewed our VP of Sales, our CTO, the product manager of the EdSurge Index and one guy who does a bit of everything about what they've seen and what they're hoping for. Edited by Blake Montgomery.

Here’s a four letter word that’s been in the news and education articles a fair amount over the past years. The word is “grit,” and it’s something that Paul Tough, the author of "How Children Succeed" and "Whatever It Takes," addresses in his most recent book, "Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why." Tough is a frequent commentator on school reform, low-income communities, parenting and politics, but in this particular book, he takes on the concept of “grit” and asks a crucial question: Is grit something that can be taught in the classroom? A few weeks ago, Paul Tough made his way to the NewSchools Venture Fund Summit in California, and EdSurge’s own Tony Wan got the chance to sit down with him to get the story behind the book, and what it’ll really take to help children succeed—whether grit can be taught, or not.

THE US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY was out in force at Maker Faire Bay Area. The Department hopes to demystify the goings-on at its various national labs in the Bay Area by portraying its scientists as makers. Those scientists also hope to excite kids about the advanced technology they get to use. We spoke to three scientists about sensors, supercomputers and cybersecurity to learn more.

THE US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY was out in force at Maker Faire Bay Area. The Department hopes to demystify the goings-on at its various national labs in the Bay Area by portraying its scientists as makers. Those scientists also hope to excite kids about the advanced technology they get to use. We spoke to three scientists about sensors, supercomputers and cybersecurity to learn more:

THE US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY was out in force at Maker Faire Bay Area. The Department hopes to demystify the goings-on at its various national labs in the Bay Area by portraying its scientists as makers. Those scientists also hope to excite kids about the advanced technology they get to use. We spoke to three scientists about sensors, supercomputers and cybersecurity to learn more.

DEMOS APLENTY: One of the most crowded tents at Maker Faire was the “Learn to Solder” tent, which allowed young makers to learn what holds circuit boards together. Would-be makers were tasked with soldering a circuit that would allow a Makerbot pin to light up. We spoke to one volunteer in the tent to learn why it’s important for makers to learn how to solder.

“IT’S LIKE THE STATE FAIR FOR NERDS:” Many families return to Maker Faire year after year. We spoke to one family that’s been attending Maker Faire for many years to find out what keeps them coming back. Meet the Bakers from Menlo Atherton, CA:

Mitchel Resnick (or Mitch, for short) knows his making—from a lot of different angles. And he’s not too bought into the whole “electronics and gadgets” side of the maker movement. Resnick has been in this business for more than 30 years, and it’s safe to say that he’s seen the maker movement—and the state of STEM education, in general—go through its phases, its ups and downs. He’s currently the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research and head of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, where he and his team have developed products familiar to many a science educator: the "programmable brick" technology that inspired the LEGO Mindstorms robotics kit, and Scratch, an online computing environment for students to learn about computer science. Is making something that every school should be doing—and are all interpretations of “making” of equitable value? EdSurge sat down with Resnick in his office at the MIT Media Lab to learn more, and to find out how he and his team are working to bring more creativity into the learning process.

The question on everyone's mind at NewSchools Venture Fund's 2016 Summit: How will we know when education has become more equitable?We interviewed Dreambox CEO Jessie Woolley-Wilson and Democrats for Education Reform President Shaver Jeffries for their takes on the most contested issue in education.

In addition to this week's regularly scheduled podcast programming, we're bringing you an exclusive conversation between executives. At the NewSchools Venture Fund Summit, EdSurge's own CEO Betsy Corcoran interviewed Edgenuity CEO Sari Factor about Edgenuity's rapid expansion to 17,000 schools, Factor's definition of blended learning and what makes a good implementation. Edgenuity, formerly known as Education2020, was originally created, as Factor put it, for students who "couldn't be in the classroom, for one reason or another." Now, after five years of rapid growth, the company is expanding its products, services and focus this fall; tune in to hear more.

Enid Rey is no stranger to controversy. A powerhouse and a lawyer by training, she's currently the head of the School Choice Department in Hartford, Connecticut's public school system. In a city like Hartford, where most people of socioeconomic background and race don’t mix neighborhoods, Rey’s job has been, at least recently, to market magnet schools to parents and students from both neighborhoods, encouraging them to integrate. Her responsibilities came to prominence when she was interviewed for the Peabody award-winning podcast "The Problem We All Live With," created by This American Life. When it comes to issues of equity and diversity, it’s everyone’s problem—like the title says, it’s a problem that we all live with. EdSurge had the opportunity to sit down with Rey at the recent NewSchools Venture Fund conference to hear how she proved innovative in her approach to segregation, and to ask what it really takes to turn efforts in one district into a viral movement.

Every month or so, EdSurge hosts a summit to bring educators and edtech companies together (there might be one coming up near you). Sometimes, we're lucky enough to have students join us, and when we do, our student panel on edtech use is the highlight of the event. Educators, administrators and entrepreneurs alike love frank talk about what works for students and what's just annoying them. In Episode 61, we showcase a video made by the Youth Development Program, an after school program within Los Angeles Unified School District, where the students sound like us! They're interviewing each other about the Kids Marathon using their best newscaster voices. We also talked to a student journalist duoAt our Los Angeles summit about the craziest things they've done with technology and what their school would be like without it. Tune in!

The Obama Administration recently admitted its work in higher education is far from done. Undersecretary of Education Ted Mitchell, the president’s No. 1 authority on higher education, said he’d give his team an “incomplete” grade. Why? Mitchell previously served as CEO of NewSchools Venture Fund, president of the California State Board of Education and president of Occidental College. In his role with the federal government, he’s been been focused on improving college completion rates for first-generation, low-income students. Mitchell’s tenure will end this year when Obama leaves office. EdSurge recently had the chance to sit down with him to ask what kind of legacy the administration will leave in higher-ed innovation. Here’s our conversation.