Group items tagged

Big data policy:  more measures for improvement and accountability.  Specific issues: school accountability, teacher evaluation, instructional improvement, and student matriculation.

Customized learning: emerging strategies for adaptive, personalized and social learning.  Specific issues: role of curriculum architects, mixing open and proprietary content.

Improving conditions & careers: how blended learning is improving the teaching profession. Specific issues:  evaluating in a team-based differentiated environment, managing a distributed staff with dynamic scheduling, and a really big issue–providing rich JIT PD during the shift.

The student-centered classroom harnesses the flexibility of new media to provide a diverse range of students with multiple means of representation, expression, and engagement. The student-centered classroom harnesses the flexibility of new media for the teacher, providing a rich set of tools and resources to elevate and differentiate teaching. In that rich environment, the teacher can be both a content provider and the classroom’s most experienced and savvy teacher/learner, a model of the kind of expert learner students can emulate.

We can provide every student in America access to great teachers, but that won’t happen in a traditional classroom (as Public Impact has so clearly spelled out)—it will happen when we leverage talent with technology and blend the best of online and onsite learning.

To power these new models that combine local and national resources, Digital Learning Now calls for educational funding that is weighted, portable, and performance-based.

This year’s entering college class of 2016 was born into cyberspace and they have therefore measured their output in the fundamental particles of life: bits, bytes, and bauds. They have come to political consciousness during a time of increasing doubts about America’s future, and are entering college bombarded by questions about jobs and the value of a college degree. They have never needed an actual airline “ticket,” a set of bound encyclopedias, or Romper Room. Members of this year’s freshman class, most of them born in 1994, are probably the most tribal generation in history and they despise being separated from contact with friends. They prefer to watch television everywhere except on a television, have seen a woman lead the U.S. State Department for most of their lives, and can carry school books--those that are not on their e-Readers--in backpacks that roll. 

They have always lived in cyberspace, addicted to a new generation of “electronic narcotics.”

Having grown up with MP3s and iPods, they never listen to music on the car radio and really have no use for radio at all.

Nowadays, when someone talks about a “21st century field trip,” they are most likely referring to a virtual field trip. Virtual field trips are incredible examples of how the Internet can change the learning experience for students today. They can take a tour of Versailles, cruise around with the Rovers on the surface of Mars, even travel back in time and “walk” around Ancient Egypt in a format that was unimaginable just a few years ago.

1. QR Code map

2.  Today’s Meet Chat

Scrabble

Words with Friends

Anymals Plants and Wildlife

Thoughtful commentators agree (as noted in June) that the innovation economy requires two things: Growth oriented policies – low tax rates, transparent and efficient government – and An opportunity platform that includes effective education and health services and efficient energy and transportation infrastructure.

You could probably add culture of confidence to round out the innovation formula: opportunity, incentive, and culture.

We need everyone starting something! Therefore, we should aspire to be the world’s best launching pad because our workforce is so productive; our markets the freest and most trusted; our infrastructure and Internet bandwidth the most advanced; our openness to foreign talent second to none; our funding for basic research the most generous; our rule of law, patent protection and investment-friendly tax code the envy of the world; our education system unrivaled; our currency and interest rates the most stable; our environment the most pristine; our health care system the most efficient; and our energy supplies the most secure, clean, and cost-effective.

1. Offer courses through the Digital

2. Flip a Classroom.

3. Blend.

Plan for the shift to personal digital learning in phases over the next three years. You need six, coordinated plans considering content and instruction, assessment and data, devices and broadband, staffing and professional development, fiscal impact, and communications.

Ensuring that teachers are properly trained to use technology resources is fast becoming as big of a budgetary concern as was acquiring the technology in the first place.

Often overlooked however, is that not all teachers are immediately comfortable transitioning to a wired classroom.