Some great posts from Wayne Jennings in this Spring’s IALA News
How To Videos: Extraordinary Resource
EdVisions Schools have made their Design Essentials videos available to all. These are profoundly helpful in seeing how a variety of educational practices are conducted in project-based learning and non-course based schools or others moving toward student-centered learning. Here are examples from the category Self-Directed, Project-Based Learning:
- Self-directed, project-based learning primary focus; driven by constructivist pedagogy (Adults explain; Students explain)
- Personalized Learning Plan (PLP) for all students emphasizing student needs and interests (view video)
- Personalized work space for each student; Internet access (view video)
- Technology infused environment; technology as a tool
- Individual/group projects complemented by multiple teaching approaches based on student needs and interests (view video)
- Achievement demonstrated publicly; highest work place standards are quality goal (view video)
- All students prepared for post-secondary education, workplace and active citizenship (view video)
- All students and staff engage in quiet reading every day (view video)
Other major categories with numerous videos include:
- Authentic Assessment
- Teacher Ownership/Democratic Governance
- Small Learning Communities
The Design Elements professional contributions shows student-centered learning in action, the best I have seen! Thanks to the award winning New Country High School and Avalon School students and staff for their exemplary videos.
Posted on February 12, 2011 at 8:18 pm under
A recent report The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning about online learning begins with this startling statement:
“Online learning is sweeping across America. In the year 2000, roughly 45,000 K–12 students took an online course. In 2009, more than 3 million K–12 students did. What was originally a distance learning phenomenon no longer is. Most of the growth is occurring in blended-learning environments, in which students learn online in an adult-supervised environment at least part of the time. As this happens, online learning has the potential to transform America’s education system by serving as the backbone of a system that offers more personalized learning approaches for all students.”
Blended learning is defined as 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, place, path, and/or pace. The report describes six types of blended learnings commonly used in schools.
A Radically Different World. If you think our future will require better schools, you’re wrong. The future of education calls for entirely new kinds of learning environments. If you think we will need better teachers, you’re wrong. Tomorrow’s learners will need guides who take on fundamentally different roles. As every dimension of our world evolves so rapidly, the education challenges of tomorrow will require solutions that go far beyond today’s answers.
These comments come from: http://www.futureofed.org/. Other exciting sources of education futuristic activitiy are Knowledge Works and New Tech Network and 2020 Forecast.
