Expertise: Practice

Getting Smart Podcast | The Future of Blended Learning

This podcast looks at the future of blended learning, from the current issue of its multiple definitions to schools leading in next-generation models. There is also an episode on the importance of blended and personalized learning for educators and to the growing importance of having a guiding vision for implementation. Source Organization: Getting Smart Visit… Read More ›

Student Generated Discussion Spawns Meaningful Learning

This article explores why teachers must demonstrate to students that they can be trusted. They can grow that trust by allowing students to jump in and take control of the direction of their learning. In a classroom, the unexpected can be both scary and exhilarating, which is why there is a need to create environments… Read More ›

Digital Learning Day—Baltimore County Public Schools (Video)

This video shows digital learning in action from the Baltimore County Schools. The schools have a one-to-one initiative known as S.T.A.T. (Students & Teachers Accessing Tomorrow), which aims to provide more than 100,000 students with a personal digital learning device by 2018. The district has combined their staff, teachers, parents, faith and community partners, business leaders,… Read More ›

I’m a Teacher Who Hates Technology—So Let Me Design the Products

Ashley Lamb-Sinclair is a teacher who believes that educational technology is often just something else teachers have to juggle, rather than something they can help create in order to ease professional burdens. From her experience, the technology given to teachers to work within classrooms or to help with professional development does not connect to the… Read More ›

What is School? Student Voice and Agency

“We all want our students to become creative critical thinkers who are able to navigate the challenges of the 21st century. To do that, they need to take ownership over their learning, and we need to guide them there. So how do we define student ownership? And how can we develop it in our classrooms… Read More ›

How Technology Helped Deliver a Taste of Victory to a Struggling Newark School

This article is about the plan to use new instructional models to get better test results for the Quitman Street Renew School. The schools that has used Education Elements’ blended learning models to help improve test results. The journey to personalized learning at Quitman Street Renew School began during the 2013-14 school year. Because over 80 percent… Read More ›

Moving from a Factory Model to…What?

A new campaign, tentatively titled #NextEdStory, is aimed at catalyzing a crowd-sourced, generative discussion among the leaders and converts to student-centered, next generation learning. Next Gen Learning Challenges and Education Reimagined will be hosting a Twitter chat to discuss: While we agree factory school models are a problem, we don’t have a correspondingly clear image or metaphor for what we’re… Read More ›

Incorporating 21st Century Skills in the Classroom

Students at the Center Hub Video Tool Suite explores how teachers incorporate 21st-century skills into core subject classes. What does it look like in action? How does this help prepare students for college and career, and enrich their core subject learning?

Can a Truly Student-Centered Education Be Available to All?

The Big Picture Learning Network started with the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center in Providence, Rhode Island, and has expanded to almost 100 schools around the world, with 55 in the U.S. alone. The majority of the U.S.-based schools are traditional in-district public schools, although about 25 percent are public charter schools. Many are located… Read More ›

Personalized Learning is Not a Product

This article argues the possible down-sides to personalized learning. For all the hype surrounding so-called “personalized learning,” plenty of skeptics worry that it could do more harm than good—especially within the context of larger trends in academia. They worry that, among other things, personalized learning products will be used not to improve student learning, but… Read More ›

How Da Vinci Schools Built an Instructional Model Around “Failure”

This article describes how the Da Vinci schools are giving their students the right to fail. Giving students the freedom—and fearlessness—to fail first requires them to take ownership of their own learning, and Da Vinci achieves that with a curriculum centered around project-based learning, or PBL. Source Organization: EdSurge Visit the Resource