Personalized Learning

Open High School

While in Utah, we visited Open High School, an innovative virtual charter school that has a commitment for using open education resources (OER) and different edtech tools to enhance the learning of their students.

EdTech

Smart Cities: Portland, Countercultural and Interesting

Like other left coast metro areas, Portland is a creative hotspot. But also like left coast cities, school districts are resistant to options and innovations. State leadership on proficiency-based learning has started to get some results and it is exciting to see the ed startups begin to connect to the public school systems.

Personalized Learning

Automated Essay Scoring in a High Stakes Environment

Dr. Mark Shermis One of our goals here is to begin to create the data abundance mindset in U.S. K-12–prepping for policies and practices informed by big data surrounding anywhere anytime learning.  To that end, we like to highlight interesting projects and proposals–and we have a good one…

EdTech

Education Leaders Meet At the Wash. Education Innovation Forum

Policy leaders, foundations, district leaders, and local and national technology innovators plan to meet today at the Washington Education Innovation Forum, hosted by Robin lake and the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), to explore how Washington can become a leader in education technology and innovation.

EdTech

The Long Stretch Until Summer

Your day-to-day is anything but ordinary. Each day you have the opportunity to reach students in a way that nobody else can. You will spend more time with them in a given day than some of their parents. Your "boring" life involves shaping the future.

Personalized Learning

Miami Zone suggests closing better than supporting bad schools

After taking over NYC schools in 2000, Rudy Crew set up a Chancellor’s District—an early example of differentiated management for low performing schools.  Like Steve Adamowski’s work in Cincinnati, this action was an important illustration of doing whatever it takes to turnaround low performing schools.  The Chancellor’s district…

Personalized Learning

Hysteria Around Turnarounds

The NYTimes ran a story with this misleading headline and byline A Vote to Fire All Teachers at a Failing High School CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — A plan to dismiss the entire faculty and staff of the only public high school in this small city…

Personalized Learning

Capistrano Valley High School Demonstrates the Art of Animation

This week's featured SchoolTube film showcases Capistrano Valley High School's participation in the ACME Animation Network. Students at Capistrano draw, scan, and develop animated videos that they can then upload to the ACME site for educators, parents, industry professionals and peers to review.

Personalized Learning

How teacher pay should work

Kim Marshall’s December 16 EdWeek commentary attempts to “demolish the argument for individual merit pay.”  He makes good points that suggest that individual bonuses based solely on value-added test scores are not a good idea.  He suggests, instead, team-based bonuses and more pay for master teachers. There’s an…