featured
We Hired a Director of Personalized Learning! Now What?
As more schools adopt personalized learning and blended learning models, positions like directors of blended learning and personalized learning managers are becoming more common. This article from Brian Greenberg of the Silicon Schools Fund gives a nice overview of the role and its importance in these emerging models. However, the newness of the role means that organizations are figuring out how…
How Blended Learning Can Support Student Agency
Blended learning can lead to student agency when it gives students choices about what, where, when, and how they learn. For a better understanding of what student agency is and what it looks like in school-based learning, see my first post in this series, How Next Gen Learning Can Support Student Agency. The following blended learning strategies were shared in a recent #NGLCchat on student…
Set the Stage for Personalized Learning in Your Classroom
On NGLC’s Personalized Learning topics page, we state, “In an education model where students are truly at the center, learning is tailored to individual students’ strengths, needs, and personal interests. Learning opportunities take into account existing knowledge, skills, and abilities, set high expectations, and push students in supportive ways to reach their personal…
Why Students Should Train like Football Teams
It can’t really be a coincidence that the start of school and football season coincide. Maybe we educators should take it as a sign and pay more attention to football, its players and coaches.
No, I don’t mean we need to huddle in PD, though sometimes we do just that. Or that we all should turn to football as a distraction from the stress and heart wrenching work that it is to educate our…
A Summer of Innovation: Part 2 (Orr Elementary)
Benjamin Orr Elementary is a District of Columbia Public School (DCPS) in Southeast Washington, D.C. During the school year, CityBridge Education Innovation Fellows Diane Johnson and Kelley Jones teach mathematics, science, and special education. However, during the summer, these two Fellows are piloting a station rotation-based blended learning model. Since their summer pilot focuses on English…
A Summer of Innovation: Part 1
Are you interested in learning how to leverage educational technology? Do you want to learn how to implement a personalized learning model in your classroom? Are you always searching for opportunities to expand your professional learning network? If you’ve answered “yes” to any or all of these questions, then allow me to borrow a moment of your time. I want to introduce to you a group of…
Beginning My Summer Pilot: Student Success Sheet
As part of the Education Innovation Fellowship, each Fellow designs a summer pilot program that uses personalized and blended learning to solve a specific problem in our classrooms. For my pilot, I wanted to give students and their families better access to the various data points we use to measure student success. Our charter network (KIPP DC) does a great job tracking a lot of different student…
Empowering the Nonconsumers
My experience with Education Innovation Fellowship began with readings directly from or steeped in the language of the private sector, most notably The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. I am naturally suspicious of conflating of business and education; I fundamentally believe that a school cannot be run like a business. But as I read about hybrids and—be still, my Silicon Valley-watching…
The Uphill Battle of Innovation
Landing at Dulles International Airport from California two weeks ago was a jarring return to winter; a runway full of snow after a week of 75 degrees and sunny is quite the adjustment. But my return has presented an even larger challenge for me: being innovative in a model that doesn’t preach innovation. Much like my colleague Desiree Smith wrote, I am also searching for my way to spread…
How to Avoid Post-REVIVAL Stress Disorder (PRSD)
I’m a PK (Pastor’s Kid), so I know a spiritual revival when I see one. On this California trip, we have not entered any makeshift churches out of white tents, but in equally inspiring, open, and creative spaces, we have been challenged to respond to a call of action to join a growing movement in our educational system.
I started to realize that the 22 of us Fellows were beginning to convert…