Group items tagged

the future of learning and education is becoming easier to predict every day: it’s digital.

The combination of ubiquitous mobile devices and dramatic improvements in personalized and engaging digital learning experiences has resulted in drastically reduced time-to-market for high-quality, technology-enhanced educational content.

Alvin Toffler. For a while now, he has talked about the need for speed in learning—and relearning—and the essential skills required for success. He’s said, “the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

a hybrid teacher role as Data Strategist. I was charged with the task of organizing the various data points that, taken collectively, offer useful clues about student achievement, progress, and deficiency. The data lens could zoom out to a schoolwide perspective that might inform staff development planning, narrow to a classroom or grade-level view offering insight on skills requiring remediation, or focus on a single student being considered for referral to the school psychologist for a learning disability.

There is growing evidence that teacher empowerment as school leaders is linked strongly with teachers' tendency to engage in behaviors that accelerate student growth: soliciting parent involvement, communicating positive expectations, and being willing and able to innovate in the classroom.

In addition to measurable student impact, teachers that lead schools are better equipped to guide their own professional development, share their expertise, and develop explicit and implicit systems of accountability, while experiencing more respectful, trusting, and professional cultures.

Blended learning is any time a student learns at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student control over time, path, and/or pace.

The definition implies simple remote correspondence—like online videoconferencing or web chatting in a real-time environment only—does not qualify as blended learning, and perhaps points to a theoretical division between the labels of "online" and "distance" learning.

The report then labels six types of blended learning approaches:• face-to-face driver programs where teachers deliver most instruction in a live classroom and use online activities to supplement or remediate what goes on in the brick-and-mortar school;• rotation models where students follow a schedule that alternates between face-to-face class sessions and in-person instruction;• flex formats where most of the curriculum originates online, but an on-site instructor provides instruction as needed in individual and small group sessions;• online lab sessions where students do work online, but in a computer lab at a brick-and-mortar school with aides who offer supervision but little subject guidance;• self-blend schools where students may take online courses a la carte to supplement their brick-and-mortar school's curriculum; and• online driver constructs where students receive most of the course online and independently, but participate in required or optional face-to-face meetings.

Our first accomplishments as professionals are usually rooted in our skill as individual contributors. In most fields we add value in the early stages of our careers by getting things done.

Instead simply doing more, sustaining our success as leaders requires us to redefine how we add value.

Continuing to rely on our abilities as individual contributors greatly limits what we actually contribute and puts us at a disadvantage to peers who are better able to mobilize and motivate others. In other words we need to do less and lead more.

The job of a good school is creating the partnership between teens and adults that scaffolds this experience and recognizes the multiple ways that adolescents master these skills.

If we intentionally design schools that meet students where they are – accommodating young people’s schedules, building on their strengths, and becoming an integral part of their lives – we can recuperate and accelerate learning, empowering young people to succeed in college and career. That’s our job.