Personalized Learning

i3 Reviews

Had five conversations about i3 in the last 24 hours: Three focused on applicant eligibility.  There is a very high bar for applicants.  Read this section carefully.  It requires a very strong track record of student achievement with a couple exceptions for nonprofits producing results leading to achievement.  Don’t apply…

Personalized Learning

Harlem Success

Harlem Success Academy runs the best elementary schools I’ve visited with the most: reading; students in 4th grade read at least 25 leveled books per month. science: students get hands on science every day starting in Kindergarten well equipped classrooms: teachers use every square inch of floor and wall…

Personalized Learning

Book of Work

Had an encouraging conversation at College Board this morning about the potential for a new AP assessment system that would allow several testing times each year (eventually many times or anytime) and reduced reliance on the end of course assessment but considering a ‘book of work’ during the course taking…

Personalized Learning

Read Friedman on Start Ups

Please read Tom Friedman’s post on start ups.  Here’s the most important sentences: Good-paying jobs don’t come from bailouts. They come from start-ups. And where do start-ups come from? They come from smart, creative, inspired risk-takers. How do we get more of those? There are only two…

Personalized Learning

Step Function Improvement

As the learning revolution matures, it is likely to be turbocharged by lessons about the neuropsychology of learning and motivation.  I don’t think we know much about this and don’t use what we know very effectively, but we are likely to learn far more than we know in the coming decade.

Personalized Learning

The 3×5 Learning Revolution

Twenty years after technology began transforming every other sector, there is finally enough movement on a sufficient number of fronts—15 to be precise—that, despite resilience, everything will change.   New and better learning options are inevitable, but progress will be uneven by state/country and leadership dependent. The 5 Drivers.

EdTech

Entrepreneur Thinking: What It Is, What It Ain't

My superintendent in the East Village apartment I rent would like me to believe that his solution for the cracks around the somewhat faulty plumbing in my bathroom ceiling and wall is entrepreneurial in its deployment and conceptualization. It most certainly is not. It is not Entrepreneur Thinking to “patch”…

Personalized Learning

Postcards from 2015

Here’s a couple snapshots of high school a few years from now using currently available tools and a few in development.  These pictures are student-centric; there are obviously a number of teachers and learning professional involved in the success of each of these students.  Comments, suggestions, alternatives welcome.

EdTech

Rodel-Backed Plan Wins in DE

There were lots of people scratching their head about Delaware’s phase one Race to the Top win yesterday.  It was not a last minute consultant generated application, it was the result of a decade of leadership from the Rodel Foundation–one guy that leveraged a small checkbook and a lot of…

EdTech

The Book is an Artifact

Those of you in the education innovation space will know what I am talking about when I say that the era of the book has come and gone. The book is an artifact. It’s a holdover from an era where knowledge was plentiful (relatively) but access to knowledge was limited.