STEM
Personalized Learning

MSOE: An Example of Education for Employability

Tom Vander Ark

The Milwaukee School of Engineering experience is a pretty good example of “rigor, relevance, and relationships” (as my friends from Big Picture would say). Their commitment to employability is as strong as any campus that I’ve visited. It’s a place that seems to be asking the right questions about what’s next. Unemployment rates would be lower and economic growth rates would be higher if every city had an urban jobs engine like MSOE.
Personalized Learning

Next Generation Science Standards: A Guide to the 2nd Draft

Guest Author

The second draft of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) is now available for public comment at http://www.nextgenscience.org/. This final public draft will be available online for everyone to review and provide feedback until January 29. Following this comment period, Achieve and the lead state partners will continue revising the draft, and expect to release the final standards for states to consider adopting in March.
Personalized Learning

The Virtues of Daydreaming & 30 Other Surprising (& Controversial) Research Findings About How Students Learn

Guest Author

Have you checked your assumptions about student learning at the door? People in general, hold onto beliefs that are shaped by early experiences, the media, and faulty influences. The following list is a compilation of research that may surprise you. Video games, e-books, playtime, and music are all a part of an educator’s repertoire. Read on, and be prepared to put your traditional beliefs aside as science points to innovative methods that indicate future success.
Personalized Learning

Seattle School Breaks Down Language Barrier to Improve Math Proficiency

Getting Smart Staff

Personalizing and engaging students in math is an ongoing challenge in schools across the country. In Washington State, where countless organizations are working diligently to improve access to quality math learning for students’ futures, some schools are implementing a blended learning math program that draws upon game-based learning to increase math proficiency.
Personalized Learning

Big History: An Organizing Principle for a Compelling Class, Block or School

Tom Vander Ark

After Bill Gates saw a series of lectures by David Christian on big history Gates said, "He really blew me away. Here's a guy who's read across the sciences, humanities, and social sciences and brought it together in a single framework. It made me wish that I could have taken big history when I was young, because it would have given me a way to think about all of the school work and reading that followed. In particular, it really put the sciences in an interesting historical context and explained how they apply to a lot of contemporary concerns."
Personalized Learning

Math Game Transforms Classrooms in 3 Critical Ways

Getting Smart Staff

Recently, Colorado Springs School District 11 was honored to receive the Rising Star Award from MIND Research Institute for our implementation of Spatial Temporal Math (ST Math or “JiJi Math”). Our experience of leveraging JiJi Math across 36 elementary schools for our 13,000 students has proven to be a valuable opportunity for systems learning, and our partnership with MIND is a story of improvement by the numbers.
Personalized Learning

How Augmented Reality Can Change Teaching

Guest Author

The technology behind Augmented Reality is taking a real-world view and enhancing it with computer-generated imagery. Whether this is done by using a computer monitor and camera or fitted goggles to imprint imagery in the lenses, augmenting in this manner has great possibilities for a variety of tasks.
Leadership

Four Strategies in Four Years that Will Transform a Community Forever

Lisa Duty

Annually, for more than 45 years, the city of Reynoldsburg, Ohio has celebrated the Tomato Festival-- a nod to its heritage as the birthplace of the commercial tomato. This middle-America town also boasts one other claim to fame: A so-called "traditional" LEA, namely Reynoldsburg City Schools (RCS), which is poised to be a breakout star among serious implementers of thoroughly re-engineered conceptions of learning and schooling.