EdSurge Podcast

Larry Cuban—whose been a teacher, a superintendent, and more—is an academic whose thoughts and feelings about edtech are the ones we’re featuring on the EdSurge podcast today. Cuban’s writings have great impact and reach in the education. Every year, Rick Hess put out an “Edu-Scholar Public Influence ranking.” The metrics recognize university-based scholars in the U.S. who are contributing most substantially to public debates about education. And Larry Cuban, a former Stanford university professor, makes the top ten list every single year. Talking with him in person reveals a whole new light about who he is as a voice and as a teacher. In this interview, we hear his thoughts on venture-backed companies, technology in education, and more.

EdSurge has been all over the place these last few weeks— from the Educon conference in Philadelphia to Washington D.C. for Teach for America’s 25th anniversary Summit. And in each place, the conversations have been anything but boring. When it comes to big themes, one particular conversation caught our attention. Summit Public Schools CEO Diane Tavenner and founder of Deans for Impact Benjamin Riley went head to head on whether “personalized learning” is the answer to solving the achievement gap. We were there to catch a few sound bytes.

The term on everyone's lips these days is “adaptive learning:" Proponents promise the technology has the ability to improve educational experiences in personal, efficient and scalable ways. It's unclear, though, what the inner workings of the technology look like. We called some of our expert friends and asked them to talk about how adaptive learning works in their fields, and they spoke at our recent meetup in San Francisco. We heard from EdSurge's president Tyler McNally about our recent research on adaptive learning and several others: Jennie Dougherty—Associate Director of Innovation, KIPP Bay Area Angela Estrella—Teacher, Instructional Coach and Parent James Harrell—Talent Development Manager, Oakland Unified School District Johann Larusson—Lead, Center for Digital Data, Analytics and Adaptive Learning, Pearson Elena Sanina—Senior Manager of Blended Learning, Aspire Public Schools Esther Tricoche—Associate Partner, New School Venture Fund Missed the meetup? Not to worry. We recorded the talks along with the news from this week so you can catch up on both.

We're bringing you the latest in edtech from the week of January 23-30: Pearson and Scholastic's dark and stormy night on the stock market, Coursera's new fees, your weekly Ka'Chings and more.