March Hodgepodge

As my recently pared-down Bloglines account fills up with great stuff and I don't have time (or haven't made time) to properly process it, I'm left with skimming and linking with no real reflection. The first three are loosely related to Bill Gates' call for school reform a couple of weeks ago, and the rest is a hodgepodge of gems:

• Albert Ip's Our world is changing, our schools are failing...
  
• Rob's take on raising standards for schools
  
• Designing schools for the present age,
  via George
  
• Doug's vision for improving graduation rates (50-page PDF), which he feels are being ignored in the rush to focus on testing
  
• Doug also covers the bigger picture surrounding portfolio learning, focusing on real personal benefits rather than the tools or institutional motivations
  
• One of my favourite thinkers, Pat Kane, writes eloquently about moving Towards a Players' Education
  
• More play, less 'work' for early years
  
• Seb's excellent notes from the Information Architecture Summit in Montreal