Jim McLaughlin's Blog

On February 1, the FCC and the Department of Education unveiled a “Digital Textbook Playbook” (PDF), a guide to help K-12 schools makes the transition from printed textbooks to digital ones. According to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, the goal is to get all students in the U.S. using digital textbooks in the next five years.… Read more

This revolution’s “tipping point” came earlier this year at the International Forum for Visual Practitioners annual conference, which drew 100 visual practitioners from across the globe. The panel I moderated with Business Models Inc. CEO Patrick van der Pijl and Doodle Revolution’s Sunni Brown kicked off the conference with an expansive discussion on the future… Read more

Assessing high schools is as varied as the data collected on high school. The Defining a 21st Century Education report uses data from a few places that school boards should also consider using to create a more comprehensive picture of their schools’ successes, including the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the British KS3 ICT… Read more

The National School Boards Association NSBA was encouraged on Thursday by President Barack Obama’s announcement to waive problematic and burdensome regulatory requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act NCLB from ten states. However, NSBA cautions that this is not enough and is calling for Congress to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary School Education Act… Read more

Rhode Island is fortunate to have Deborah Gist as commissioner, she’s a real chief for change. Gist and her team held a digital learning summit in Providence today. I had the good fortune to spend the day talking to teachers and principals about the shift to personal digital learning. They told me what excites them… Read more

… Nobody yet knows how the coming budget battles will play out and how Congress will allocate $1.2 trillion in automatic spending “sequestration” cuts that are scheduled for January 2013. But industry STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) advocates warn that expected reductions in education budgets could be detrimental to U.S. defense technology. “There are… Read more