OpenEd: Changing the Way the World Learns
A New York Times article last week suggested that big ideas are dead. At Open Education Solutions, we don’t think so—we want to change the way the world learns. We see evidence of new approaches to learning that work better. Following are four examples of how we’re helping to deploy new strategies, structures, and technologies.
Declara: Smart Natural Workflow Learning
Declara takes a very different approach to personalization, it auto-generates ontologies rather than relying on engineered sequences. Core features include content collections, curation, annotation and measures of content efficacy, and collaboration.
Teachers, Did you Finish Your Summer Reading?!
Before you go headfirst back into the classroom and into “teaching mode,” we want to “assign” 5 great posts from our awesome teacher bloggers. Don’t worry, it won’t take long, but we sure don’t want you starting school without finishing your summer reading!
Hot: #OnlineLearning #MakerSpace; On the #EdTech Horizon: #VR, #AI
The predictions of the 2016 NMC/CoSN Horizon Report include that this year's hot tech topics, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality and wearables, will become widespread in education in a few years. Here is a summary of the report's findings.
The New Equity Agenda
Nearing a quarter of the school populations, Hispanic students are generally not well served by U.S. K-12 education. Here’s five state policies that would help.
SMARTtech Roundup
Blended Schools & Tools Fuse Boost. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced that the results from a year-long pilot of their Algebra Curriculum for iPad stimulated a near 10 percent boost in Math scores. The HMH Fuse platform encourages the use of personalized lesson plans by combining direct instruction, ongoing…
Relationships Key to High Quality Online Instruction
Last week we explored the importance of quality content but it is teachers that bring it to life. This week, Digital Learning Now released a video summary of Element #6, high quality instruction.
EdTech 10: 2014, The Year of The Horse in Edu
People born in the year of the horse are said to be quick-witted, focused on improvement, and willing to take part in venture careers. 2014 saw just that.
Staff Picks: Charter Authorizing, Charter Days, Solar Power & Cloud Textbooks
Karen picks the article "Emanuel Takes Push for Longer Day to Charter Schools." Sarah picks the article "Publishers Turn to Cloud Computing to Offer Digital Content" on McGraw-Hill Education's Cinch platform. Tom picks performance contracting as the idea of the week.
INCS Addresses Inaccurate Reporting on Charters
The Illinois Network of Charter Schools addresses two reports recently published that do not accurately depict transfer rates or the characterizations of magnet schools and charters. Here is a link to their response and some sections of their comments on the reporting.