Personalized Learning

Like Fish to Water: Virtual Learners in 2012

Carri Schneider

I have worked as an online educator since 2005 – facilitating learning in a two-year online program that equips current educators with Master’s degrees in Educational Leadership and signifies their formal readiness to take on positions of leadership inside their schools or districts. Getting to know these professionals through weekly interactions over the course of two years allows me to maintain an important connection to “real” schools and the students they serve as I fulfill other professional roles as an education policy researcher and consultant.
EdTech

ASU Boosts Completion Rates With Data & Developmental Math

Tom Vander Ark

Dean Regier said completion rates for his online students--mostly working adults with prior college credits--are different than they are for 18 year old freshman but the basics still apply: build a foundation of basic skills, track progress, and get them on a path to a degree that makes sense for them.
Personalized Learning

Auto Essay Scoring Headlines NCME, Addresses Critics

Tom Vander Ark

Some writers and teachers of writing have been quick to criticize or make light of the Automated Student Assessment Prize (ASAP). The team running this project (which I co-direct) has been driven by a clear mission: we want students to write more on state tests and in classroom.  We want teachers…
EdTech

Q&A: Jeff Mao Shares the Inside Scoop on Maine’s 1:1 Program

Getting Smart Staff

Jeff Mao, the Learning Technology Policy Director of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI) at the Maine Department of Education, joins us today to chat about the ways that Maine forged the path of 1:1 learning with the first and only statewide 1:1 laptop program. He tells us more about the challenges the state faced, the ways the program has benefits students and educators, and how the program is evolving to adapt to the needs of the future.
Leadership

Good Work: Frantic Learner

Tom Vander Ark

Think about all of the new things you have learned in the last year – it is probably an amazing list. Keep a journal (or write a blog) of weekly observations and what you learned from each experience. When you focus your awareness, learning jumps out at you from a variety of sources. Find out what you should be learning for this job and the next, not just for survival, but for the joy in learning, in connecting two different subjects, in mastering a new skill, in growing as a parent.
EdTech

Automated Essay Scoring Demonstrated Effective in Big Trial

Getting Smart Staff

A direct comparison between human graders and software designed to score student essays achieved virtually identical levels of accuracy, with the software in some cases proving to be more reliable, a groundbreaking study has found. The study, which was underwritten by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and managed by Open Education Solutions will be released here on Monday, April 16th, at the annual conference of the National Council on Measurement in Education.