About us and this blog

About Generation YES
We believe that technology in schools is critical to bringing 21st century educational opportunities to everyone. However, we see that traditional approaches to integrating real technology into classrooms have largely failed. Even though visionary educators have seen the potential for decades, there are far too few bright and shining success stories. More often than not there is a failure of implementation between the vision and the action. We believe the missing component is student involvement, student voice, and student ownership of the process.

When students are actively involved in planning and implementing change, they become invested in the process. They become key stakeholders in improving education for themselves and their peers. We focus on technology as a vehicle for this, because technology is a powerful conduit for constructive, collaborative learning, and the connection that today’s youth feel for this new technology-driven world.

We must stop thinking of school as something that happens to students, with all the information, learning and experiences flowing from “us” to “them”. Students must be empowered to be agents of change, not objects of change. Teachers who are expert facilitators, guides, and co-learners are key to this process.

Generation YES is a non-profit dedicated to creating tools for this kind of change – professional development, print materials and online tools to help students and teachers achieve these goals. In Generation YES schools, students learn how to teach, mentor, and lead as they use technology to help teachers, students and their community.

In addition, we partner with other organizations and education agencies to develop large scale projects that support our mission. (See our current projects)

For this digital generation, there is no more important task than creating relevance between their lives and their education. This generation is connected, aware, and eager to put their minds and hearts into any problem facing the world. We believe that if we teach today’s students to solve real problems, learn how to learn, and give them the tools to do it, we are investing in the global citizens of the future.

More information about Generation YES and our programs can be found on our main website at www.genyes.org.

Why blog?

• We like sharing ideas with people
• We want to think out loud as an organization
• We want to include everyone’s voice in the discussion

Read our Welcome post for more reasons. You can subscribe to this blog here.

Most blogs are personal journals - how will this work as a company?
We aren’t sure. We’re willing to try. We set this up as a group blog and hopefully it won’t be confusing. Or maybe it will be and we’ll try to organize it better. The cool thing about these tools is they allow this flexibility.

Who is contributing?
Here’s who is contributing now. We hope that once Generation YES teachers and students find this blog, we will have more voices.

Sylvia Martinez is president of Generation YES. She is co-author of Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, a book for educators about makerspaces, 3D printing, Arduino, and programming. She has a varied background in both educational and consumer software and games, with expertise along the way in design and development of online environments that encourage learning and communication. Full bio. Follow me on Twitter.

Dr. Dennis Harper is the founder and CEO of Generation YES. He has taught in over 40 countries around the world — K-12, undergraduate and teacher education programs. He’s known world-wide for his focus, research, and practical support of student voice in transforming schools with technology. Full bio

Others coming soon - we hope to talk a couple of other people (especially our student interns) into coming online. They are being shy for now.

All of us can be reached by email at our first names plus @genyes.com

Full disclosure
Generation YES is a not-for-profit organization. But we still have to make enough money to stay around and fulfill our mission. It’s a delicate balance. This blog is not about constantly trying to sell our services and promoting our own interests — and we expect to be called on it if it sounds that way. We hope what we do helps teachers align everyday practice with their philosophy and allows students to have a voice in their own education. To do that, we try to make stuff that inspires people to teach and learn in ways that are authentic and engaging. We hope that has value.

Other stuff and random connections:

• Sylvia has a long-term relationship with Gary Stager, a fairly well-known name in the educational technology world.