future of learning
EdTech
Seeing is Believing: The Awesomeness that is zSpace
You see, when I think about my recent test-drive of the zSpace System, which is defined by the self-titled technology provider as “a virtual reality environment for immersive exploration, visualization, and learning,” I find myself with a swirling brain full of positive adjectives that ironically render me nearly speechless.
Leadership
Las Vegas: Downtown Project, Blended Progress
“Education is the bedrock on which a truly great city is built,” according to Tony Hsieh. His Downtown Projects is reshaping the old city center north of the Vegas Strip. Clark Co has some great magnets and blending learning plans.
Difference Making
Student Entrepreneurship in Action
By: Esther Wojcicki. What does it take to get students interested in learning entrepreneurial skills? I can tell you what doesn’t work---teaching to the test, which is unfortunately is a national obsession today. Testing does not lead to real world skills.
Personalized Learning
Choosing Excellent Schools – Not Charter Versus District
By: Don Shalvey. Too often these days in schools, if you support charter schools you are seen as against the school district or even against public schools. Or, if you are a supporter of the district, you are often seen as anti-charter and against giving educational choices to parents.
Personalized Learning
Design Thinking: A Human-Centered Approach to Innovation in Education
By: Sandy Speicher. We tend to think first about the needs of the system and create solutions from there. But what if we looked first to the needs of people, and then designed ways the system could meet its goals by serving these needs? This is the heart of how design thinking gets to innovative solutions.
Personalized Learning
Houston: As Good as it Gets
School improvement is more about execution than innovation, but doing what works — like tutoring struggling students — consistently across a network seems pretty innovative in education.
Personalized Learning
New Study Reveals Trends in Professional Learning
By: Jason Lange. A 2013 Australian study conducted by the government-funded Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership and the nonprofit Innovation Unit examined 50 high-performing corporations, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations from around the globe to identify common features of professional learning experiences.
Personalized Learning
Got Game? How Play Enhances Learning
By: Delicia Sepulveda. For the past two years, I've had a hand in creating games that today reach hundreds of thousands of students, helping them learn math in a fun and engaging way. I get to see students playing with puzzles that I designed, and I get to experience first-hand the impact of these games on student learning.
Personalized Learning
College Now: Scott Mendelsberg’s Great New Book on College Prep
In many high schools, the shuffle of a discipline-based, big-catalog master schedule can lead to lack of sustained relationships and increased risks for students to fall through the cracks. Important outcomes get little attention with the lack of an advisory spine. In his new book College Now, Scott Mendelsberg takes on these problems of aims and architecture; of inequitably distributed resources and expectations; and the political dysfunction of urban school districts.
Personalized Learning
Talent Is UNDERrated
By: Renee Hill. An intelligent, capable, results-driven pool of individuals who are willing to act interdependently and accountably, is essential for any school or school district to competently meet the needs of today’s students, parents, professionals, and communities. Talent is THAT important.