personalized learning

EdTech

Silverback Links with Linkit & Gooru

“We call it an instructional improvement system,” said Jim Lewis. As Blaine, Idaho superintendent, Lewis got fed up with the lousy systems designed for tracking student interventions and progress, so he built his own. Other districts asked to use his Mileposts tracking software and he realized they were solving a widespread need. He formed Silverback Learning Solutions in 2010 to make it better and share it more broadly.

EdTech

Book Review: The Leader’s Guide to 21st Century Education

Ken launched the Partnership for 21st Century Learning a decade ago to add the 4Cs--critical thinking and problem solving; communication, collaboration; and creativity and innovation--to the 3Rs. He was successful at gathering corporate support for the agenda but it was slow to be adopted by school districts preoccupied by state testing programs.

Personalized Learning

Changing How We Think About Student Choice in Learning: Recombinant Education

An explosion of innovation has been transforming how we think about learning, and how we organize talent and resources to support learning experiences. School as we once knew it has become ‘unbundled.’ While Ohio has been debating charter schools, vouchers, and e-schools for years, emerging digital and blended learning models have created additional opportunities and new paradigms for thinking about student choice, and with them some demands for navigating this new learning ecosystem.

Leadership

Q&A: Connecting to Community

Building frameworks around community and student needs is essential. In simple terms, identify resources and needs in the communities and tie projects to the classroom learning. Make the curriculum real.

Personalized Learning

Despite Bad News, Progress is Possible

I have a hard time watching evening news--especially in the last few weeks--the headlines are hard to swallow. You can’t help but assume that things are getting worse. It’s depressing. But the news doesn’t give you an accurate picture of the long term trends that are making life better for more people on this planet.

Personalized Learning

Part 1: To Personalize Learning, First Personalize Teaching

The irony is hardly lost on anyone when at education-related professional conferences educators sit in the audience as experts lecture them about how to teach as a guide-on-the-side rather than a sage-on-the stage. A “do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do” moment that often has even the lecturer chuckling.