Archive
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Personalized Learning
More than Words Alone Can Say: Writing with Images in the Digital Age
Last week, on the day before Thanksgiving vacation, several of my fifth-graders voluntarily stayed after school with me to work on a project for which they would receive no grade: producing calendars based on poems and illustrations they had created for a class project.
Ed Policy
Bush-Sponsored Summit Calls for Excellence at Scale
The fifth annual Excellence in Action National Summit on Education Reform, was held in Washington DC the last two days. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush chair of the host organization, kicked off the event Tuesday by urging state policy makers to hold firm on college and career ready standards.
EdTech
Kickboard Launches Free Starter Account For K-12 Educators
Kickboard, a school analytics platform for comprehensive student performance profiles, today launched free "Starter Accounts" for K-12 educators. Individuals or teams up to three teachers can create Kickboard accounts to manage classrooms at no charge.
Ed Policy
Answers For & Lessons From Critics of Competency-Based Learning
I'm trying to square two things that happened last week. The Nellie Mae Foundation issued a great report called Making Mastery Work: A Close Up View of Competency Education (MMW), a visit to 11 cool schools. The other event was a Facebook dialog with unschoolers that think competency-based schemes are more testing in a fancy package.
Personalized Learning
Calling All Resources: Fostering the Right Time to Write
Creating the ultimate writing atmosphere that inspires students to produce their very best level has always coincided with a constant search, a continual revamping, and an open platform for students’ suggestions. As a collective writing community, Studio 113 students and I seek the most powerful writers’ tools; they may range from Stephen King’s On Writing to the soothing writers’ website OmmWriter to a simple online dictionary. During this incessant quest, we remain open to any ideas that will help us produce a setting conducive to crafting excellent, heartfelt prose, rhetoric, and poetry. In essence, we seek to create originals, and fostering the right time to write requires a number of resources.
Personalized Learning
Free College Courses, Cheap Credits, Flexible Pathways
Contributions to free post-secondary learning opportunities have been breathtaking this year. Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been around for a while but the number and variety of courses, the investment, and aggregate enrollment exploded this year.
Ed Policy
Data Quality Campaign Releases Annual Report On Data to Improve Achievement
Data Quality Campaign (DQC) today released its annual state analysis, Data for Action 2012, which highlights states' progress in supporting effective education data use to improve student achievement.
Personalized Learning
Wikispaces For Designing Common Core Activities
Are you wondering where to begin to adopt the Common Core ELA standards? While there are many individual standards to sift through, it’s important to take a step back and look at the big picture to gain an understanding of the importance of the teacher’s role in designing learning experiences to facilitate a more active classroom that supports students as producers.
Personalized Learning
Why a Badge Is Better Than an A+
We are not totally gamifying our classrooms or currently using Edmodo, so this year I was not really considering the possibility of awarding my students digital badges. That is, until I recently came across this awesome site and FREE web tool for teachers, classbadges.com and I knew I had to have these for my students.
Personalized Learning
Need to Energize Your Class? Just Add Wax & Be Still
These stagnant classrooms, indicated by boredom-induced silence, constant class disruptions, or mediocre student work examples, benefit greatly from the implementation of interactive learning structures. One such learning model that is sure to invigorate any lesson is the "Wax Museum" learning structure created in Studio 113.