The Knewton Blog

This post was co-written by Kristen Tracey. Scalability vs. Perfection: that’s really the issue at hand any time you need to make a large number of videos. Of course, we want every educational video we make to be perfect — clear, engaging, and without any stumbles. However, the reality of producing lots of videos is that you simply can’t always fix everything. Editing educational videos, like any other web videos, is all about balancing scarce… Read more

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This post was co-written by Jess Nepom.  There has been a lot of talk lately about creating educational videos for your students, whether you mean to use them in class, on the web, or both. Fewer people really talk about the different options for the format of your video — by which I don’t mean the technical file format, but rather the actual style of what will be on the screen. Should you use an… Read more

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Several months ago, I upgraded to an iPhone 4s. I could go on and on about various apps and games, but one functionality I hadn’t explored until fairly recently was my phone’s ability to create a video. Well, I’m part of the Video Team here at Knewton – we’re responsible for all of the videos you see in our products and around our website and blog – so I thought I’d challenge myself: Could I… Read more

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Have you ever tried to teach a skill, then gotten frustrated at the process because nothing seemed to be getting through? “It’s easy, let me show you. You just do this.” “Like this?” “No, not like that. Just do THIS.” “Like this?” “No! ARGH!” Is it your fault for not being able to get through to the student? Or is it their fault for not understanding something that seems simple? In most cases, it’s your… Read more

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When we talk about the ongoing revolution in education, we tend to focus on students: how their experience is changing, how to personalize learning, how to make the classroom a more engaging and effective place. Sometimes we don’t pay enough attention to another large group (7 million people in the US alone) who think about these issues every day: teachers. Last March, Metlife released the Survey of the American Teacher, which has been published since… Read more

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Miss Part I or Part II of the series? Check it out here. I recently read Daniel T. Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. As I was reading Willingham’s investigation, I noticed that most of the real reasons Willingham argues that students don’t like school can be eliminated or reduced through continuous adaptive learning technology. In my first… Read more

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The U.S. is facing a full-on college readiness crisis. One-third of college students require remediation before enrolling in college-level classes. Of those students, one-half will never receive their bachelor’s degree. What’s causing the problem — and what’s at stake? This infographic lays out the state of college readiness in the U.S. and explains why being prepared for college matters now more than ever. Click the image below to go to the full infographic – The… Read more

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It’s been a while since our last installment of EdTech Blogs We Love. Here are 3 more to add to the list! Blogging about the Web 2.0 Classroom Steven Anderson, the author of Blogging about the Web 2.0 Classroom, is well-known both for his blog and his prolific Twitter feed, @web20classroom. Steven is a District Instructional Technology, in which capacity he “[works] with district and school administrators on how to harness the power of technology… Read more

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Miss Part I of the series? Check it out here. I recently read Daniel T. Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. As I was reading Willingham’s investigation, I noticed that most of the real reasons Willingham argues that students don’t like school can be eliminated or reduced through continuous adaptive learning technology. In my first post of this… Read more

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Ask students why they don’t like school, and you’ll get several answers: it’s “hard,” “boring,” “disconnected from reality” or “only for smart people.” The real answer is of course more complex than any of these responses would suggest. To get a deeper understanding of the matter, I recently read one man’s investigation: Daniel T. Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for… Read more

Posted in Adaptive Learning, Knewton | 19 comments

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