Learner-Centered
A New Start on Accountability
Building off the new blog series, #TheNewAccountability, how student-centered learning, meaningful data, and innovation zones can improve school accountability systems.
..But What Are They Learning? 3 Tips for Deeper Learning
As we look at the start of fall, it is a great time to refocus our energies. When we worry that students aren't learning, we come up with reactive solutions, but how can we get in front of these issues? How can we move from planning activities, to planning learning?
What’s the Uber for Education?
An Uber-like education would be student-centered: personalized, competency-based, with high student ownership, and would happen anywhere anytime.
Real Learning for Real Life
Washington State leaders will gather in Seattle on Tuesday and in Spokane on Wednesday to consider the implications of these two historic shifts occurring simultaneously. Hosted by Partnership for Learning and Washington Roundtable, the convening will explore the skills gap, new standards, and next-generation learning environments.
Best Practices in Alternative & Competency-Based Learning
In short, Edvisions wants to change the school day to change the learning life. They transition from spoon feeding (traditional public education) to showing students they’re able to start feeding themselves with choice about their education based on their interest.
Big Picture: Student-Centered & Competency-Based Learning
Radical personalization is the core innovation of the Big Picture school model--it was flex before we knew what to call it. Their approach to internships remains a best practice. Twenty years after Littky’s groundbreaking work at Thayer, the rest of us are finally talking about student-centered competency-based learning.
For The Ambivalent Student: Four Projects to Get Them Interested In School
Even the most ambivalent child can take an interest in school if you utilize the right techniques. One way to get a child interested in learning is to incorporate projects that they will be interested in. The following four projects will help an ambivalent student take an interest in school and learning.
Review: JFF’s Curricular Opportunities in the Digital Age
“Historically, most classrooms have been “curriculum centered” rather than “student centered.” David Rose, a Harvard developmental neuropsychologist, and Jenna Gravel, a doctoral student, open their recent paper Curricular Opportunities in the Digital Age. If you’ve been working with adpative technologies, you won’t find any new information here. If you teach in a traditional environment, this would be a good paper to discuss in a professional development session, but pair it with The Rise of Blended Learning.
Jobs for the Future Launches Project On Student-Centered Learning
Jobs for the Future (JFF) recently released three papers as the beginning of a series in its new project "Students at the Center: Teaching and Learning in the Era of the Common Core." The first three papers focus on: What student-centered teaching and instruction looks like; How school districts can approach student-centered learning; and The brain function behind effective learning.
Building with Rammed Earth
This year I had the great fortune of getting to know some thoughtful charter school leaders from across the country. They were convened by the Partners forDeveloping Futures, a group that makes grants to promising charter schools who are led by people of color. I just returned from a trip to New York City where our group visited three schools that were in their early stages of development and exemplars of school design.