Education Elements February 2017 Newsletter
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February 2017 Newsletter

On Our Minds

 

Renewed Focus and a New Board Member

We are so excited to announce the addition of Jack Witlin to our Board of Directors. Jack Witlin is a retired Principal from Deloitte Consulting, where he served the company and its predecessor firms for nearly 40 years. Witlin will replace Jennifer Carolan. Witlin is particularly excited about working with the leadership of Education Elements because of the strong foundation the company has in both developing professionals and in positively impacting outcomes in the classroom for its school district clients. “When the mission is noble it is easy to get excited about helping out. Nothing could be more important than upping the performance of our children. I hope to leverage my experience in order to accelerate the great progress that Education Elements has already had in building an outstanding consulting firm and in making positive change happen for their education clients.”

After serving on the board since the organization’s founding in 2010, Jennifer Carolan of Reach Capital stepped off the board to enable Education Elements to focus on its consulting practice. “I am excited about all the ways Education Elements has supported school districts to-date, but am looking forward even more to what’s to come for their organization,” said Carolan. “We have seen time and again that good products matter, but focusing on the people and the pedagogy matters even more. Without a focus on implementation, initiatives may fail and Education Elements prevents that from happening.”

Please join us in welcoming Jack to the Ed Elements Community!

A PL Power Couple

We are excited to announce that we have kicked off work this week with Waterloo Central School District in Waterloo, NY. All four schools in the district will complete the design process this spring with a soft launch next fall. Superintendent Terri Bavis is the wife of Don Bavis, superintendent of Marion CSD, another one of our district partners. Welcome to the family to Terri and Waterloo CSD, and congratulations to our first husband-wife personalized learning duo!

Blueprinting the Curriculum Adoption Process in St. Louis

We have partnered with CELT (Center for Education Leadership and Technology) to facilitate the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations-funded project that brings a comprehensive and replicable curriculum adoption process to St. Louis Public School (SLPS) District. It is a 5-month project that examines the current curriculum adoption process for the school district, provides a gap analysis, then develops a future state process by closely collaborating with the district curriculum team. The need for a dynamic curriculum adoption process that meets the needs of our children in this fast-changing, connected age is so critical, and we’re proud to be partnering with the SLPS for this work! We’ve recently kicked off our first workshop and we’re so thrilled to be working with such a passionate group of educators who want to offer the best curriculum for our students.


Product Spotlight

 

Touchpoint and Its New Resource Library

District wide initiatives are tough work--the number of documents and the amount of information needed to manage the initiative do not make it any easier. Resources pile up quickly and become difficult to track down. As the school year goes on, it is easy to forget where to find an important resource, or who shared it with you or what it is even called.

That’s why we created the new resource library in Touchpoint. It is a one-stop-shop where users can search for and discover all resources tied to their Personalized Learning initiative. As your initiative continues and more and more resources are create and then shared, you can always go to the resource library to find what you need. Users can search by keyword and even filter by project phase to quickly get to documents and artifacts.

Touchpoint Resource Library Screenshot - Edit Feb2017.png

 

Partner Spotlight

 

Blended Learning with i-Ready

Blended learning has captured the attention of educators, driving countless experiments and incredible investments. While their approaches differ widely, educators’ efforts share a common goal: create more productive classrooms and a more personalized, effective educational experience for students.

To make blended learning a reality, educators need new tools designed specifically to fulfill the promise of blended learning.

The i-Ready Blended Learning System

i-Ready is an integrated blended learning program that makes this promise a reality for teachers and their students. i-Ready saves teachers time by connecting rich assessment data to online personalized learning and teacher-led instruction in a system that is designed to work seamlessly together.

Assessment Data That Informs Instruction

  • Pinpoints student needs down to the sub-skill level with a valid and reliable adaptive K–12 Diagnostic.
  • Tracks mastery of grade-level standards, monitors student growth, and predicts student proficiency on rigorous state assessments.
  • Provides powerfully simple reports that help educators provide targeted instruction.

 Engaging, Individualized Instruction

  • Uses assessment data to create personalized learning plans for every student.
  • Enables teachers to provide differentiated instruction, both on and offline.

 Whole Group and Small Group Instruction

  • Provides rigorous teacher-led instructional materials that fully prepare students for the standards in a highly supportive way.
  • Offers a virtual filing cabinet of instructional resources, including teacher-led activities, interactive whiteboard lessons, and detailed lesson plans for all
    K–8 standards.


Learn more about the i-Ready Blended Learning System and see the third-party research showing that it is proven to maximize student growth.

i-Ready

 

Can You Answer One Question?

Each month we will ask one question of our community, and report back the answers to you the following month. Click below to take our 1 question, 1 minute survey!
 

Win a Free Ticket to PL Summit!

Apply to win a PL Superhero Pass and attend The Personalized Learning Summit 2017 in San Francisco for free!

Apply now to win a trip to attend the personalized learning summit 2017

 


Education Elements in the News

People are talking about us, especially our clients!



Places to Meet Up

Connect with us at these events: 

Want to meet up at an event? Email amy@edelements.com and tell us where you will be!



What We're Reading



More Savings, More (Personalized) Learning and Much More Fun!

Because you asked, we responded: We are extending our early bird registration rate for the PL Summit 2017 until February 15th, so register now and save! Need another reason to do so? Brad Montague, the creative mind behind Kid President, is our first keynote speaker.

Register now to see him and get inspired during our three-day event in San Francisco focused on harnessing the power of personalized learning.