News
Read the latest and archived news stories about the Concord Consortium's activities and staff.
Try a series of position-time and velocity-time SmartGraphs, and get "smart" hints and feedback as you learn about motion, acceleration due to gravity, and more.
Are you an engineering or electronics teacher? If so, we want you—and your students! Students can practice their skills measuring and troubleshooting virtual circuits. Teachers get detailed reports on student performance. Want to light a fire under your students' electronics learning? Try SPARKS!
Chad Dorsey will present the Concord Consortium’s vision of a Deeply Digital Education with a featured presentation on Wednesday, January 18, at 3:45 p.m.
The Concord Consortium has received a $2.5 million grant from Google.org to pave the way for digital curricula that model the "textbook of tomorrow."
Harvard Education Press has just published a new book, New Frontiers in Formative Assessment, featuring chapters by Dan Damelin, Kimberle Koile, and Paul Horwitz.The book is edited by Concord Consortium board member Pendred Noyce and her colleague Daniel Hickey.
We have an exciting full-time opening for a Software Developer ready to create rich open source HTML5 applications for students and teachers.
The Fall 2011 @Concord is now available for download.
In 1981, Bob Tinker designed the first microcomputer-based real-time temperature data grapher for education. And an industry was born. We continue to research and develop probeware and its educational applications.
Carolyn Staudt presents Concord Consortium's science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) projects at the 2011 Massachusetts STEM Summit, "Advancing the STEM Agenda Locally & Nationally," on October 18 at the Boston Marriott in Newton.
Concord Consortium President Chad Dorsey and Board Member Lev Sviridov will participate in the 2011 Excellence in Action National Summit on Education Reform at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco on October 13-14.
Concord Consortium founder Bob Tinker will be a featured speaker at the California STEM Summit "Sparking Innovation in STEM," held at UC Davis on October 10 and 11. Bob will describe a deeply digital future using Concord Consortium activities and resources.
“Video games can unleash a learning revolution,” reports the Boston Globe. We agree. That’s why since 1994 we’ve been producing interactive digital activities—like our SPORE award-winning Molecular Workbench—in science and math for grades 4 and up. We’re tapping into the spirit of games to engage learners. And we’re excited to announce that we’ve just been awarded a new grant from the National Science Foundation. GeniGames will add game-based design elements to our Geniverse software. Students can learn about genetics by solving games of dragons and drakes.
An interview with the Concord Consortium's Dan Damelin.
In a project sponsored by the Noyce Foundation, teachers at an innovative new high school will adopt and modify our probe- and model-based science activities. Schools for the Future Academy opened this month in Jacksonville, Florida, serving students who are behind academically.
Senior Research Scientist Andy Zucker comments on the U.S. Department of Education's "misguided" and "irrational" policy requiring security screenings of education researchers working under contract. Sociological and psychological research sheds light on people’s behavior when faced with requirements such as these screenings.
An interview with Charles Xie, creator of the Molecular Workbench software.
Springer has just published a new book, Models and Modeling: Cognitive Tools for Scientific Enquiry with a chapter by Charles Xie and Amy Pallant. “The Molecular Workbench Software: An Innovative Dynamic Modeling Tool for Nanonscience Education” demonstrates how dynamic modeling of nanoscale phenomena based on first principles provides a direct approach to making nanoscience more accessible and teachable in the classroom.
Molecular Workbench was awarded a Science Prize for Online Resources in Education. SPORE has been established by the American Association for the Advancement of Science to "encourage innovation and excellence in education, as well as to encourage the use of high-quality on-line resources by students, teachers, and the public."
The Journal of Chemical Education selected Concord Consortium's "IR magician" Dr. Charles Xie's paper titled "Visualizing Chemistry with Infrared Imaging" as the cover article of the July 2011 issue.
Concord Consortium's senior research scientist Andy Zucker says that improving education is not rocket science – it's much harder than that!
Andy Zucker, author of Transforming Schools with Technology: How Smart Use of Digital Tools Helps Achieve Six Key Education Goals and a senior research scientist at the Concord Consortium, gives a thumbs up to Spotlight in Technology in Education.
Our High-Adventure Science research characterizes uncertainty associated with middle school students’ scientific arguments. Read paper presented at the April meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST). Our Evolution Readiness project presented Getting Kids to Understand Evolution: First-Year Implementation Results at the April conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
Over 90 ninth grade students pilot tested our Engineering Energy Efficiency curriculum in a Massachusetts school in March. They built standard model houses, learned about conduction, convection, and radiation using probes and Energy2D simulations, then designed their own model houses.
An interview with Concord Consortium Senior Scientist Paul Horwitz.
Paul Horwitz, Trudi Lord, and Cynthia McIntyre present the Evolution Readiness curriculum at the New England Educational Research Organization on April 28 at 10:15 a.m. in New Bedford, MA.
Three sessions at the 2011 AERA (American Educational Research Association) Conference showcase the Concord Consortium's projects. Come learn about our Evolution Readiness and Universal Design for Learning projects.
Amy Pallant discusses the role of uncertainty in student scientific argumentation at the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST). Based on the High-Adventure Science project, which engages students in unanswered questions in science, she presents “Characterizing Uncertainty Associated with Middle School Students’ Scientific Arguments” on Sunday, April 3, at 2:45 p.m.
Our Spring @Concord is available for download now.
Over 100 high school students tried their hand with virtual breadboards at yesterday's Engineering Day at Tidewater Community College thanks to an electronics videogame developed by the SPARKS (Simulations for Performance Assessments that Report on Knowledge and Skills) project.
Concord Consortium senior scientist Paul Horwitz describes games in the context of authentic assessment.
President Obama praised the virtues of educational technology during a March 8 visit to TechBoston Academy, one of six schools in the New England area piloting the Concord Consortium's Geniverse software.
The Concord Consortium President, Chad Dorsey, will give a featured presentation on the first morning of The National Science Teachers Association conference in San Francisco.
The Concord Consortium's Paul Horwitz, director of the Evolution Readiness project, is a commentator for Education Week this week.
The Concord Consortium will be attending and presenting at the NSTA conference in March 2011. We look forward to seeing you at our sessions. Add the following sessions to your conference schedule.
If you're heading to San Francisco for the CyTSE conference on March 8 and 9, look for Concord Consortium staff at the following presentations: Serious Games for STEM Learning, Learning From and With Data, The Molecular Workbench, Innovative Technology in Science Inquiry, and Inquiry in the Digital Age - Enhancing Science Learning using Computer Models.
The Concord Consortium's Paul Horwitz and Evolution Readiness advisory board member Louise Mead of the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action discuss “the evolution of teaching evolution” in a February 7 article originally published in the Hechinger Report.
Mashable.com included the Concord Consortium's free, open source software on it's in its December 16th list of favorite online resources for science teachers.
An interview with Concord Consortium senior scientist and former Congressional fellow Paul Horwitz is featured on LiveScience. Paul discusses the societal benefits of his work, what's needed to be an effective researcher, his favorite childhood experiment and the best piece of advice he ever received.
Mashable.com features the Concord Consortium's projects as some of their 8 Ways Technology is Improving Education
Evolution Readiness is featured in Education Week's November 16 article "Efforts to Improve Evolution Teaching Bearing Fruit".
The new issue of @Concord includes articles on the PCAST report, fourth grade students learning about evolution, quantum chemistry activities, IR imaging technology, UDL, and more.
Join the Concord Consortium for our 2010 Open House Thursday, October 28 from 7:00 to 9:30 PM. Take part in a discussion about the future of deeply digital curriculum with a distinguished panel, including representatives from Wireless Generation, CK-12 Foundation, Pearson Education, and OpenAirBoston. The evening will also include opportunities to talk with Concord Consortium innovators and explore our latest interactive software.
Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers is a fantasy adventure for students in grades 5-8, written by Concord Consortium board member, physician, and education reformer Pendred Noyce. In this first book in the Adventures in Lexicon series, cousins Ivan and Daphne travel through a magical land of words and numbers in search of the lost children of Lexicon, who have been lured away by mysterious lights in the sky.
The GENIQUEST project has been featured in the October issue of the National Science Teachers Association's (NSTA) peer-reviewed journal for secondary science teachers, The Science Teacher. The article describes how the project uses a multi-layered genetics model to permit students to breed dragons and examine their genetics.
Concord Consortium board member Larry Rosenstock has received the prestigious 2010 Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education. Rosenstock is the CEO and founding principal of High Tech High (HTH), and received the Secondary Education prize for creating educational ideas that work and scaling them up to improve student achievement.
The new issue of @Concord includes articles on formative assessments in electronics, a new simulation for teaching and learning heat transfer, nanoscience and genetics education, and more.
Andy Zucker’s article, "Transforming Schools with Technology," was featured in Independent School magazine. The special issue, focused on the theme of Teaching in a 2.0 World, won an award from the Association of Educational Publishers as the best single-theme issue of an education publication.
At the Denver School of Science and Technology, a public charter high school serving many students from low-income families, laptops are used by teachers and students in a variety of ways. About 30% of the graduating class takes an AP Physics exam, compared to only 3% nationally.
The Concord Consortium announced its new President, Chad Dorsey, at the meeting of its Board of Directors on October 28, 2008. "Chad was the unanimous choice of the Board and has its enthusiastic support," said Board Chairperson, Pendred Noyce.
Congratulations to Robert Ong of Nedlands, Australia! He is winner of a new iPod touch. Over 200 of you responded to our website survey. Your input will help us update our website to improve the ways you learn about and use our software and activities.
