What the Savviest School Administrators Know About Education Technology
This article discusses the challenge administrators face as they choose between a large array of ed technology for their schools. Administrators must take into consideration evidence of effectiveness, privacy, and time needed for training, amongst a host of other criteria when selecting technology to support personalized learning. The article outlines and provides links to a… Read More ›
Ensuring ‘Anytime Anywhere’ Access in a High-Poverty District
This transcript of an interview with Deputy Superintendent of Educational Services for the Santa Ana Unified School District, David Haglund, covers the importance of access to high quality technology and experiences for students from high poverty districts. He discusses how their district has used Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies and allocated scarce resources to… Read More ›
Why a School’s Master Schedule Is a Powerful Enabler of Change
This KQED MindShift blog article follows the school-wide improvement led by Principal Jerry Smith at Luella High School outside Atlanta, Georgia. Looking to drastically transform classrooms and move to a more inquiry-based approach, the school competed for and won a Next Generation Systems Initiative grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to begin their… Read More ›
How Lobsters are Keeping Students in School
This article explores the move to a personalized learning program in one small rural community in Maine. Deer Isle-Stonington High School was struggling with one of the highest dropout rates in the state, losing many students early to the lobster fishing industry that is the life-blood of the town. A school improvement plan, begun in… Read More ›
High Schools Create Career Connections
This article explores a modern approach to career and technical education. Using school examples from all over the country, the author introduces a broad array of career programs in a number of industries from film to medicine. In all of the examples, education and industry leaders have worked together to identify the skills needed for… Read More ›
Launching the Student-Centered Learning Research Collaborative
Originally Posted on Competency Works, November 11, 2016 There is increasing evidence supporting the growth of student-centered learning (competency-based learning is one of the four elements) to promote success for all students and drive equity in education. Yet, work remains. How can we curate research-based best practices for implementation? How can we scale student-centered learning,… Read More ›
EdNews Round-up: Education under a New Administration (Plus Civic Education Resources)
America woke up on Wednesday morning to a new President-elect, and an acknowledgement of a deeply divided country. During the next four years (and beyond), Students at the Center will continue to promote an approach to teaching and learning that supports an education system that values, respects, connects, challenges, inspires, and engages ALL students, especially… Read More ›
Can Personalized Learning Work in Rural America?
In this article, the author asserts that personalized learning can help resolve some of the unique challenges that rural schools and students in rural districts face. However, most of the initiatives to implement personalized learning, and the corresponding education research, have focused on urban settings. The article looks at how implementation in a rural setting is… Read More ›
Goodbye, Long Nights of Lesson Planning: The Secrets to Successful Virtual Co-Teaching
In this article two teachers from different states discuss how they are co-teaching virtually. After meeting at a summer professional development fellowship program, Justin Taylor and Zach Seagle decided they could decrease their workload and support each other by implementing similar core concepts and practices in their government and politics courses in Tennessee and Connecticut. Both… Read More ›
3 Tips For Introducing Competency-Based Learning Into K-12
This article shares three ways, based on feedback and interviews from teachers and researchers of competency-based learning (CBL), to introduce competency-based learning into a new environment. CBL refers to the notion of allowing learners to acquire credits based on goals they hit rather than the amount of time they spend in a chair, often referred to as… Read More ›
8 Tech Tips for Differentiating in an Inclusion Classroom
In this article, an educator who has worked for ten years with students with disabilities shares eight tips for differentiating in an inclusion classroom. The author gives examples from her experiences of how to better engage students with disabilities through access to technology in the classroom. Some of the tips include ‘use technology tools to close… Read More ›
Personalized Learning: How Kids are Getting into College by Mastering Their Skills
In this article, Brian Stack, a Principal from New Hampshire, explores parents’ fears that because colleges do not understand competency education, attendance at a high school implementing this student-centered approach could harm their child’s admissions chances. First, this principal provides a simple overview of competency education for families. Next, he describes competency education efforts at… Read More ›