Personalized Learning
Personalized learning is a mindset and approach to teaching that focuses on meeting each learner where they are and tailoring a curriculum that considers their interests, prior knowledge and skill level, and pace. Such a demand on the teacher requires sophisticated usage of technology in a combination of personalized, blended and online learning.
Maker High: Why Every School Should Be a Maker Faire
"Maker Faire" running this weekend in San Mateo. It’s a “festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement.” There will be lots of inspiration for schools that combine digital learning and community connected, team-based, production-focused, authentic, engaging, and relevant student work.
ClassDojo: Going Beyond Good Test Scores to Build Good People
What’s the single biggest indicator of lifetime outcomes and success, as early as age three? (I’ll give you a few hints. It’s not IQ. It’s not socioeconomic status. Give up yet?) It’s self control - and a whole slew of other behavioral management skills.
Review: Philip Howard on Fixing Education
Philip Howard is a lawyer, author of Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America. In a recent Atlantic piece, Howard pitched a five part bureaucracy busting platform. We appreciate the effort, but it's got a lot of holes in it.
Iowa Limits Opportunity, Protects Status Quo
The Globe Gazette reported that Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad is expected to sign a watered down ham-handed education bill “even though he and Department of Education Director Jason Glass agree it falls short of what they wanted.”
Staff Picks: Teaching, Testing, Gamification, Writing, & Cheaper Higher Ed
CCSSO and the K-12 Center at ETS hosted a conference on Tech Enhanced Assessment. In my lunch keynote I talked about profiles, playlists, projects, and progress based on demonstrated mastery.
Teaching & Testing the Common Core
“If we get this right, we’ll put our students on the path to a better future.” Gene Wilhoit, CCSSO, was talking about implementing Common Core assessments during closing panel of the Technology Enhanced Assessment conference. “Assessments are one element in the ecology of schools and school improvement,” David Conley said, “The whole system needs to be addressed.”
SmartTech Roundup
How’s it hanging? Google hosted its first EduOnAir Conference on Blended Learning using Google Hangout. Hangout OnAir allows users to broadcast, record and share its sessions. This is a great resource for educators teaching online courses or conducting professional development sessions.
College Completion: Still a Big Deal, So Let’s Make It Easier and Cheaper
The return on investment from American colleges is dropping. But disruptive alternatives—like free—will pop the bubble for third tier institutions. Declining subsidies will convert your favorite state U into a selective private institution. Let’s make sure the massive public subsidy is producing an ROI.
Prize Means More Writing, Deeper Learning for American Students
With the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Open Education Solutions announced the winners of the $100,000 Automated Student Assessment Prize (ASAP) this morning in Washington DC. The top three teams, made up of international data scientists, developed predictive algorithms that were able to score thousands of essays very quickly with remarkable accuracy compared to expert graders.
Hewlett Foundation Announces Winners of Essay Scoring Technology Competition
A British particle physicist and sports enthusiast, a data analyst for the National Weather Service in Washington, D.C., and a graduate student from Germany won the $60,000 first prize in a competition to design innovative software to help teachers and school systems assess their students’ writing. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation sponsored the contest and awarded $100,000 to the top three research teams – none of whom have a background in education.