One of my consistent educational mantras is that students have to read independently to get smarter. The stats on this are clear: According to the U.S. Department of Education, of the 8th-grade students who scored in the top one-quarter on a national reading test in 2011, 36 percent read for fun almost every day. Of the… Read more »
Posts Tagged: technology
A Positive Phone Call With Aliya Bhatia, Founder of Dash4Teachers
Aliya Bhatia (New Orleans – Delta ’10) didn’t plan on building edtech tools after teaching. But as she was grading papers in a coffee shop one day, she got frustrated with the fact she couldn’t recall which parents of her 130 students she had spoken with on the phone. She needed a tool to manage… Read more »
Solving Big Problems with Diversity and Interdisciplinarity
There’s research emerging that interdisciplinary founding teams are vital to creating successful startup companies. Within the education technology sphere, this is obvious to folks who have taught and are looking for engineering and business expertise to help them get their ideas scaled into products. But I don’t think that necessity of diverse startup teams stops… Read more »
Tools for Testing Time (or Any Day of the Year)
Maybe you’re at a similar point on your school calendar: standardized testing is on the horizon. In Maryland, the state assessments for grades 3-8 are just a couple of short weeks away. They begin March 13. Between now and then, we’ll be reviewing material from our first units; activating knowledge from last spring, when my… Read more »
Hi, I'm Andrew Plemmons Pratt. I am the Program Manager for New Classrooms in Washington, DC. (Though opinions expressed on this site are entirely my own.) I taught 7th-grade English in Prince George’s County, Maryland as a member of the 2010 Teach For America corps. I write about literacy & edtech here—along with stuff like industrial archeology and bread baking.