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.
Protecting Your Career: Why Virtual School Teachers Need Liability Insurance
More than a year ago, Sarah Walters* was a well‐liked virtual school teacher living in a small community in Colorado. Sarah had taught at a suburban school in its close knit community for more than five years before transferring to a new, virtual school for increased career flexibility where she received many awards. It was in this position that the rug was swiftly pulled out from under her after she was fired for contact deemed “inappropriate” by school administrators.
Digital Portfolios for Primary Students
“Mrs. Cassidy, I showed my blog to my parents last night. I showed them everything on my blog. I showed them all the things on the computer!” That was my morning greeting from one of my six-year-old students not long ago. He had received a surplus computer1 from my school division the day before, and had suddenly been able to show his parents all of the learning artifacts he’d been adding to his digital portfolio through the course of the school year.
How to Work Together to Build Capacities for Collaboration
Having challenged, in my previous post for Getting Smart, some of the common notions we educators share about collaboration, I acknowledge that it is only fair that I take some time to wrestle with what collaboration really means and why it is so important as we prepare our students for the future.
10 Conversations at COSN
The COSN conference is underway in Washington DC. School district edtech directors find themselves in a very dynamic situation these days. Here’s 10 of session and hallway conversation topics from yesterday:
California Student Bill of Rights: Access for All Students
Led by David Haglund, a group of California districts drafted The California Student Bill of Rights to ensure that every student has access to a well-taught college prep curriculum.
Technically Speaking: How Common are the Common Core?
How common are the CCSS really, and who is systematically tracking state-specific CCSS modifications and additions? Doug Levin asks important questions about the Common Core. How much variation in state-specific CCSS standards language can be tolerated at a technical level to ensure interoperability across states? What is the process for ongoing governance of CCSS implementation at the technical level?
Tony Bryk on Learning to Improve
As President the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Tony Bryk is doing applied research across networks his team created with support from a variety of foundations. Tony and team keep asking the networks “What does good look like and how does one go about getting good?”
Are American Students Workforce Ready?
Are American students workforce ready? To what extent do schools teach workforce readiness skills? How do we measure workforce readiness of individual students? Is a national measure of workforce readiness a needed tool to increase the focus on workforce readiness? Can such a measure be developed and endorsed and utilized by all the sectors that “theoretically” need it?
The Cloud: Too Big to Fail
Almost any tech device that is having “its year” this year, is most likely tied into the cloud. What exactly is the cloud? It’s simply a metaphor for the Internet, and in my own metaphor, the cloud will always include bright, sunshiny days.
Alliance President Bob Wise Addresses the Common Core Naysayers
Following up on Alliance Senior Fellow Robert Rothman's blog post from last week, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, responds to individuals who are skeptical of the impact that the common core state standards will have on student achievement.