Social Learning Vs. Informal Learning: Can You Tell The Difference?
In this article, Christopher Pappas delves into the differences between social learning and informal learning, and share tips on how to use both in eLearning. Learning can happen anytime, anywhere, with those around us serving as invaluable sources of inspiration, experience, and knowledge. In many respects, the world is our teacher, but we must be… Read More ›
The Benefits and Challenges of Student-Designed Learning
Science Leadership Academy students have many opportunities throughout their four years to choose how and what they investigate in their classes, and by senior year they are adept at choosing their own essay topics, meeting deadlines, staying focused while working online, and coming up with creative projects that matter to them personally. But when a… Read More ›
#RealTalk: Providence Students Raise Their Voices
Megan Harrington is a Communications Associate at the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. You can reach her on Twitter at @NellieMaeEdFdn. On a sunny Wednesday afternoon in April, over 100 high school students gathered at the Providence Career and Technical Academy cafeteria, talking with friends, setting up tables with sheets of paper and markers, and… Read More ›
UDL in ESSA
With the new Every Student Succeeds Act, federal K-12 education law now defines and endorses Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a scientifically-based approach for personalizing learning. What does ESSA say about UDL? What are the implications for education practitioners and researchers? Join CAST for a presentation and discussion. The webinar will be held May… Read More ›
Making the Shift from Community Engagement to Community Collaboration
This article explores how leaders are helping to pilot a new way of working with the community that embraces collaboration in an effort to shift the tide. Over time, community engagement has largely become a one-way mechanism for districts to push out information about initiatives and programs into the local community. Along the way, a… Read More ›
The Importance of High-School Mentors
This article stresses the importance of role models. When it comes to helping young people succeed, education experts and nonprofits are embracing the idea that a broad web of formal and informal role models is key. This video from The Atlantic documents the power that mentors can have at a defining juncture in the lives of… Read More ›
Matching Edtech Products With Neurological Learning Goals
This post can help you make a list of what you want from edtech digital tools that will best suit your goals and are most consistent with neuroscience research correlations about how the brain most successfully processes information. The word edtech refers to educational technology that includes online learning activities through games, websites, computer-assisted instruction,… Read More ›
Developing a Sense of Agency
This post explores how giving students a sense of agency can transform the way you impact your classroom. Students’ desire to help solve meaningful problems is too often an untapped resource hidden by the assumption that the teacher needs always to be in control of the classroom. When educators shift the paradigm from controlling to empowering,… Read More ›
The Difference Between Blended Learning and Personalized Learning, and Why it Matters
This article is about ending one-size-fits-all education. At LEAP Innovations, personalized learning is defined as learning anytime, anywhere—that is focused on, paced for, and led with the learner, and designed around each individual learner’s needs, strengths, interests, and goals. Blended learning is defined as teaching and learning infused with technology to better inform and direct the… Read More ›
How Cross District Collaboration is Driving Personalized Learning in Rhode Island
Over the past two decades, schools across the country have joined a national movement to integrate digital and face-to-face personalized learning — also known as blended instruction–into their curriculums. At the Highlander Institute in Rhode Island, we help schools and districts make these transformations and provide learners with the support they need to thrive… Read More ›
When Celebrating Learning Differences is at the Heart of School Culture
This article explores how Individualized Education Programs (IEPS), typically created for special education students, can be a used as a model for all students and make personalization on a large scale easier and more accessible to all students. When special education teachers create IEPs for students with learning differences, a variety of professionals come together with… Read More ›
Blended, Project-Based, and Social Emotional Learning at Thrive Public Schools
This article explores how Thrive Public Schools in San Diego is creating a student-centered learning environment for its students. Thrive, a 200 student K-8 school, has a makerspace where students build stuff and work out marble trajectories, and gives a glimpse into the future of learning—blended, personalized, and competency-based. The article includes tools, ideas for implementation… Read More ›