How We Learn

The LEAD Commission, created by Education Secretary Arne Duncan and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, was charged with mapping the blueprint for the nation's educational technology future. The leaders of this will outline their bold new blueprint and key recommendations on how tech will revolutionize education reform as well as key strategies for its implementation in classrooms across the country. Speakers: Jim Shelton, Julius Genachowski, James P. Steyer, Howard Gardner

We are living in a personalized world: Online retailers show us the products we need, media sites know what videos and articles we’d like, and social networks tell us what our friends are doing at any given moment. Yet in classrooms across America, students are stuck learning in the same batch-processed, one-size-fits-all way that hasn't changed in 150 years: one teacher, standing in front of 28 or so students, with one standard textbook, one standard curriculum, and one standard model of instruction. It’s time for a personalized classroom, in which students are met where they’re at, with the right kind of instruction, at the right time, to meet their unique needs. Explore how one team of innovators are challenging the factory-model classroom by reimagining each component of the classroom — from space to talent to curriculum to instruction itself — so that all students, no matter their current academic level or way of learning, get the personalized learning experience they both need and deserve. Speakers: Joel Rose

Nearly all babies are curious — the urge to find out begins as a ubiquitous and extraordinarily powerful psychological characteristic. But by the time children are five years old, environmental influences (parents, teachers, other children, as well as the physical environment) have begun to whittle each child’s curiosity into something narrower and often more fragile. For some children, curiosity disappears almost completely. But schools can do a great deal to foster the human need to know more. The stakes of this process are huge — when students are curious, their capacity to learn well is enormous; when they are not, it’s hard to teach them anything. Speakers: Susan Engel

When technology and education are combined using thoughtful, human-centered design principles, the results can provide previously impossible opportunities for students and teachers. Adaptive technologies like Dreambox allow teachers to differentiate their lesson in a way they would never have been able to before, and simultaneously provide students with the instruction they need, rather than the instruction that matches the needs of the majority of their classroom. Recognizing that learning can happen anywhere—at school, at home, at a museum, or online—is the first step toward developing a multi-modal education ecosystem that more closely mirrors the experiences students have outside the classroom, where events are shared real-time on a multitude of social networks, and entertainment is available in theaters, streaming on-demand, and accessible through myriad devices. We’re in the middle of a transformation, with the opportunity to take advantage of the best of digital and the best of face-to-face instruction. And all of these innovations are changing what we expect of the education system itself – that what matters most is what students learn and not how they learn it. The panel will explore how these innovations are challenging old assumptions, structures, and systems and what it means for us as a country and society. Jessie Woolley-Wilson Sandy Speicher Laysha Ward Wendy Woon John E. Deasy

The MOOC is perceived as a major disruptive force in teaching, clearly one that the education world is talking about as hundreds of thousands of students across the globe log on to courses from some of the best professors on the planet. The debate is underway regarding quality, economic efficiency, sustainability, and global reach. Will MOOCs live up to the hype? Are MOOCs a viable alternative to the college campus education experience? Will our love affair with technology disrupt that one-on-one connection that so frequently brings learning to life? Co-presented with NBC News' "Education Nation" Andrew Ng Anant Agarwal Shirley Ann Jackson Andrea Mitchell

Electrifying the national dialogue about what works and doesn’t work in education are the leaders who are proving that their models WORK to engage and prepare students for college. Just what are these leaders doing to effect such remarkable success among students? Ryan Hill Joseph P. Parkes Lawrence Scripp Howard Gardner

Why do some children succeed while others fail? The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about intelligence: success comes to those who score highest on tests, from preschool admissions to SATs. But New Yorker and New York Times writer Paul Tough argues that the qualities that matter more have to do with character: skills like perseverance, curiosity, optimism, and self-control. Paul Tough James Bennet

How the gamification of stubborn policy challenges — like budget, energy, and health care — can help engage and involve the public and, importantly, work to inform policymakers' decisions. Jane Harman Michael D. Gallagher Jessie Woolley-Wilson Howard Gardner

How do we prepare our youth to be successful in a rapidly changing world? What knowledge skills and dispositions are needed to thrive in the 21st century, and what alternative models will help us deliver engaging experiences? Join us for a conversation about the possibilities for how we might all learn inside and outside our formal systems. Joel Rose Fred Dust Sandy Speicher John E. Deasy

Why are we automatically drawn to stories? Why do we preferentially remember stories better than nonstory information? Why and how do stories engage and influence so effectively? Through both research efforts and thousands of tests using live audiences as guinea pigs, this work shows how and why the human brain is neurally and evolutionarily hardwired to force us to make sense, to understand, to remember, and to recall in specific story terms.

In this session, Carol Dweck will describe how students' growth and fixed mindsets shape their motivation and achievement. She will discuss 1) new large-scale studies showing the power of growth-mindset interventions to increase success in school, 2) new research on how parents' praise can create fixed mindsets and undermine motivation, and 3) new research on how fixed-mindset academic environments can decrease the representation of women and minorities. Carol S. Dweck Gillian Tett

To date, Amplify, a subsidiary of NewsCorp, has supported more than 200,000 educators and three million students in all 50 states as they begin their digital transition. It is setting the standard for next-generation digital curriculum. Why will it succeed? Joel Klein Walter Isaacson

Shirley Ann Jackson Andrew McAfee Mickey McManus John Seely Brown

Design, writ large, has always dealt with varying levels of complexity. Designing eco-systemically is more than this. It is specifically about making things that have impact in complex and evolving contexts — from impact on the most personal and intimate level to systems of action that shape contexts for possible change. Eco-systemic design is about altering the context in which things reside so as to influence how those things behave and what they mean. It is about catalyzing new practices, new perceptions, and new relationships; creating new contexts that open up radically new possibilities. In this talk, we will use two case studies to show how the tool set of eco-systemic design is applied to higher education as both a global challenge and opportunity. Ann Pendleton-Jullian John Seely Brown

The world is changing and the American education system hasn’t kept pace. Experts from across the ideological spectrum agree that we must dramatically retool education in this country — but the question is how? Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have now agreed to a seismic shift in the teaching of language arts and math by embracing the Common Core State Standards. Join us for a special forum moderated by education philanthropist Lynda Resnick to hear from some of the nation’s leading experts in education and workforce development as they discuss the hard work of creating a paradigm shift in how we equip our children for a radically changing global economy. John E. Deasy Lynda Resnick Joel Klein Eric Cantor

The big bang in human learning happens in childhood. The big bang has two components: (a) critical periods for learning certain material that are time sensitive, and (b) the social environment that provides “brain food” to build a brain. We’ll describe the essential components that make early childhood learning a big bang that no child should miss and society can’t ignore. Patricia K. Kuhl Andrew N. Meltzoff

What will the Common Core mean to our nation’s struggling schools? It sets a high and necessary bar, but the challenge before us is to ensure that every teacher and child is fortified with the skills to hurdle it. How do we build a foundation so that all kids are ready to learn? Pamela Cantor Ross Wiener Jim Shelton