After several years of collaboration and coordination with over thirty two authors, I’m pleased to announce that “Designing Effective Blended and Distance Learning Environments in K-12" is officially published!
I’m excited to announce our new monthly EdTechTeacher show “What’s Next in EdTech” streaming live on Youtube! In each episode, we will highlight excited news and resources in the world of educational technology. Each fast-paced episode will be 15-20 minutes and include a show notes document that curates all of the resources mentioned during the episode.
I had the fortunate opportunity to engage in a fascinating discussion with Digital Learning Coach and Innovation Connection presenter Jed Stefanowicz. Jed shares his thoughts on his role as a digital learning coach and strategies to help students develop computational thinking skills through hands-on projects and robotics.
I recently had the opportunity to engage in a discussion with Kyle Wilson, a long-time friend, math coach and presenter at the upcoming Innovation Connection Conference on November 1st, 2021.
A core element of personalized learning involves tailoring students’ path and pace to their specific needs and interests. This practice is often coupled with the overarching philosophy of mastery learning, sometimes referred to as competency-based education. One of the most effective ways to personalize the path and pace of student learning is to build a strong foundation of competency based learning in your classroom or institution.
As next-generation assessments and instructional data can help educators gain a deeper understanding of students, the sheer amount of information available can prove challenging. As discussed in a prior post, educational technologies can amplify the impact of proven formative assessment strategies. But in doing so, educators must often navigate various platforms and other sources of student information that, in many cases, do not seamlessly align or integrate together.
A foundational piece of any learner-centered approach involves gaining a deeper understanding of our students. We know that learner variability exists, and research suggests it is growing in classrooms across the nation. It is therefore essential to personalize instruction based upon learner differences if we are going to ensure that all students thrive in our schools. To do this effectively, we must develop a more nuanced understanding of each students’ particular abilities and needs.
We often hear of the need to redesign schools to support modern learning environments, and yes, we should. But how often does a school’s investment in these spaces clearly support and enable a shift towards innovative, student-centered practices? Not so much. That is why when I had the chance to visit Montour Public Schools last Spring, I jumped at the opportunity.
This week I had the incredible opportunity to help launch my school district’s new “Personalized Learning Fellowship.” We spent the day exploring the what, why and how of Personalized Learning, while also engaging in deep discussions about the current state of K-12 education and ways that we can shift to create a more relevant and impactful learning experience for our students.
Over the past few years, in several different roles, I have researched and experimented with various frameworks and approaches to Personalized Learning. Despite the vast amount of resources out there that describe what personalized learning is and how to implement it, it is often difficult to find quality research that gets to the “why” of personalization.
Although Personalized Learning has gained considerable traction in education, there is still much confusion and, at times, heated debate regarding what this set of ideas actually means and looks like in practice. Fortunately, there has been a relative convergence of key concepts and essential components of Personalized Learning (PL) that can help frame a more nuanced discussion moving forward as schools explore and implement different iterations of PL.
