B.Y.O.T Bring Your Own Thoughts
The latest on all student-centered models, leadership development, strategic planning, teacher retention, and all things innovation in K-12 education. We answer questions before you think to ask them.
Classrooms | Curriculum Strategy & Adoption | Personalized Learning
Writing—whether a persuasive essay, lab report, constructed response or research paper—is a consistent element of most performance tasks used by teachers to measure their students’ knowledge, understanding of concepts, and skills. The reasons are many, but perhaps the most important is that the very act of writing, which requires students to make sense of information and ideas and to express that understanding coherently, is itself a critical skill. And yet, despite its importance, there is little consensus among educators at any grade level on what constitutes effective writing, how it should be measured, or even how it should be taught. One step toward solving this conundrum is the consistent use of a general analytic writing rubric.
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Curriculum Strategy & Adoption | Virtual Learning
It’s your goal to make your virtual school program successful. My goal is to help you identify the key factors that can make or break the success of that program. Here in part four of my virtual school blog series, I offer 25 things to consider for your virtual program’s success, grouped under 5 main categories: Strategy, Design, Curriculum, Support and Operations. For each item I’ve asked one key question. Work with your team to answer that question and you’ll be one step closer to a successful virtual school. (P.S. If this looks familiar, you are right. We’ve re-worked our well-received Personalized Learning Implementation Framework to focus on the needs of virtual schools. After all, why should the brick-and-mortar schools have all the fun?)
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Curriculum Strategy & Adoption | Personalized Learning
Selecting the right digital content for your blended or personalized learning initiative can be a daunting task. With literally hundreds of digital tools available, how can school and district leaders successfully navigate the digital content landscape? In our presentation last week at ASCD in Atlanta, Jaraun Dennis*, Angela Chubb, and I set out to tackle this question in our presentation titled “How to Pick the Right Digital Content for Your Students.” According to Jaraun, schools and districts often struggle to select digital tools because they treat the selection process “...like a trip to the candy store. Teachers and administrators go to a conference, see rows and rows of shiny new digital tools, and make a purchase simply based on what they see.” Jaraun continues, “Using this approach, districts end up with lots of digital tools that sit on their shelves without being used and the blended or personalized initiative never reaches its full potential.”
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Curriculum Strategy & Adoption | Virtual Learning
The success of your virtual school may very well depend on how you implement technology and how well you engage your community. Technology is a critical part of your virtual school’s success. Depending on your school model, your virtual school may be entirely run online. It is perhaps obvious, then, that technology is a critical component, but the importance of people and community might be less clear. In our experience, both of these matter and can make a difference between a successful program and a good effort. Below we boil this discussion down to two components to consider for these areas of utmost importance.
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Curriculum Strategy & Adoption | Personalized Learning
I often hear frustration from students that “Math just isn’t for me!” This exclamation is even more troublesome when it comes from middle school girls, because young girls start off strong in math and science but lose interest and confidence as they get older. The Nation’s Report Card revealed in October 2015 that overall U.S. math scores declined for the first time in 25 years, signaling a need for change within the learning process.
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Curriculum Strategy & Adoption | Education Elements
My first year of teaching I was in a room with around 20 computers and 40 students. While this may give away my age, this was in 1999, when computers in classrooms weren’t as much of a “thing” as they are today.
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