Living in a Digital Age

Published on: Author: Ellis Crasnow Leave a comment

We live in an age of driverless cars, thought-controlled biomechanical limbs, and robots shifting heavy pallets of goods across warehouse floors. These were all dreams of yesterday, and each was supposed to take decades to be realized, if it could be realized at all. But here they are. Google’s driverless cars routinely glide along the… Continue reading

What is the best college for you?

Published on: Author: Ellis Crasnow Leave a comment

The published lists of best colleges in the nation are relatively unchanged from year to year—at the top are the prestigious, expensive, often research-heavy and well-endowed institutions, the ones that many aspire to and that all others are often compared to. But does the best college for you necessarily rank high on the list? Wouldn’t… Continue reading

The path to excellence

Published on: Author: Ellis Crasnow Leave a comment

On August 25th 2015, STEM3 Academy will open its doors to students with social and learning differences, grades 9 through 12, in time for the 2015/16 academic year. The first of its kind in the country, STEM3 Academy is unique in providing a rich and varied curriculum designed to develop the natural skills and abilities… Continue reading

STEM in the real world

Published on: Author: Ellis Crasnow Leave a comment

How do modern successful companies prepare for future workforce needs? How do they guarantee that there will be a steady pipeline of qualified candidates ready to fill the burgeoning demand for technically trained individuals? If you’re the Ford Motor Company, you start an initiative called Next Generation Learning to bring real-world problems into the classroom,… Continue reading

The STEM-Autism Connection

Published on: Author: Ellis Crasnow Leave a comment

Statistically, between 80% and 90% of those on the autism spectrum are unemployed. The social and financial costs of such a large number are huge. The work you do occupies almost a third of your life and is a large part of who you are. Those who are unemployed, particularly those who are chronically unemployed,… Continue reading

How do you change the world?

Published on: Author: Ellis Crasnow Leave a comment

A FIRST Robotics Championship is a spectacle to behold. Throngs of students crowd the stands, the blocks of colored t-shirts marking their stake in the match below. The music thunders, the beat is insistent. Flags sway side to side, propelled in rhythm by the students wielding them. And then there are the robots: bots from… Continue reading

How to improve upon perfection

Published on: Author: Ellis Crasnow 2 Comments

Last weekend, Village Glen High School participated in the Regional championship for FIRST Robotics. Competition was tight. The 41 teams that participated were some of the best in Southern California, and some of them had already participated in other Regionals, as they are allowed to do, and won awards there. The level of engineering design… Continue reading

Education’s Modern Face

Published on: Author: Ellis Crasnow Leave a comment

The face of education is changing rapidly to meet the demands of modern enterprise and industry. Just over the last few years alone, there have been new CCSS (Common Core State Standards), Next Gen (Next Generation Science Standards), and we have seen the rise of STEM and STEAM and their variants, some focusing on art,… Continue reading

Small school, Big school

Published on: Author: Ellis Crasnow Leave a comment

Which should you prefer for your students, to send them to a large school with all of the resources a large school has, or to a small school with possibly compensatory benefits? No need to ponder any longer—the evidence is in, and it overwhelmingly favors smaller schools for any number of reasons. Students in small… Continue reading

STEM and SPED

Published on: Author: Ellis Crasnow Leave a comment

It is now regarded as a truism that many of those with an ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) who are at the upper end of the spectrum have specific talents and abilities that lend themselves particularly well to STEM pursuits. It is equally true that those with an ASD thrive when provided with supports that mitigate… Continue reading