Archive: 2013
Strive for College Recognized as CNN Hero
As a college freshman, Michael Carter realized that many students had survived a more circuitous route to college than he had. He did some digging and found out that many prepared low income students don't enroll in four year college.
Every State Should Run A Next-Gen Learning Challenge
Last month, I ran a three part series about the Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) outlining how they took on the turnaround challenge, leveraged higher education partnerships, and improved the performance and sustainability of school networks (as outlined in part one of this three-part series); illustrated how blended learning supports and extends experiential…
Challenging “What School Looks Like”
Today’s editorial on the growth of online offerings in higher education was right to acknowledge the benefits of blended learning models of instruction, but erred in its treatment of fully online courses and their potential ability to reach and teach students.
Distance Learning and Online Relationships
I never get to meet most of my students in person, because I teach asynchronous online courses via Blackboard, for the City University of New York (CUNY). I was part of a cohort of Ph.D. students who began teaching after fully online programs were available.
The Learning Resources That Liberated a Family
In my previous post, I wrote about the school experience I wish for my own children. Today I am going to write about how as a family we have taken advantage of local and distant learning resources that allow us to treat education as a set of “platform services” that we can use to create a customized learning experience for each of our kids.
Design Your Digital Classroom
I will be presenting a workshop titled Design Your Digital Classroom at the Illinois Computing Educators Conference on February 26th and 27th. I’m looking forward to #ICE13 once again this year because of the energy that surrounds an event like this. It’s so much fun to work with educators who are excited to participate and eager to leverage the power of technology as a tool for learning.
Writing Across the Curriculum With The Literacy Design Collaborative
The Literacy Design Collaborative is a network of teachers and partners “building out a template-based approach to the literacy demands of college and the workplace, as defined by the Common Core State Standards.” The concept is to give teachers tools (mostly offline but soon to be online) that enable them to transform the Common Core into classroom action by giving teacher the literacy resources to build student’s college ready literacy skills through their existing content lens.
New CompetencyWorks Paper: Reengineering IT for Competency Education
CompetencyWorks releasing a briefing paper on IT for for competency-based environments, Re-Engineering Information Technology: Design Considerations for Competency Education.
Prototyping Education as a Platform
I wish school were different for my children. As a mom living in a school district with excellent schools, high test scores and property values, research-based practices, and warm, thoughtful educators who care about my kids you would think I would be satisfied. But like generations of parents before me, I want more for my kids than what I had.
NPR Fails The Online Learning Test
NPR ran a misleading story about online learning. Blake Farmer, a Nashville reporter, has been beating this drum and today invited disreputable and uninformed critics of a new statewide online school to pile on. Yes, a low percentage of students scored proficient on state tests, but when most…