No Such Thing: Education in the Digital Age

Marc Lesser

The show is about learning with technology, the realities and exciting potential. Enjoying the show? Please take a moment to rate us, and leave a review wherever you've accessed the podcast. Find our listener survey at facebook.com/nosuchthingpodcast drop a like on the page while you're there. The music in this podcast was produced by Leroy Tindy, a guest in episode zero. You can find him on SoundCloud at AirTindi Beats. The podcast is produced by Marc Lesser. Marc is a specialist in the fields of digital learning and youth development with broad experience designing programming and learning environments in local and national contexts. Marc recently served as Youth Studies Practitioner Fellow at City University of New York, and leads a team of researchers and technologists for NAF (National Academy Foundation). Marc is the co-founder of Emoti-Con NYC, New York's biggest youth digital media and technology festival, and in 2012 was named a National School Boards Association “20-to-Watch” among national leaders in education and technology. Connect with Marc on BlueSky @malesser, or LinkedIn. What's with the ice cream truck in the logo? In the 80's, Richard E. Clark at University of Southern California set off a pretty epic debate based on his statement that "media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in nutrition." * So, the ice cream truck, it's a nod to Richard Clark, who frequently rings in my ear when I'm tempted to take things at face value. "Is it the method, or the medium?" I wonder. The title, No Such Thing, has a few meanings. Mostly, it emphasizes the importance of hard questions as we develop and document the narrative of "education" in the US. For Richard E. Clark, the question is whether there's such a thing as learning from new technologies. For others, it might be whether there's a panacea for the challenges we face in this field. Whatever your question, I hope that it reminds you to keep asking--yourself, your learners, others--what's working and how so. * Clark, R. E. (1983) Reconsidering Research on Learning From Media. Review of Educational Research 53(4) 445-459. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. The Data Beyond Seat Time

    6월 25일

    The Data Beyond Seat Time

    In this episode of No Such Thing, I talk with Laura Slover, Managing Director of the Skills for the Future initiative—a joint effort by ETS and the Carnegie Foundation. We explore what it means to move beyond the century-old Carnegie Unit and toward a system that captures the full spectrum of what learners know and can do. From internships to outdoor leadership, from dashboards to transcripts that actually reflect growth—this conversation is for anyone thinking about how we build a more human, equitable, and future-ready education system. Links: Sasha Bruce Youthwork https://www.sashabruce.org/https://aschoolwithoutwalls.org/https://www.hightechhigh.org/ETS's official Skills for the Future page – This outlines the initiative’s goals, including competency-based learning and skill recognition, backed by ETS’s expertise in educational measurement.Carnegie Foundation’s Skills for the Future initiative – A deep dive into how the program is shifting education from time-based to competency-based learning, with a focus on essential skills beyond traditional academics.Indiana State Board of Education report – A detailed research paper discussing the transition from time-based education models to skill-based insights, highlighting the empirical evidence supporting this shift.Explainer on modern skills-based assessment – A paper from Carnegie Foundation discussing the limitations of traditional assessments and how Skills for the Future is innovating measurement techniques.ETS & Carnegie’s framework for durable skills – A breakdown of the essential skills identified for success across life domains, emphasizing developmental skill progressions and personalized learning.https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/resources/publications/carnegie-unit/https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1057177https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38https://www.nagb.gov/news-and-events/news-releases/2025/nations-report-card-decline-in-reading-progress-in-math.htmlhttps://christophegaron.com/articles/mind/how-do-kids-change-during-the-summer-insights-on-summer-growth-in-children/https://www.tulsakids.com/brains-on-break/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    46분
  2. Can Simulation Train Equitable Teaching?

    6월 10일

    Can Simulation Train Equitable Teaching?

    Exploring how simulations are shaping education research and practice, with insights from the book Promoting Equity through Approximations of Practice in Mathematics Education. It examines how approximations of practice can help educators sharpen their skills while keeping equity at the forefront. It’s not just about improving instruction; it’s about ensuring that all students, regardless of background, have access to high-quality learning experiences. Links: Lee, C., Bondurant, L., Sapkota, B., Howell, H. (2025). Promoting equity in approximations of practice for mathematics teachers. IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-1164-6 Benoit, G., Barno, E., & Reich, J. (2025). Simulating Equitable Discussions Using Practice-Based Teacher Education in Math Professional Learning. In C. Wilkerson Lee, L. Bondurant, B. Sapkota, & H. Howell (Eds.), Promoting Equity in Approximations of Practice for Mathematics Teachers (pp. 165-200). IGI Global Scientific Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-1164-6.ch008  Shaughnessy, M., Boerst, T. A., Garcia, N., & Claiborne, B. (2025). Orienting to Student Sense-Making: Using Simulations to Support the Development of Equitable Mathematics Teaching. In C. Wilkerson Lee, L. Bondurant, B. Sapkota, & H. Howell (Eds.), Promoting Equity in Approximations of Practice for Mathematics Teachers (pp. 253-276). IGI Global Scientific Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-1164-6.ch011  Howell, H., Shaughnessy, M., Stengel, B., Lee, C., Bondurant, L., Sapkota, B., Benoit, G., & Lai, Y. (2025). Editorial insights: Reflections on the volume and charge to the field. In C. Lee, L. Bondurant, B. Sapkota, & H. Howell (Eds.), Promoting equity in approximations of practice for mathematics teachers (pp. 395-414). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-1164-6.ch017 Ataide Pinheiro, W., Kaur Bharaj, P., Cross Francis, D., Kirkpatrick Darwin, T., Esquibel, J., & Halder, S. (2025). An Investigation of Gender Biases in Teacher-Student Interaction in Mathematics Lessons Within a Virtual Teaching Simulator. In C. Wilkerson Lee, L. Bondurant, B. Sapkota, & H. Howell (Eds.), Promoting Equity in Approximations of Practice for Mathematics Teachers (pp. 201-228). IGI Global Scientific Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-1164-6.ch009  MIT’s Teacher Moments digital simulation platform: https://teachermoments.mit.edu/  Becoming a More Equitable Educator https://openlearninglibrary.mit.edu/courses/course-v1:MITx+0.503x+T2020/about  Reich, J. (2022). Teaching drills: Advancing practice-based teacher education through short, low-stakes, high-frequency practice. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 30(2), 217-228. https://doi.org/10.70725/023707spaywm  Bima’s lit review: https://doi.org/10.1080/14794802.2023.2207088  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    53분
  3. The Movement for Digital Wellness

    5월 21일

    The Movement for Digital Wellness

    For decades, the conversation around youth and technology has been dominated by powerful voices—media, researchers, and word-of-mouth warnings—painting a picture of digital tools as the looming threat to young people’s well-being. But what if that narrative isn’t the whole story? What if, instead, we favored the spectrum of possibilities in the digital present and future, instead of a good or evil binary. It would take a a vibrant counter-movement, led by passionate advocates and young people themselves, determined to reclaim the digital world for good. And good news, there is one. This episode was recorded live at Sesame Workshop, bringing together a true who's who of leaders and do-ers in the world of “Digital Wellness for Young People.” At the heart of our conversation is Young Futures—a startup initiative funding projects through the crucial lens of digital wellness. Young Futures is empowering the next generation to create, innovate, and advocate for a healthier digital landscape, supporting ideas that prioritize well-being over profit. Joining us are visionaries from the Scratch Foundation, the organization behind the world’s largest free creative coding platform for kids, empowering millions to express themselves and solve problems through technology. We’re also honored to welcome leaders from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, a research and innovation lab that advances learning in a digital age, inspired by the pioneering spirit of Sesame Street. Links: https://www.youngfutures.org/ https://joanganzcooneycenter.org/initiative/ritec/ https://www.scratchfoundation.org/ https://joanganzcooneycenter.org/initiative/well-being-by-design-fellowship/ https://www.gamesforchange.org/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    58분
  4. Access is Capture: How Edtech Reproduces Racial Inequality

    5월 8일

    Access is Capture: How Edtech Reproduces Racial Inequality

    Roderic Crooks is an associate professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. His research examines how the use of digital technology by public institutions contributes to the minoritization of working-class communities of color. His current project explores how community organizers in working-class communities of color use data for activist projects, even as they dispute the proliferation of data-intensive technologies in education, law enforcement, financial services, and other vital sites of public life. He has published extensively in HCI, STS, and social science venues on topics including political theories of online participation, equity of access to information and media technologies, and document theory. He is the author Access Is Capture: How Edtech Reproduces Racial Inequality, published in 2024 by the University of California Press (https://www.ucpress.edu/books/access-is-capture/paper).  Access is Capture  Racially and economically segregated schools across the United States have hosted many interventions from commercial digital education technology (edtech) companies who promise their products will rectify the failures of public education. Edtech's benefits are not only trumpeted by industry promoters and evangelists but also vigorously pursued by experts, educators, students, and teachers. Why, then, has edtech yet to make good on its promises? In Access Is Capture, Roderic N. Crooks investigates how edtech functions in Los Angeles public schools that exclusively serve Latinx and Black communities. These so-called urban schools are sites of intense, ongoing technological transformation, where the tantalizing possibilities of access to computing meet the realities of structural inequality. Crooks shows how data-intensive edtech delivers value to privileged individuals and commercial organizations but never to the communities that hope to share in the benefits. He persuasively argues that data-drivenness ultimately enjoins the public to participate in a racial project marked by the extraction of capital from minoritized communities to enrich the tech sector. Links: Amazon listing for Access Is CaptureUniversity of California Press page for Access Is CaptureAuthor's personal websiteTalks and events from Civics of Technology featuring Roderic N. CrooksArticle co-authored by Crooks discussing intersectional themes in feminist formations Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1시간 1분
  5. The Learner's Apprentice: AI and the Amplification of Human Creativity

    4월 3일

    The Learner's Apprentice: AI and the Amplification of Human Creativity

    Sylvia Martinez was an aerospace engineer before becoming an educational software producer and vice president of a video game company. She spent a decade as the President of Generation YES, the groundbreaking non-profit that provides educators with the tools necessary to place students in leadership roles in their schools and communities. In addition to leading workshops, Sylvia delights and challenges audiences as a keynote speaker at major conferences around the world. She brings her real-world experience in highly innovative work environments to learning organizations that wish to change STEM education to be more inclusive, effective, and engaging. Sylvia is co-author of Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, often called the “bible” of the classroom maker movement. She runs the book publishing arm of CMK Futures, Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, to continue to publish books about creative education by educators. Ken Kahn has been interested in Al and education for 50 years. His 1977 paper "Three interactions between Al and education" In E. Elcock and D. Michie, editors, Machine Intelligence 8: Machine Representations of Knowledge may be among the first publications on the topic. He received his doctorate from the MIT Al Lab in 1979. He designed and implemented ToonTalk, a programming language for children that looks and feels like a video game. He has developed a large collection of Al programming resources for school students (https://ecraft2learn.github.io/ai/). He recently retired as a senior researcher from the University of Oxford. Links https://constructingmodernknowledge.com/about-the-cmk-hosts/https://sylviamartinez.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/posts/garystager_ken-kahn-speaks-with-sylvia-martinez-about-activity-7303865110035341313-BcUlhttps://uk.linkedin.com/in/ken-kahn-997a225 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1시간 1분
  6. The Duty of Care?

    2월 25일

    The Duty of Care?

    Dave Edwards, PhD (ABD), MAT, is a queer person and career educator who has served in almost every role in preK-12th grade school communities.  After getting started as a special education paraprofessional in an Autism classroom in Saint Paul Public Schools, he served as a special education teacher, middle/high school classroom teacher, special education coordinator, Dean of Students, and Assistant Head of School. From 2015-2018, Dave made the jump to higher education as lead instructor for the nontraditional teacher licensure program in Emotional Behavior Disorders at the University of MN Twin Cities. He was an undergraduate and graduate professor in the teacher preparation program at Hamline University from 2018 to 2020 before devoting his efforts full-time to Gender Inclusive Schools.  Dave is the proud parent to a transgender daughter, and his family's experience with the discrimination she experienced in kindergarten directly informs his vocation of helping school communities create safe learning environments. Dave serves on the board of the Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition and his family is heavily involved with Transforming Families MN. Gender Inclusive Schools provides parent and educator training to proactively create safe learning environments for LGBTQ+ young people. We specialize in facilitating full-staff professional development sessions on a variety of equity topics, providing small group consultations, collaborating on support for individual students, and school-board policy development. During the 2023/2024 school year, Gender Inclusive Schools supported educators in over 75 different school communities across the United States, Canada, the UK, and Australia. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/gender-inclusive-school/ https://www.graduateprogram.org/2024/10/making-your-classroom-more-gender-inclusive/ https://www.genderinclusiveschools.org https://www.mapresearch.org/news/policy-spotlight-conversion-therapy-bans-release https://www.notion4teachers.com/blog/fostering-gender-inclusivity-educator-strategies https://www.highereddive.com/news/trump-executive-order-diversity-equity-inclusion-colleges/738052/ https://www.genderinclusiveschools.org/educator-pd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    55분
  7. The Platform Urging Adults to Learn Instruments with Trained Musicians

    1월 16일

    The Platform Urging Adults to Learn Instruments with Trained Musicians

    Moombix is an all-in-one solution for online music education that includes a vigorous marketplace with profiles for each teacher, a booking and payment system, a timeline that charts all communications and shared files, a calendar, lesson-planner and a learning platform that is tailored for the online lessons with all the basic tools within reach. Margret Juliana is an Icelandic serial entrepreneur and the founder of Moombix. She is a professional musician herself, a singer, pianist and a composer with a varied experience that ranges from jazz to rock and classical music. Margret Juliana graduated with honours from the Royal Academy of Music in London where she performed and taught music after graduation. After returning to Iceland she made a swift change in her career and founded her first startup. Along with her team she created the award-winning application Mussila, a musical game that teaches children the basics of music. Margret has received many awards as an entrepreneur. She was the Founder of the Year in Iceland at the Nordic Startup Awards 2017 and she has been recognised by Forbes as one of Europe's most promising entrepreneurs. Moombix, her second tech startup, is aimed to provide tools, and a platform for personal, real-time music lessons. Links: Heyr himna smiður, þorkell Sigurbjornsson, Schola Cantorum Reykjavicensis, Hörður Askelsson https://open.spotify.com/track/7rAxhJu2iS9WyjWiCzk9EJ?si=5c3c6fab2fd7464c https://techfundingnews.com/moombix-scores-1-9m-to-bring-online-music-learning-platform-to-the-uk/ https://www.boomplay.com/episode/8572218 https://www.eu-startups.com/2024/10/reykjavik-based-moombix-raises-e2-27-million-to-scale-its-online-music-learning-platform/ https://thefoundermedia.com/moombix-raises-2-46-million-in-seed-funding-to-revolutionise-music-education/ https://www.moombix.com/about-us https://www.hugverk.is/en/newsroom/news/trademarks/moombix-a-mix-of-music-beat-and-a-bit-more https://musically.com/2024/10/18/music-education-startup-moombix-raises-1-9m-seed-funding/ https://www.financial-news.co.uk/moombix-secures-1-9m-to-revolutionise-music-education-in-the-uk/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    50분
5
최고 5점
45개의 평가

소개

The show is about learning with technology, the realities and exciting potential. Enjoying the show? Please take a moment to rate us, and leave a review wherever you've accessed the podcast. Find our listener survey at facebook.com/nosuchthingpodcast drop a like on the page while you're there. The music in this podcast was produced by Leroy Tindy, a guest in episode zero. You can find him on SoundCloud at AirTindi Beats. The podcast is produced by Marc Lesser. Marc is a specialist in the fields of digital learning and youth development with broad experience designing programming and learning environments in local and national contexts. Marc recently served as Youth Studies Practitioner Fellow at City University of New York, and leads a team of researchers and technologists for NAF (National Academy Foundation). Marc is the co-founder of Emoti-Con NYC, New York's biggest youth digital media and technology festival, and in 2012 was named a National School Boards Association “20-to-Watch” among national leaders in education and technology. Connect with Marc on BlueSky @malesser, or LinkedIn. What's with the ice cream truck in the logo? In the 80's, Richard E. Clark at University of Southern California set off a pretty epic debate based on his statement that "media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in nutrition." * So, the ice cream truck, it's a nod to Richard Clark, who frequently rings in my ear when I'm tempted to take things at face value. "Is it the method, or the medium?" I wonder. The title, No Such Thing, has a few meanings. Mostly, it emphasizes the importance of hard questions as we develop and document the narrative of "education" in the US. For Richard E. Clark, the question is whether there's such a thing as learning from new technologies. For others, it might be whether there's a panacea for the challenges we face in this field. Whatever your question, I hope that it reminds you to keep asking--yourself, your learners, others--what's working and how so. * Clark, R. E. (1983) Reconsidering Research on Learning From Media. Review of Educational Research 53(4) 445-459. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

좋아할 만한 다른 항목