Posts by Tom Vander Ark
6 Ways to Boost Your Professional Learning
Social media, professional learning communities, and collaborative authoring environments have expanded learning opportunities. Developing productive personal learning habits can accelerate your career and extend your impact. Here are six tips that might just change your life.
In Education, How Do We Create a Culture of Experimentation?
Opt-in innovation, together with small-scale experimentation, are attempts to acknowledge that for too long, the education system has been experimenting at the wrong scale, in the wrong ways. The future of school, and the future of school reform, means experimenting with, and not on, each other.
Micro-Credentials: The Future of Professional Learning
Like students, educators deserve a clear map of what they need to know and be able to do, multiple ways to learn, and options for demonstrating mastery. In most cases we think progress will be marked with a stackable series of micro-credentials.
Robots & Implications For Life On Planet Earth
It's hard to know how the growth of robots and maker learning tools will all play out but three near term educational implications seem clear. It will let kids show what they know, and there will be more opportunities for interest-based learning and deeper learning.
Helping Teachers and Schools Run Experiments
Imagine giving teachers and schools opportunities to run experiments of their own or to join larger trials. Imagine if they had access to better measures and powerful analytics. The next step in supporting teachers as scientists is an intelligence platform that combines information about best practices, formative assessment, templates for setting up experiments, and social features.
The Context-Driven Future of Learning
The future will be personalized, whether it’s online search or learning. The content-driven internet and personalized learning are in its initial stages of development. But as the tools and technology continue to improve, learning will become more accessible, more tailored, more immediate, and more powerful.
Student Motivation Matters: 25 Tips and Strategies
A new report from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching reviews what we know about student motivation. It's a great summary of academic research on motivation, but it stops short of illuminating the path forward.
Blogging is Alive and Well for Leaders, Learners and Lead Generators
Blogging is alive and well. Advocates, leaders, and lead generators are using blogs more than ever to share stories and tips that promote empathy and action. What caused this resurgence of writing? We think it’s new platforms, advocacy, content marketing, and a little edu blogging.
10 Powerful Project-Based Learning Engagement Strategies
Student engagement is key to motivation, persistence, and deeper learning. In addition to our recently featured 22 instincts that motivate a commitment of time and energy, here's 10 strategies to promote powerful project-based learning experiences.
8 Ways Educators Help Parents Promote Powerful Learning
As we look to the new school year, we must recognize that parents have a strong desire to be advocates for their children, in partnership with teachers and EdLeaders. The path forward and beyond exists, and is inspired by over 60 parents represented in our new book.