NGLC Awards Innovative School Networks & Colleges
Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) announced its second round of grants to innovative high school and college programs today. The $4.5 million in grants will be shared by eight high school recipients, mostly charter networks, and four colleges. The blended learning models will yield strong college attendance and completion rates among low income students.
Why I Teach On Udemy
I teach the way I like to learn, by completing a task. My style of teaching varies from traditional curriculums in that I show the steps necessary in completing a project, regardless of the academic structure of the task as a whole. My courses are constructed to offer a cross-section of the main principles, then offer tangents that people can explore on their own. This method ensures that people get to ‘touch’ and ‘experience’ all aspects of a project, while sparking additional interests in particular aspects.
Q&A: Student Leverages Website & Facebook to Save Civil War History
Twelve-year-old Andrew Druart is likely the world’s youngest Civil War enthusiast and activist. Druart has raised more than $10,000 for the Civil War Trust through a “Donate for Andrew’s Cause” button on the website. In return, the Civil War Trust awarded Druart a junior preservation award for his hard work in fundraising and awareness for Civil War battlegrounds – the organization’s first-ever award to go to a child.
10 Ways K-12 Is Becoming More Like Cisco Academy
With more than 1M enrolled students and about 40,000 assessments weekly, Cisco Networking Academy is the biggest classroom in the world. In 10 ways US K-12 education is becoming more like NetAcademy: relevant, blended, competency-based, with games, sims, and online assessments.
Q&A: How to Create Custom Courses & Improve Grade Management
CompassLearning, a K-12 educational software provider, recently launched Odyssey 2012 to empower educators with new custom courses and grade management solutions. Updates include more than 400 new activities for reading, Language Arts, math and science across the K-12 curriculum.
Q&A: The Online Teaching Landscape
Online and blended teaching is a new art and skill for teachers today. It requires a unique set of skills to connect with students remotely and stay current with new technologies. Teresa Scavulli, K12, Inc.’s Vice President of Academic Services, joins us today to share her insights on online and blended teaching through training, professional development and informal learning.
Does Online Assessment Increase or Reduce Bias?
Dr. Mark Shermis addressed a question about the possible bias of online assessment and said, "Automated essay scoring software will ultimately make it easier to administer more writing assignments, raising the literacy bar for all school children."
Good Work: Sweat the Small Stuff
Culture is the unwritten rules for how things work and how people treat each other. It’s a function of all the little stuff: the stories people tell, how decisions are made and communicated, where people sit and park, and how contribution is recognized. An award winning principal taught me that while trying to accomplish big things you need to sweat the small stuff.
Matthew Peterson on The Neural Basis of Learning
Matthew Peterson, MIND Research Institute, suggests that educators should create learning environments with more hypothesis-driven learning. This strategy is built into a special temporal game-based approach called ST Math. In school districts with district-wide adoption and high levels of participation, ST Math has helped double math proficiency.
Staff Picks: Higher Ed, Digital Learning, Math Education, SmartTech
Karen Picks “Changing the Economics of Higher Education” Karen says, “I’m a big believer in higher education, having served on a community college board, and we have quite a few college degrees in our family, but both of my children obtained their degrees with alternative/combination high school-college…