[First published on LinkedIn]. It’s been a long time coming. When we started in 2010 working with Ohio’s Credit Flex law, we created a demonstration app for issuing micro-credits. Essentially, components of high school learning that would accumulate into full Carnegie Units. If you learned the fundamentals of Javascript…

In last night‘s SNL cold open, Kate McKinnon’s singing of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah rang just perfect. A song evoking millennial bonding like few others. It’s as if Cohen was called to his reward so we could together have that moment. Remember where you were when you first heard the song…

Designing A Rick Hess “Mini-Me” — What’s your most prominent public skill? If you’re Frederick M. Hess (who’s piece prompted this), it’s seeing how non-governmental entities can improve K12 learning. ..Plus writing cogently about the same, and gathering people to iterate and push such improvements forward. What if we wanted to code Rick’s expertise into IBM’s…

It’s surely wrong to so blatantly appropriate this. Yet the point is so good, and such a small part of the main piece, and yet so critical to our work here. Read the whole piece Joe Posnanski piece on taking his daughter to see Hamilton. It’s really powerful and really…

I’m not asking you yet to believe it’s possible, or even that it’s a good objective. I’m only asking that you help sketch out some ways, means, and waypoints. In this, let’s think far beyond ‘could Alton Sterling have been tazed?’ or even police matters in the larger sense. …

How might teachers judge if a learning playlist should earn teens high school credit? Begin with these checks. Does it develop personal connections? Not all pathways and experiences will. Most should. Whether the new connection is someone at the local arts center, a peer across town or across the state, professional programmers, designers, marketing execs…

In which I confess my ill-gotten gain. — “Follow the money.” You may know that for some anti-reform crusaders, the “follow the money” mantra has produced, well,… great money. …

What was the real innovation of the ’80’s that led to the .com and tech revolutions? If you said the microchip, you’re less than a third right. What allowed exponential change was largely a change in the legal climate that came with the breaking up of the AT&T like monopolies…

What do we mean to launch such an experiment? We mean, first, to start small. Then grow organically. Start with the most interested students, and the most interested teachers, and the most interested community members, and allow them to evolve a process that appeals to others. National contests are fine…