Got Game? How Play Enhances Learning
By: Delicia Sepulveda. For the past two years, I've had a hand in creating games that today reach hundreds of thousands of students, helping them learn math in a fun and engaging way. I get to see students playing with puzzles that I designed, and I get to experience first-hand the impact of these games on student learning.
College Now: Scott Mendelsberg’s Great New Book on College Prep
In many high schools, the shuffle of a discipline-based, big-catalog master schedule can lead to lack of sustained relationships and increased risks for students to fall through the cracks. Important outcomes get little attention with the lack of an advisory spine. In his new book College Now, Scott Mendelsberg takes on these problems of aims and architecture; of inequitably distributed resources and expectations; and the political dysfunction of urban school districts.
Teaching Students to Learn Using the Dominant Media
Alan November led a provocative conversation with Ohio superintendents at a TRECA retreat. He urged problem solving and teaching with the dominant media of society--the internet.”
Talent Is UNDERrated
By: Renee Hill. An intelligent, capable, results-driven pool of individuals who are willing to act interdependently and accountably, is essential for any school or school district to competently meet the needs of today’s students, parents, professionals, and communities. Talent is THAT important.
Collective Impact – Creating a Self-Sharpening Education System
By: George Tang. Over the last several years, collective impact has become common education vernacular and has generated as much buzz as Kimye. Ok, maybe not that much, but collective impact has become a household term for communities seeking to ensure children are effectively supported and seamlessly connected from early childhood to K-12 education to higher education to the workforce.
Smart Cities: Lessons from Tampa
Tampa area districts serve more than 300,000 students but don’t get much national attention. Hillsborough provides a great example of effective homegrown leadership.
6 Ways to Promote Data-Driven Instruction in K-12 Schools
By: Jason Lange. The push for data-driven instruction has been widespread since the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, which was signed into law in 2002. Yet the number of individual classrooms regularly practicing DDI remains startlingly low. It would be easy to blame teachers for the slow adoption rates, citing a supposed “fear of data,” but the true reasons are actually more complex.
Forming an Entrepreneurial Mindset in K-12 Students
By: Ryan S. Olson. Perhaps the most important question of our time is, Are we forming young people who will thrive in these times? Parents must address this. So must educators, who significantly form children. But educators fail students if they foster only technical skills and textbook knowledge
New York: An EdTech Hotspot, A Stalled District
Despite state barriers to online learning, young people in NYC are taking advantage of anywhere, anytime learning. The NYC Department of Education has been slow to improve student access to technology. The iZone was the largest blended learning initiative in the country but its future seems in question. Outside the district, the learning revolution continues.
Fostering Next Gen Learning: a Q&A with iNACOL’s Susan Patrick
Tom recently discussed next-gen learning with Susan Patrick of iNACOL. Here's a Q&A from their discussion...