

“Our Local Schools Should Be Showcases Not Basket Cases”
Posted by JamesB in Technology, tags: Education, GoogleWhat an excellent title to a blog, unfortunately it’s not mine but from The Silicon Valley Watcher. The topic of the post was a recent event hosted by Google called Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age. This two day event brought together 200 of the nation’s top thought leaders in science and technology, informal and formal education, entertainment media, research, philanthropy, and policy to create and act upon a breakthrough strategy for scaling-up effective models of teaching and learning for children. The forum will showcase cutting edge research, proven and promising models to challenge decision-makers in key sectors to help "refresh and reboot" American global leadership in education.
For those who don’t know the history of Google the co-founder Sergey Brin dropped out of Stanford to start Google and is now the 26th richest man in the world. Both of Brin’s parents were well educated with his father being a mathematics professor.� Brin followed his fathers interest in mathematics but also was interested in computer science and was in the graduate computer science program before he dropped out. He is quoted from this event as saying:
"It’s important for students to be put in touch with real-world problems," Brin said. "The curriculum should include computer science. Mathematics should include statistics. The curriculums should really adjust."
So far they have not posted a recording of the event but hopefully that will be forthcoming.