With technology making transformative strides in business, communications, transportation, space, and beyond, why do two of society's most important sectors, healthcare and education, continue to lag so far behind? According to Microsoft's Craig Mundie—who as senior advisor to the CEO has spent years speaking with global leaders on the company's behalf—government may be the root of the problem. "The reason these two sectors have been resistant to change is because in almost every country [they] are controlled by the government," Mundie said in an interview at our Techonomy 2013 conference. More
Tag Index / Showing 21 - 40 of 55 results for “education”
Government Learning Partner Insights
Will All Schools Have Nanotechnology Labs?
Setting up high school students with atomic-force microscopes and optical profilers so they can study nanotechnology may seem like a science teacher’s dream, but it’s already happening in at least one school in the United States. And the amount of outside financial support received by Wheeling High School in Illinois to make the lab a reality, coupled with efforts to encourage teachers to emphasize the field, suggests that more labs may soon be cropping up. The focus on nanotech in Wheeling and elsewhere speaks to its potential. More
Lawmakers: Colleges Need Free Digital Textbooks
Lawmakers in Washington are considering a proposal that would help colleges produce and share free digital textbooks, a move proponents say would help make college more affordable. The Affordable College Textbook Act would create a grant program for colleges interested in establishing pilot programs that use “open educational resources” to reduce textbook costs. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a supporter of the legislation, has defined these resources as free, online academic materials that everyone can use, adapt, and share. More
A Holiday Gift That Helps You Navigate an Electronic World
Thirty-one-year-old Ayah Bdeir wants to inspire a new generation of innovators, and she has the building blocks to do it—literally. Bdeir is CEO and founder of littleBits, a company that sells an electronic toolkit that can teach complex engineering concepts to kids and adults in a fun and simple way. LittleBits users get access to an open-source library of small electronic modules resembling LEGO pieces that snap together with tiny magnets to create fully-functioning devices. Each “bit” has a specific function—it might create light or sound, have a sensor or house a motor—allowing users to create anything from a flashlight to a fully operational robot. More
The Public Image of the Female Programmer
The Labor Department has estimated that there will be 1.4 million job openings for computer-related occupations this decade. On the heels of less-than-stellar jobs numbers, this should be welcome news to millennials planning their career paths. But, as Catherine Rampell wrote in this week’s New York Times Magazine, few young women are choosing the computer science field, despite its potential for high incomes and flexibility. Why is this? Rampell suggests that computer science has a “public-image problem,” and there aren’t enough narratives of successful women in the field. More
The Techonomy Experience Looms
With Techonomy 2013 just weeks away, our team at Broadway and Bond in NoHo is putting the final touches on our best program ever. Techonomy carries a heritage from our many years at Fortune. It's a living magazine. Tina Brown calls conferences "theatrical journalism," and we don't eschew that, but ideas are what get us most excited. The conference opens with a look at the extraordinary ways tech is changing business, and ends with an even bigger-picture look at how innovation is transforming the world and life. More
McKinsey’s Susan Lund on Tomorrow’s Workforce
At our recent Techonomy Detroit conference, McKinsey Global Institute director of research Susan Lund shared a worrisome statistic: today four out of five U.S. college graduates can't find work in their field of study. So how can we get more graduating students into the workforce? According to Lund, we need a radical rethink of American education. "The basic way we educate kids hasn't really changed in a hundred years," Lund said. "And what's needed today are workers of all different sorts, but with more skills." More
“Help Kids Dream Big,” Says Teach For America’s Annis Stubbs
A "prerequisite of being a kid" is dreaming big, says Annis Stubbs, executive director of Teach For America - Detroit. Our challenge is providing students with an education system capable of supporting their big dreams—a system that distributes resources equally, educates the child as a whole, and empowers students to execute on their ideas. At the Techonomy Detroit conference, Stubbs talked about her vision of a reinvigorated education system. "Everything starts with an idea," she said. "We need to help figure out how to ensure that our kids feel good about expressing their ideas and they feel confident enough to have these big ideas." More
Cities Learning Startup Culture
With Help from Etsy, a Small-City Mayor Brings the Maker Movement to the Classroom
Larry Morrissey was 35 and had never held a political office when he ran a successful campaign as an independent candidate to become mayor of Rockford, Ill., in 2005. Now in his third term, Morrissey is determined to bring the city where he grew up back from years of economic decline. Among efforts to bolster local business and the city’s faltering education system, he recently teamed up with the online marketplace Etsy to create a pilot program for entrepreneurship education. He says it’s a link to an era when entrepreneurship was a way of life, not something learned in grad school. More
You Can Teach an Old Brain Young Tricks
In recent years many educators have endorsed the benefits of video games in learning, both for younger students and at the university level. But now brain scientists have discovered that a multitasking video game can also improve the short-term and long-term focus of older adults, The New York Times reports. The study found that some people as old as 80 even showed neurological patterns of 20-year-olds after playing the game, which involved swerving around cars while simultaneously picking out road signs. More
America’s Economic Recovery Hinges on STEM Education
Of all of the potential threats to an economic recovery in the United States, one issue stands above the rest for companies like Dow. The issue isn’t tax reform. It isn’t energy prices. It’s not even budget issues in Washington. All of those are important. Perhaps the most important issue for us at Dow—the one that has the potential to either wreck or resurrect the American economy—is whether this country has enough qualified workers to sustain the economic recovery that we see looming just over the horizon. More
How Technology Continues to Disrupt Higher Ed
While technology’s role in reshaping education predates even the earliest overhead projector, its potential to disrupt North American schooling now seems greater than ever. More colleges are proposing the option of full online degrees and in the past year the idea of a complete switch to web-based learning has emerged as a potentially practical solution to America’s education problem. Some believe that once more schools put the economical offer of a full, accredited online degree on the table, the costly campus experience will become a thing of the past. Whether young (and older) Americans will also be willing to trade the social aspect of academia for ease of access and a lower price tag remains to be seen. More
Smart Policies Can Restore a Thriving Middle Class
Labor freed up through technological change is supposed to find its way into other industries and increase the overall production of goods and services. We can produce more goods and services with the same amount of labor as before, and that should allow growth that makes us all better off. But does it make us all better off?Technology has advanced to the point where good, middle class jobs are being replaced rather than those on the lowest rung of the job ladder, and this is polarizing labor markets as the middle class is reduced in size. More
Girl Develop It Instructor Calls Out “Bogus Stereotypes”: Girls CAN Code
Jennifer Mozen helps lead software development teams and would like to see more women in her field. By day, she is a delivery principal at Chicago-based web development and digital consulting firm Table XI. In her spare time, she is a volunteer coding instructor with Girl Develop It, a nonprofit organization with chapters in 15 U.S. cities, Sydney, and Ottawa that provides software development training and mentorship for women. In this Q&A, Mozen tells Techonomy’s Andrea Ozretic that she sees a big shift coming in the demographics of software development. More
What Is Blerdology?
Blerds unite! Blerdeology, a social enterprise to support and engage the black startup and STEM community, is rallying blerds (black nerds) across the country with its “Blerd’s Night Out Tour.” Blerdology is the first organization to produce hackathons specifically targeting African-Americans, and these summer networking events aim to showcase rising black innovators and engage minority startup ecosystems. More
Teachers Say No to “LOL” and “YOLO” in Student Writing
Technology is not necessarily helping students become better writers, a new study has found. Although technology in the classroom has made students better collaborators, a Pew Research Center study has found that teachers are worried about students using informal texting language and improper citations, the Washington Post reports. While tools like tablets, Google Docs, and blogs have allowed students to more easily work together, nearly 70 percent of teachers think digital tools also make students more likely to “take shortcuts and put less effort into their writing.” More
Every Classroom Needs a Camera, and Here’s Why
Let’s imagine every classroom installed a camera (and software) that could record, store, and manage the lecture and materials so they were available to students anytime and anywhere on any device. What improvements would that bring? The universities and colleges that have done just that using Echo360’s edutech software (in which my firm, Revolution Growth, is an investor) have improved student outcomes and instructor efficiency. More students pass the class, and with higher grades. Fewer teachers are required for entry-level classes, and valuable time is spent on more personalized instruction. More
Class of 2013: Narcissism or Altruism? In a World of Abundance, Time to Decide
I'm jealous of anyone graduating college today. You are stepping as a newly-burnished adult into an era of unprecedented promise, innovation, and opportunity. The world you will witness and contribute to can be fairer, wealthier, and more peaceful than any that people have ever known. What makes all these glories possible is the exponential pace of change driven by technology. Your generation takes that for granted, and revels in it. But it makes those older than you deeply uncomfortable, and many simply refuse to see it. That puts a lot of responsibility on you. More
Who Needs College, Anyway?
Will college become superfluous in the digital economy? It’s a real possibility—at least, for some jobs. A new two-year, hands-on apprentice program, Enstitute, teaches skills in information technology, computer programming, and app building, and could help close the income gap between college graduates and those with just a high school degree. “Enstitute seeks to challenge the conventional wisdom that top professional jobs always require a bachelor’s degree—at least for a small group of the young, digital elite,” writes Hannah Seligson in a recent New York Times profile. More
Student Activists Want Schools to Teach Entrepreneurship
An effort to engage students in discussions about education policy got its start last year as nothing more than a Twitter hashtag, #StuVoice. But with more than a thousand followers, Student Voice has now become a movement, and this month, with support from Dell, the group organized its first live event. On a recent Saturday morning, elevator doors at Microsoft's New York office opened to a crowded scene of high school and college students chattering away in much-longer-than-140-character conversations. One of the most popular panels featured several successful teen entrepreneurs discussing how the current education system fails to support entrepreneurship. More
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