SMARTtech Roundup: Blended Learning, STEM, Common Core
Blended Schools & Tools HBCU blends. The Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF) and Connections Education will launch TMCF Collegiate Academies a blended learning program that will allow students to individualize their education and work at a personalized pace. More than “just add water.” PBS/Media shift provides two questions to guide technology integration:…
Online Learning Studies Must Evaluate Individual Student Trajectories
The “gotcha” research on charter schools and innovation continues, with the latest aimed at K12 Inc.’s online schools. There are plenty of important policy and oversight research questions around the performance of charter schools and online schools, but unsupported claims like the latest from the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) are frustrating and unproductive.
The Difference Between Improvement and Innovation
Improvement is doing things better. Innovation is doing things differently. Well-deployed technology enables both. Two bloggers missed these important distinctions this week.
The Talent & the Agent: My Desired Class
Leaning on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s famous “frightening conclusion” quotation, I am Zen-like in my focus on the classroom atmosphere and I intend to create - the talent and the agent this upcoming school year. By developing flexible lesson plans, implementing interactive learning structures, and engaging the customers with passion-based projects, the class of my dreams will be a reality.
NAF Launches Student Certification Assessment System
National Academy Foundation announced a new certification system today. We think it signals a real commitment on NAF's part to getting serious about outcomes. We are bullish on certification systems as market signaling strategy that will grow in importance over time. We like the way NAF approached the design of this system. They are one of small handful of organizations that has the reach to do this at scale. In other words, we think this is a pretty big deal.
The Education Response to the Opportunity Gap
Robert Putnam's data is really disturbing. The Harvard sociologist is at it again. Like Bowling Alone, Putnam's new data (discussed recently at the Aspen Ideas Festival) suggests the opportunity gap is widening. More than race and poverty, class and a lack of social mobility are widening gaps that reduce opportunity.
Do You Have the Edtech Lingo Down?
When was the last time you were at an edtech conference and heard fragmented conversations laced with the latest education lingo and acronyms? Does flipped classroom, blended learning, gamification, OER, BYOD sound familiar? Here at Getting Smart, we toss around many of these words every day and work constantly to keep up with the latest trends. We understand how confusing it can be, which is why we've decided to share this great Edtech Cheat Sheet by Boundless.
What the PGA Can Teach Us About Value-Added Modeling
Value-added modeling, or VAM, is an analogous method of attempting to gauge teacher effectiveness. Technically, SGP is most similar to a variation of VAM known as Student Growth Percentiles (we’ll distinguish the two as SGPGolf and SGPEd). Like SGPGolf and unlike more traditional VAMs, SGPEd does not attempt to explicitly account for the myriad drivers of results such as peer effects, poverty, gang involvement, or home life.
10 Apps That Combine Learning With Fun
From traditional games, such as Scrabble, which can be used as a vocabulary-building incentive, to Foldit, a game designed by scientists to use crowdsourcing to better understand proteins, to apps that help identify plants and wildlife that are useful on hikes and field trips, here are 10 apps that combine learning with fun, and give you one less reason to have to take that phone away when it's time to learn.
Q&A: Hey, We Invented Blended Learning
After I described blended learning at a recent conference, Diana Frezza from Scholastic came up to me and said, “Hey, we invented blended learning with READ 180.” Having seen a lot of READ 180 classrooms over the last 20 years, I knew it was a proven multi-modal reading intervention. But I wasn’t up to date on READ 180 Next Generation so I called Scholastic president Margery Mayer.