Archive
component:where.learning-spaces
Flex Schools Personalize, Enhance and Accelerate Learning
Flex schools offer an online core curriculum with on-site academic support and guidance, integration and application opportunities, and extracurricular activities. Students in flex schools progress as they demonstrate mastery in most courses. Every community should have a flex option that provides a fully supported individualized pathways to graduation.
Q&A: How Can We Increase STEM Opportunities for Special Needs Students?
The upcoming ABC Family movie, "A Smile as Big as the Moon," brings teacher Mike Kersjes and Joe Layden's moving memoir about one special education class to life. Mr. Kersjes, a special education teacher for more than 10 years, shares the compelling story of how his class was the first group of special-ed students to attend Space Camp, a prestigious and competitive program at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.
Building a Thoughtful Blend
Innosight Institute’s report The Rise of Blended Learning defines it as “any time a student learns at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace.” To their definition, I add a requirement that the shift to an online environment for part of the student is intended to boost learning and operating productivity. Here's a description of rotation and flex schools and tools.
A 2020 Vision for Riverside Unified School District
By: David Haglund The introduction of information technologies into virtually every aspect of our lives has led education leaders, parents, and students to think differently about where and how learning takes place. Traditional concepts of schools, classrooms, and learning are being challenged as technologies introduce new ideas and capabilities into the system and new school models are emerging (e.g., Riverside Virtual School www.rvslink.net). Beyond the school walls, the global business market is demanding a new set of skills from college graduates and has an increasingly growing pool of workers from which to draw the best qualified employees.
Michael Crow Remarks on University Design
Michael Crow, the president at Arizona State University, remarks on current and future university design across the country at the Future of State Universities Conference this October in Dallas, Texas. Crow argues that we need to design universities that are widely accessible to everyone, highly focused on problem solving for a more competitive economy and especially supportive of the children of the working class. He says that most public universities today would be unwilling to take on this model because it's too complex and tough to implement.
7 Things to Include in Your Innovation Conference
If I was hosting an innovation conference focused on secondary education, here's seven things I'd include: a design prize, interesting breakouts, virtual field trips, lessons from workforce development, cool components, and a design studio.
Not My Parents High School
I spent the last two days in Chicago with principals and superintendents including Glenn Vos from Holland Christian Schools (HCS). While it includes the high school that my parents graduated from, this is not a Rip Van Winkle school system. Ted Sizer and the Coalition of…
From Place to Service
The shift from print-based learning to digital learning is a big deal, but more fundamental is the shift from institution-centric education to student-centered learning. Rich Halverson spoke about Rethinking Education at SREB last month. Below is a list adapted from Rich’s book about the10 shifts that…
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.
Customizing Without Computers
I saw the future of high schools yesterday. It wasn't about cool digital aps, laptops, or talking to other young people on the other side of the world. It was re-engineering schooling around young people and their lives. Only in its second year,ACE Leadership High School, a charter school in Albuquerque, has the key to to unlocking our young people's hearts and minds.