Visioning Toolkit: Laying the Groundwork for a Community-Wide Vision for Personalized Learning

A district’s vision is central to everything they do and everything they hope to accomplish. If you really want to change the system, a vision must be created by and lived throughout your community.

In this toolkit you’ll find the following resources to help you begin and sustain the work of implementing personalized learning: Guidance on crafting a system-wide vision for personalized learning, incorporating diverse stakeholder voices Questions and considerations for finding the right people to champion the work of personalizing learning Direction on how to identify factors that may impact… Read More ›

Fourth Industrial Revolution & the Impact on Education

Presented by COSN New technologies like artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and robotics are emerging with the potential for having a transformative impact on industry, the economy and society as a whole. The speed and scope of this technological transformation is exponential with the potential for unlimited possibilities and endless opportunities. What are the implications for… Read More ›

Visible Thinking Resources

lightbulb and crumpled paper showing a creative idea

This article, When Kids Have Structure for Thinking, Better Learning Emerges, looks deeply at how to best teach students about metacognition. It underscores the importance of thinking structures which, with continued use, provide concrete strategies to build thinking skills while deepening content learning. The article discusses work done by the Harvard Graduate School of Education Project Zero, which conducts… Read More ›

Waukesha STEM Academy Series

This four-part series featuring Waukesha STEM Academy (WSA) is part of a series on personalized, proficiency-based education in Wisconsin. This blog post gives an introduction to what’s happening state-wide. WSA is a competency-based school with personalized learning for all 300 students it serves. It spans grades 6-8, but students move at their own pace and… Read More ›

Guide for Creating Trusted Learning Environments

The following guidebook was designed to help communities create positive and safe learning environments for students inside and outside of school, on and off-line. The classroom is moving beyond a physical space to include learning networks enabled by technologies. These environments should advance learning and foster innovation without sacrificing the safety of the learner. To achieve this,… Read More ›

Charting the Course for the Next Phase of K-12 Competency-Based Education

This webinar will discuss the recent iNACOL report on competency education, Quality and Equity by Design: Charting the Course for the Next Phase of K-12 Competency-Based Education. The report examines four key issues in the field  which must be considered to continue to scale up competency education efforts with quality and sustain them over time:… Read More ›

2017 State of the States: Connectivity

This report was compiled by EducationSuperHighway, a nonprofit focused on upgrading Internet access in every public school classroom in America to ensure equal access of all students to digital learning opportunities. The report looks at ways to connect the remaining 6.5 million students in 40 states that still have limited access. The authors detail three main… Read More ›

Comparing Good Jobs to Good Classrooms: Essential Elements for Supporting People to Learn, Persist, and Succeed

Originally posted on September 19 on Jobs for the Future Recently, I read an employer profile for the Kentucky-based materials manufacturer Universal Woods, written by Steven Dawson. Universal Woods is a manufacturer of hard surface panels and flooring headquartered in Louisville, KY, with 200 employees, and operations in Ohio, Australia, and Belgium. To many, Universal Woods… Read More ›

The Role of Noncognitive Factors in Student Success

This short research brief and accompanying video, produced by the UChicago Consortium on School Research, highlight some of the big ideas from their research on noncognitive factors.  It outlines the importance of the following five factors to student success in the classroom and beyond and examines the importance of student’s environments in the development of these factors… Read More ›

Digital Promise Research Map

This database managed by Digital Promise brings together thousands of research articles on key education practices. The database is searchable and organized to allow the user to see relationships between topics and subtopics. The database includes  student-centered learning topics such as: Student motivation, Cognition and learning Online learning The website features an “Ask A Researcher” section… Read More ›

Building Competencies for Careers: Preparing Students for Twenty-First-Century Jobs

Truly innovative schools teach students how to apply content knowledge learned in the classroom to real-world situations while helping them develop the critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and other deeper learning skills that today’s jobs demand. This webinar, co-hosted by the Alliance for Excellent Education, Center on Education Policy (CEP), and Council for a Strong America,… Read More ›