Posts by Tom Vander Ark
SMARTER Specs Suggest Complex Tests
SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) published its "content maps and specification" in English/language arts. They suggest complex tests that include adaptive assessment and demonstrations of learning.
Good Work: Sentiments of Consideration
Leadership requires empathy at scale and a broad perspective. Certainty is great for execution but the politics of public education are personal and that perspective-building dilog.
Recapping a Dozen Don’t Miss Op-Eds
Here’s a baker’s dozen August Op-Eds you may have missed. Leadership 1. The Art of Balancing Execution & Innovation: principals and systems heads need to help their community of learners balance process improvement strategies with new approaches to learning. 2. Done Reforming; Focusing on Getting Smart: five things that…
Done Reforming; Focusing on Getting Smart
Next week, our team will be launching GettingSmart.com, a site devoted to innovations in learning. We will continue to focus on K-12 applications, but will expand our coverage of innovations in informal, early, and adult learning. We will cover learning entrepreneurs, investors, technologies, and strategies. We will build a community of learners optimistic about the potential of connecting more young people to the idea economy through personal digital learning.
The Art of Balancing Execution & Innovation
Every school needs an execution agenda to improve the quality of instruction around an adopted curriculum. Every school needs an innovation agenda. Finding the right balance is the art of leadership and the product of dialog.
Students deserve access to quality digital content & online courses
Digital Learning Now released a video on Element 2, student access. It recommends that all students have access to quality content and courses.
Making Visible A Decade of Lost Children
Charles Blow makes visible differences in this American life. This week he highlights the millions of children living in poverty.
Good Work: Trustees For A Slice of America
My home town hides its poverty all too well. But a group of committed leader take ownership, and act like trustees.
Adaptive Learning: Key to Customization
Customized learning, driven by adaptive engines emerging from three innovation pathways, will accelerate achievement and boost completion rates.
Good Work: Committing to Place
I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who stand in the line and haul in their places –March Piercy Early one July morning…