21st century skills
8 Ways To Encourage Soft Skills (Core Dispositions) in our Children
Parents and teachers alike agree personal growth and development matters, but these qualities still seem intangible, subjective, and hard to see and measure. The very term ‘soft skills’ sounds pretty fluffy and doesn’t command the sense of importance it deserves. So how might we, as parents, highlight and nurture these core dispositions in our children?
The Hard Road to Soft Skills: Leaving Room for Our Children To Fall
If we believe adversity creates character why can’t we let our kids experience it? We let fear win when we shield our children from challenging experiences.
Your Planning Process Signals What’s Important to You
Designing a retreat? Building a budget? Making a plan? Think about what the process will signal to your community. We suggest a process that is simple, transparent, and inclusive. Remember, how may be as important as what you decide.
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.
It’s Time to Trash the Terms “Non-Cogs” and “Soft Skills”
By: Andy Calkins. In this blog Andy suggests a deliberate adoption of language that lives up to the central importance of persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence in students’ genuine readiness for everything they encounter during their PreK-12 experience.
Designing A Network Of Education Innovation Clusters
By: Steven Hodas. With support from the Grable Foundation, Innovate NYC Schools and Digital Promise are launching the design phase of the Innovation Cluster Network to bring together educators, startups, policymakers, investors, researchers, and community groups across the usual boundaries that separate them.
The Power of Parents, Teachers, and Technology in Character Education
How character is acquired, how parents and other adults shape the character of their children, and how school-based, digital learning could advance intentional character growth.
Flexible Learning Time Provides System Approach to Differentiation in a Competency Education School
Brian Stack, principal of Sanborn Regional High School in New Hampshire shares how developing a flexible learning time each day provides intervention and enrichment for students and how this time has been a key to providing students with the differentiation and personalization needed success in their competency-based system.
LearnZillion: Dreaming Big About Collaborative PD
Historically, most PD has been the low engagement top-down model. PLCs have benefits of teacher-owned collaboration. The LearnZillion approach “combines the rigor and consistency of the top-down approach with the benefits of teacher collaboration,” said Westendorf.
New Assessments for New Skills
Without measurement the teaching of collaboration is extremely difficult. The current challenge is how to develop Collaborative Assessment tasks, particularly formative assessments that align with local curriculum, contexts and needs.