Archive: 2013
Free Choice Learning: What Teachers Can Learn From Museums
What does a public school classroom have in common with a museum exhibition hall? The answer has nothing to do with oversized models or informative laminated labels - and everything to do with the joy of learning.
Humanizing Online Learning with VoiceThread
If you are an online instructor who is aching to break out of the social limitations of the text-based discussion forum that still dominates online courses, learn how VoiceThread can help.
JFF Reports on Competency-Based & Blended Learning
Job's For The Future is a Boston-based intermediary and policy design shop. Since Hilary Pennington opened the place two decades ago they've been advancing the sector with great papers and direct support to partners.
How to Find the Magic in an Educational App
The concept of how to find the magic in an educational app came up recently during our weekly EducationalAppTalk forum. The question arose, “Why should educational apps be field-tested?” Well, we (teacherswithapps) field test apps with kids on a regular basis and have found that most often it is the kids who find the MAGIC.
Changing How We Think About Student Choice in Learning: Recombinant Education
An explosion of innovation has been transforming how we think about learning, and how we organize talent and resources to support learning experiences. School as we once knew it has become ‘unbundled.’ While Ohio has been debating charter schools, vouchers, and e-schools for years, emerging digital and blended learning models have created additional opportunities and new paradigms for thinking about student choice, and with them some demands for navigating this new learning ecosystem.
Infographic: The History of Education
The folks at Boundless who last brought us the EdTech Buzzwords Infographic are back with The History of Education. The graphic takes a look at how formal education began, changes along the way, current day and predictions for the next twenty years. Do you agree with the predictions?
7 Ways States & Districts Can Use Authorizing to Boost Quality & Innovation
Performance contracting is a services agreement with clear outcomes. States and districts have been using performance contracts for public charter schools, private school special education placements, information and business services, and for energy efficiency partnerships.
EdTech 10: Disrupt, Incubate, Re-engineer
There were big verbs in the news this week, with lots of activity across the K-12 and Higher Ed space. This week’s EdTech 10 is all about disrupting, incubating, persevering, re-engineering, and shifting. Now, get to reading...
Making Room for Innovation
Despite steady progress on achievement and graduation rates, big gaps remain. Earlier this month Ted Kolderie, Education Evolving, addressed state charter school leaders. He made six important points addressed in this blog.
The Infrastructure of Personalized Learning
In my previous posts I’ve written about my wishes for a personalized learning environment for my children, how such an environment is not yet available, and how we as a family have begun to use a wide variety of resources to essentially prototype such an environment. I use the metaphor of a “platform” – seeing education not as a single, monolithic experience to be performed upon our young people, but as a set of services that students and parents can use to meet their own, unique educational goals.