Will Richardson

Co-founder of Modern Learners, author, speaker, instigator, surfcaster, husband, and father to two amazing young adults. Currently advising the work of Modern Learners while also asking Big Questions at the Big Questions Institute.

What You Should Know This Week

Convictions in the Atlanta Cheating Trial. Each week, Educating Modern Learners picks one interesting current event – whether it’s news about education, technology, politics, business, science, or culture – and helps put it in context for school leaders, explaining why the news matters and how it might affect teaching and learning (in the short or

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Why Curriculum Constrains Learning

The printing press changed our relationship with knowledge and helped spark the Protestant Reformation, which one could say helped bring about the Enlightenment and all of those scientific advances (such as modern medicine) that we now take for granted. The Internet is once again changing our relationship with knowledge, whether we like it or not:

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What You Should Know This Week

Finland’s Education Reforms. Each week, Educating Modern Learners picks one interesting current event – whether it’s news about education, technology, politics, business, science, or culture – and helps put it in context for school leaders, explaining why the news matters and how it might affect teaching and learning (in the short or in the long

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Urgent Memo: We’re Losing Teachers

Two recent news articles from different parts of the world should have us thinking hard about the future of the teaching profession. First, from Australia, a report that there has been a 12% fall in applications to study teaching at that country’s universities this year. Greg Craven, the vice-chancellor at Australian Catholic University says, not

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What You Should Know This Week

Pearson, PARCC, and Social Media Monitoring. Each week, Educating Modern Learners picks one interesting current event – whether it’s news about education, technology, politics, business, science, or culture – and helps put it in context for school leaders, explaining why the news matters and how it might affect teaching and learning (in the short or

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Parents as Modern Learners

Last month, a story from New York’s PS 116 went viral: the school sent a note home to parents, explaining that it had stopped giving homework so that kids could do something else with their time after school – play, for starters. According to news reports, parents rebelled – some threatening to remove their children

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What You Should Know This Week

The Apple Watch. Each week, Educating Modern Learners picks one interesting current event – whether it’s news about education, technology, politics, business, science, or culture – and helps put it in context for school leaders, explaining why the news matters and how it might affect teaching and learning (in the short or in the long

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What Motivates Learners? Freedom.

The best part of my day is always second period, which is called “Spartan Time” in my school.  That’s the thirty minutes set aside in our school’s schedule for students to participate in remediation or enrichment experiences offered by their teachers.  While many of my peers use that time to get students who were absent

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Leading Through the Transition

One of my oft repeated lines in my presentations to teachers and leaders goes something like this: “This modern world of technology is not what you signed up for when you went into education.” By that I mean that most people who go into the profession have a very clear picture of what they’re getting themselves into.

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Five for the Future: Work

We read a lot here at EML. A lot. We’re contstantly scanning a variety of blogs, RSS feeds, Twitter feeds, e-mail newsletters and more in an attempt to track the latest and most relevant thinking about the modern world and the modern learner. While our emphasis is on the learning, we’re also highly interested in

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What You Should Know This Week

The End of (a) College. Each week, Educating Modern Learners picks one interesting current event – whether it’s news about education, technology, politics, business, science, or culture – and helps put it in context for school leaders, explaining why the news matters and how it might affect teaching and learning (in the short or in

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