The concept of homework as we have known it in the past is changing rapidly, since it often distorts the overall picture of learning. Flipped classrooms, the ability to use the same technology and tools both in and out of the classroom, and personalized learning are making ripples in the education world.

Today, we finished the second week of an interpersonal communications course. The students in the course are first term college students, a few fresh out of high school. As is my common practice, I end my week of instruction with reflective questions for the students: What was your significant learning this past week?

Zak Malamed of StuVoice.Org mentioned in a student voice panel that when given projects by teachers to complete, it was often just another "thing" to get done, just like a paper or worksheet. I have seen lessons shared by teachers that they called Project-Based Learning, Inquiry Learning, or Maker Education, but upon close examination they...

Interesting article...Now, how do we figure out how to be successful mentors? And who writes the guidelines for the programs the students will pursue?

During one of my workshops last year in Boston, Brad Ovenell-Carter (@braddo) put his visual notetaking skills to action. I took his lovely summary drawing and used ThingLink to add layers of information and elaboration. In the future I am keen to share more about my experiences of design thinking with school leaders, teachers and other organisations in blog posts here.

Found this for the PD folks! Methodology There are two components to the EdSurge PD framework: professional learning stages and tool classification. On the EdSurge site, each of the 28 tools listed here have been analyzed according to this framework. You can read the analysis of each of these tools by searching the EdSurge site for the individual product page for each of those products.