Ashley Cronin's Profile

When the Smithsonian wanted to find out how to best leverage digital museum resources to make them relevant for classroom learning, what did they do? They asked teachers. The resulting effort is the Smithsonian Learning Lab, a flexible, online, research-informed learning platform that launched in public beta in autumn 2015.

This contentious election year, there has been a lot of attention paid to the importance of civic education, but for educators, it can be tricky to know how to get started. A new, nonpartisan film series from Vulcan Productions and Show of Force -- in partnership with FilmBuff -- can help secondary teachers engage young people in the political process and inspire them to get involved.

Chances are high that computer-science literacy will be increasingly relevant for jobs of the future. Some theorists even suggest that the ability to read and write code is a fundamental 21st-century competency. Yet, according to an August 2015 Gallup survey, many students get little exposure to these concepts at school; opportunities are even more limited for low-income students.