Competency-Based Education
Ed Policy
Utah Digital Learning Summit: Blending Learning, Penguins & Dopamine
There would be more and better education options in this country if every state had a Robyn Bagley. She sat on the board of two online schools and is working on a blended high school. She was instrumental in the development and passage of SB65, the nation’s most innovative online learning bill. Bagley’s Parents for Choice in Education and Digital Learning Now! (DLN) co-hosted a summit in Utah this morning bringing together local and national experts in online and blended learning.
Personalized Learning
Competency-Based Progress
Susan Patrick, iNACOL (where I'm a director) and Chris Sturgis teamed up on a great new site, CompetencyWorks. While the shift to digital is key, and extending the reach of great teachers is important, the shift from age-cohorts to to a show-what-you-know system will prove to be the most profound--and challenging--educational change of our time. That's why the conversation and community on CompetencyWorks is so important.
EdTech
SMARTtech Roundup: What’s the word of the week?
Blended Schools & Tools Alabama Digital Boost. The Superintendent of Huntsville City Schools spoke to the district’s successes with digital learning, noting a shift to digital textbooks and plans to boost distance learning to allow teachers to interact with students via internet for extra help. CMS goes BYOT.
Personalized Learning
What the Learning Sciences Tell Us About Competency Education
At a recent meeting sponsored by iNACOL to think deeply about competency and assessment, we talked about what impact the last few decades of learning science should have on doing the best job planning and using competencies for learning.
Personalized Learning
Policy Implications of Online & Blended Learning
At the National Charter School Conference (#NCSC) in Minneapolis yesterday, I participated in a discussion of the Policy Implications of Online & Blended Learning with Jim Griffin, Colorado Leage of Charter Schools, Mickey Revenaugh, Connections Learning, and David Hanson. I told the audience of school heads, authorizers, network leaders and district…
Personalized Learning
10 Must-Haves to Lift Us from the Grading Quagmire
Converting existing schools to a competency-based environment can be a monumental challenge. At the top of the list of controversial items is grading—the old A-F system imprinted in our brains. There are 10 edtech advances that will help make the competency-based environments easier to manage.
Personalized Learning
Making AP a Bigger & Better Competency-Based System
Two million high school students took AP tests this month. AP may be the world's largest competency-based learning system. There are at least five opportunities to make it bigger and better.
Personalized Learning
From Chronology to Competency
This competency-based stuff sounds logical—kids should learn what they’re supposed to learn and show what they know—but tradition runs pretty deep. Parents that want their kid to have the best shot at a good college believe grade point is everything and they want junior to have the ability to earn that A with a little extra credit. The shift to competency rather than chronology as the foundational element of our education system is a more complicated shift than the tradition to digital. Here’s ten blogs on the subject of competency-based learning from the last 8 weeks.
Personalized Learning
10 Elements of Competency-Based Learning
Students should meet learning expectations and show what they know. Competency-based systems are fundamentally different than traditional batch processing by birthday. Here's 10 elements of a blended and performance-based system.
Personalized Learning
Riverside Virtual School Takes a Competency-Based Approach to Online Curriculum
Curriculum is personal. When created, teachers are essentially deciding what information is valuable enough to share with others. Will it challenge, engage, and inspire? Online curriculum allows for flexibility. One of the greatest things about online learning is that students work at their own pace, even with deadlines, the "when to work" is usually determined by the student. This is also one of the biggest challenges with online learning.