Virtual Viewpoints MVLRI

Fuse Architect - An interview with Highlander Institute on school progress by MVLRI

This episode is the fifth in our series documenting the Fuse Architect Project, a collaboration between the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, the Highlander Institute, and several other Rhode Island-based stakeholders endeavoring to design and pilot systems that promote student centered learning. In this episode, we’re excited to talk with Emily Zilly, science teacher at Rodgers High School in Newport, Rhode Island, and four of her students who are participating in some student-centered learning models. We also talk about their work for the upcoming science fair, an example of a project-based, student-directed learning experience benefitting from the Fuse Architect influence.

This episode is the fifth in our series documenting the Fuse Architect Project, a collaboration between the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, the Highlander Institute, and several other Rhode Island-based stakeholders endeavoring to design and pilot systems that promote student centered learning. In this episode, we’re talking with Pegah Rahmanian, the Executive Director of Youth in Action. Pegah and her team have been working with two participant schools of the Fuse Architect program to help ground their work in conversations around equity and social justice. Pegah also notes that through working on this initiative, their own organization has learned and grown in areas as well.

In this episode, we’re joined by two researchers affiliated with the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub – Mimi Ito from UC Irvine and Justin Reich from MIT. First we’ll get acquainted with their work more generally and learn about the unique research topics they’re pursuing at their respective institutions. Then, we talk extensively about a recent publication that they authored that was published through the Hub, called From Good Intentions to Real Outcomes: Equity by Design in Learning Technologies. We talk about the process of producing this report, including convening stakeholders from many different organizations involved in education technology and online learning, and the challenges and strategies identified with regard to equitable use of learning technologies in K-12 settings.

This episode is the fourth in our series documenting the Fuse Architect Project, a collaboration between the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, the Highlander Institute, and several other Rhode Island-based stakeholders endeavoring to design and pilot systems that promote student centered learning. In this episode, we’re talking with Roberto Gonzalez of the Rhode Island-based nonprofit STEAM Box. Roberto shares with us some inspiring stories that come out of the work that he does with Fuse Architect schools and other programs, and gives us insight on his process that puts students at the center and grants them control of their learning.

In this episode, we’re joined by Jordan Rickles, principle researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Jordan’s work focuses on K-12 education, and has recently examined outcomes of virtual learning for credit recovery. We talk about some of the big questions being researched in a recently launched initiative with Los Angeles Unified School District aimed at studying the efficacy of online learning solutions in a credit recovery setting.