Trending In Ed with Mike Palmer

In honor of our 399th installment of Trending in Education, we've reassembled the original team of Brandon Jones, Dan Strafford, and Mike Palmer to reflect on how this podcast started and share some highlights and lessons learned from our long history of doing the show together. Along the way, we get Brandon's and Dan's takes on where the world of learning is heading including Brandon's list of fi...

Cynthia Knable is the Founder and CEO of CeresEd, an educational content development company. She leads teams of talented project managers, writers, editors, and artists in creating products for educational publishers, EdTech companies and more. Cynthia joins Mike Palmer to share her experiences beginning as a content writer and editor before quickly rising to a leadership role culminating in foun...

Matt Burke and Ben Tapper join Mike Palmer to talk about what we can learn from the congregational experience especially in light of the transformative times we've been living in. Matt and Ben work for the Center of Congregations in Indiana and cohost its podcast providing tools and educational resources to congregations across the state and beyond. We look for parallels and opportunities that com...

Paul Reville is the Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). He is the founding director of HGSE's Education Redesign Lab. In 2013, he completed nearly five years of service as the Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  Paul joins Mike Palmer to talk about his new book, Collaborative Ac...

Dr. Michelle Miller-Adams is a professor of political science at Grand Valley State University where she teaches courses on international relations, poverty and inequality. She's also a Senior Researcher with the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Michelle joins Mike Palmer on this episode to talk about her new book, The Path to Free College: In Pursuit of Access, Equity, and Prosperi...

Mike Palmer is joined by Nancy, a virtual human who makes her first appearance as a guest host, in a conversation about what the "New Normal" that emerges on the other side of the pandemic might like for the world of learning. We explore the trends of Canny Centaurs, Universal Design for Learning, Class Outside, and Simulearning both with Nancy's help and with the help of many of our great guests...

Dr. Glenn Albright is a clinical psychologist and the Co-founder / Director of Research at Kognito, a health simulation company that has trained thousands of education staff in the U.S. on how to properly converse with students that exhibit at-risk behavior and properly refer them to counseling services. Glenn joins host Mike Palmer to dive into how the use of virtual characters in scenario-based...

Liza Weale is the Founder of Gatehouse Admissions and the coauthor of What Matters? and What More? 50 Successful Essays for the Stanford GSB and HBS (and Why They Worked) with Jeremy Shinewald, the Founder of mbaMission. Liza joins hosts Mike Palmer and Melissa Griffith for a conversation about business school admissions, authentic storytelling, and the return on investment (ROI) of attending B-Sc...

Lillian Nave is a Senior Lecturer and UDL Coordinator at Appalachian State University. She's also the host of the Think UDL Podcast. Lillian joins Mike Palmer and guest host Dawn DiPeri on this deep dive into UDL and other trends Lillian is noticing from her vantage point in inclusive education. Lillian shares her origin story which began in art history, moved to freshman seminar, and ultimately l...

Kumar Garg is the Managing Director of Schmidt Futures, a venture facility for public benefit that recently cosponsored the Futures Forum on Learning Tools Competition with Citadel. Kumar joins our host, Mike Palmer, to talk about the winners of the tools competition who were recently announced and to provide his insights and perspectives on learning engineering as well as trends in educational te...

Dr. Eric Moore is an internationally recognized Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Accessibility consultant, instructional designer, and educator. He specializes in the theory and practice of UDL, especially in the context of higher education. In addition to working in UDL and Instructional Design at the University of Tennessee, Eric heads up a consultancy, Innospire Education, and was featur...

Michael Spencer is the CEO of Global Expansion Strategies, a firm that specializes in helping EdTech companies scale through broad adoption in international schools. Michael joins Mike Palmer to talk through his experiences in the field of international educational technology. Michael highlights the changes that have taken place since the pandemic including a seismic shift from predominantly print...

Small ways to improve online teaching and learning, and a discussion on how to get learners' attention in your courses with Flower Darby and James Lang. James M. Lang writes about higher education, literature, and travel. He is a Professor of English and Director of the D'Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption University. This episode also discusses his books Distracted, Small Teaching...

Mike welcomes Dan Carroll, the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Clever, which helps K-12 school districts, educators, and students navigate some of the complexities of the digital world. They begin by discussing Dan’s early career teaching for Teach for America, and then his move into educational technology administration. Frustrated by the speed he could launch new initiatives, with some f...

Mike welcomes Dr. Leo Casey, the Executive Director of the Albert Shanker Institute who has written a book called The Teacher Insurgency: A Strategic and Organizing Perspective. They begin with Leo’s upbringing by two New York City teachers, how he abandoned his dissertation to teach in Crown Heights, and how he began working with the union when his school shut down. Leo then began to head the Alb...

Mark Davis has a 20-year track record of roles of increasing responsibility in the Education field. He left Education soon after the 2016 Election to start a Cannabis company named Mozen. After a four-year run, he sold the company and now is returning to a General Management position in Education. In this 4/20 Special Edition of Trending in Education, Mark joins Mike Palmer to tell the story of hi...

Dr. Jonathan Friedman is the Director of Free Expression and Education at PEN America. He joins Mike Palmer on this episode to talk about emerging trends in K12 and Higher Ed in the US relating to Free Speech and Free Expression. You can learn more about what Jonathan and PEN are doing at pen.org After hearing Jonathan’s “origin story,” we quickly dive into the case of BL vs Mahanoy School Distric...

Dr. Steve Joordens returns to join Mike Palmer in a conversation about the connections between growth mindset and feedback. If growth mindset is the "What," getting good at giving and receiving feedback is the "How" of learning and personal growth. Steve draws on his experiences as a Psychology Professor and Director of the Advanced Learning Technologies Lab at the University of Toronto and as a F...

Dr. Corey Dolgon is a Professor of Sociology at Stonehill College. He's an expert in several areas of sociology and service learning and is the author of five books, including The End of the Hamptons: Scenes from the Class Struggle in American’s Paradise (2005) and Kill it to Save it: An Autopsy of Capitalism’s triumph Over Democracy (2017). He recently edited The Cambridge Handbook of Service Lea...

Dr. Timothy R. Clark is founder and CEO of LeaderFactor, a training, consulting, coaching, and assessment organization that focuses on leadership development, organizational change, strategic agility, psychological safety, and emotional intelligence. He is the developer of the EQometer assessment and The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety training program. Tim joins Mike Palmer to talk about the rol...

Alexis Block is a PhD Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. She’s also the creator of HuggieBot and now HuggieBot 2.0 which have allowed her to do groundbreaking research in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Alexis joins Mike Palmer on this episode to talk through her recent paper on The Six Commandments of Robot Hugging. We explore what got Alexis to this point in her resea...

Dr. Stephen Kosslyn returns to the show to dive into the topics covered in his new book Active Learning Online with Mike Palmer. What does deep processing really mean and how can its power be unlocked for learning? How do chunking and associations relate to how we learn? What is the dual coding principle and how should instructional designers tap into it to ensure their lessons stick in the minds...

Steve Grubbs is the Founder of Victory XR, a company that specializes in using Virtual Reality to make compelling learning experiences. Steve joins Mike and begins by telling how he has stayed connected to education and technology in different capacities through his professional life before zeroing in on the work he's been doing of late. Whether it's building a VR simulation of the march across th...

Dr. Nicholas Tampio is a Professor of Political Science at Fordham University who recently wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post about the importance of play in K12 education as we begin to plan for the summer. Nick returns to join Mike Palmer on this episode to explore the risks of rushing kids back to school when they need time to play outside. We question the benefits of pushing to cat...

Mike is joined by Cara Lesser. CEO and Founder of the KID Museum in Bethesda, Maryland. Cara starts by describing how she transitioned from working on healthcare policy to growing interested in education as her children entered school. Inspired by the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, she sought to create an institution dedicated to what she felt was lacking in her children’s education: creative, h...