Ways We Learn

Eric Hudson is serious about creating meaningful learning, and his recent work has focused on AI in education. He says:

“How we frame AI for ourselves as educators will affect how we frame it for our students, and I believe strongly that how we talk to students about AI will have a lasting impact on how they see its role in their own lives.”

A few of our conversation topics:

• Students want to produce authentic and meaningful w...

Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but it’s not that often that you get to speak with someone who can really pull back the curtain on how the future of AI is taking shape.

But that’s why you listen to Ways We Learn, isn’t it!

Claire Zau is a Vice President at GSV Ventures, an early stage edtech Venture Capital firm at the forefront of transformative technologies that are shaping the future of education and work. Some notable ...

Ways We Learn is going even deeper into some of our topics by examining them in some short series! We'll start with AI.

Actually, we've already started! Our last episode was the first in this series: AI in Higher Ed with James Genone!  Next week's episode will feature Claire Zau on What's Next in AI.  And then we'll have Eric Hudson on to talk about AI policy and implementation in schools.

Find the next episode...

In our latest episode, Joe, Sean, and Brian welcome James Genone, former Head of Innovation at Minerva Project and now Head of Product and Operations at Atypical AI.

James shares his perspective on integrating AI into education. He discusses Minerva University's approach to adopting AI, highlighting its potential to take on the labor-intensive parts of education such as grading and providing consistent formative feedback, ...

If you have children (or have ever been a child yourself) you may have wondered whether education could be better.

A couple examples:

❌ Mistakes are when learning happens. Yet grades punish mistakes. 🤔

🤝 Situated and social learning experiences are extremely powerful and meaningful. Yet much of education is theoretical and individual. 🤔

So… why does much of our educational system work against what we know about learning? And cou...

Yusuf Ahmed is a former MIT Media Lab researcher, and for education geeks like Sean, who taught kids to code, he was part of the group that invented both Scratch and LEGO Robotics. And if you're not an education geek, both of those platforms are used by millions of kids as accessible ways into computer science.

He was also part of the founding team of ALU, a pan African network of universities and bootcamps, and Yusuf is curren...

🧠 Students' brain waves synchronize with their teacher's when they're learning. 🧠

🤗 Feelings of belonging and connection are essential in a safe and productive classroom. For students who feel out of place, a 😊 from the teacher reads like a 😏 and can set off their fight or flight response!

Mark Williams, a neuroscientist, professor, and author of the just-published book “The Connected Species,” joins us to speak ab...

Did you know there’s a degree-granting university system for our armed services that’s separate from our traditional colleges and universities? Today we have the good fortune to learn about our military’s higher education system by speaking with a professor who teaches “lawfare,” or the use of law as a weapon, to our up-and-coming military leadership.

Dr. Jill Goldenziel is a professor at the National Defense University-College of ...

As an experienced mother of two young adults, Sue Groner knows how stressful and overwhelming parenting can be at times. She founded The Parenting Mentor to provide an ally for parents in their quest to raise confident and resilient children. In today’s Ways We Learn, Sue shares her approach to mentoring parents and some of her strategies for producing great kids.

Sue is the author of Parenting with Sanity and Joy: 101 Simple Strat...

Caleb Hicks was the Co-Founder and President of Lambda School, where he designed and oversaw the entire academics process including admissions and student onboarding, learning experience design and delivery, as well as student services and community. In this retro he shares his learnings from building and running a well-known bootcamp.

Prior to Lambda School he was a Senior Manager of Instructional Design in the Worldwide Educatio...

In this episode we’re going to play. Or at least talk about play.

Play is usually not seen as serious work (it’d be called work if it was!), but today we’re speaking with someone about the importance of play in adult learning and work.

Mary Hendra is an executive leader and entrepreneur who brings curiosity, creativity, and compassion back into the workplace and into our spaces of adult learning. Redefining “play,” she engages equa...

Research has shown that most children who have ADHD have received more than 20,000 negative and corrective messages by the time they turn 10. “Try harder.” “Don’t be lazy.” As a child with not-yet-diagnosed ADHD, Dr. Kristen C. Eccleston heard these herself. After being underserved by traditional education, and after becoming a Special Education teacher, she built a alternative special education program where kids with ADHD and oth...

It's Autism Awareness Month. What better way to learn how to support autistic and neurodiverse people than to speak with someone from those communities?

Nate Shalev is a speaker, author, and inclusivity expert who helps to create workplaces where businesses and people thrive. Their expertise has been highlighted in the Harvard Business Review, NY Times, the Wall Street Journal and more. Nate earned a BA from Barnard College of...

Motivation is a key predictor of student success in any type of class, but as the teacher/student ratio increases motivation becomes even more of a requirement for success. MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) and other online learning experiences are perfect for examining student motivation and self-directed learning because of the low-touch nature of these courses. In this episode, Joe and Sean discuss the research paper "F...

Societies of our past were frightened by creativity. Did they understand something we don't? 

Today, creativity is prized in all fields. Education is no exception. Schools of all varieties, from Pre-K through adult learning, strive to produce creative thinkers, through exercises in divergent thinking and ideation or even through assessment of their volume of creative ideas. The revised edition of Bloom's Taxonomy lists "Create...

The educational term “transfer” refers to a scenario in which the learner is able to apply their learning in a novel context — for example, learning a geometry concept in class and then applying it in a construction project. Transfer is a highly sought-after outcome in many schools and adult learning scenarios, and yet the conditions that make transfer possible are not always present. In this episode, Sean, Joe, and Brian discuss E...

We’ve got another fascinating guest for you today! Garrett Smiley is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sora Schools, an online accredited private school whose aim is to disrupt traditional education by creating student agency and deeply meaningful learning experiences. Garrett has a really interesting educational philosophy and approach to classroom learning and is someone we can all learn from.

Links and further reading

Sora Schools: http...

Today we’re lucky to have Darrell Silver, a founder of the very successful online school Thinkful, who gives us a retro of an ed tech startup from launch through its growth through its very successful acquisition. It’s a rare inside look at what worked and what didn’t as a educational startup grew, and a valuable conversation about building an educational organization.

Links and further reading

• About Thinkful: https://www.thi...