The New Media Consortium (NMC), together with the Consortium for School Networking (COSN), released its annual K12 Horizon Report, which can be very useful for educators contemplating how much they have accomplished or where to go next with their technology initiative. The full report can be accessed here.Although the 2015 K12 Horizon report largely speaks […]
Few teachers receive individualized professional development, though many are expected to personalize learning for students. Microcredentials—digital badges that teachers earn by learning a skill and demonstrating mastery through student results—offer a PD pathway designed to be highly differentiated and engaging. The microcredentialing process starts with teachers choosing a skill they want to develop. They take […]
The 2015 passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) reverses the trend of federal authority over K12 education. The new law returns state and local authority to levels that have not been seen in decades. One of biggest changes is that ESSA increases fund transferability for key federal programs. Under NCLB, state and local […]
Invasive fish species can harm Florida's waterways. And now students from Miami-Dade County's BioTECH @ Richmond Heights work with Zoo Miami scientists to monitor the invaders and their effects on local lakes. The conservation-biology-focused STEM high school—which opened in 2014-15 with help from an $11 million federal grant—focuses on zoology, botany, genetics, ecology, chemistry and […]
Technology is a vital part of students' lives: 92 percent of teens say they go online daily and 24 percent say they are logged in "almost constantly" according to a 2015 report by the Pew Research Center. Most of that involves social media (Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram), which is sometimes used to bully, make […]
Students in a Spanish 3 class at Bethlehem Central High School may live in upstate New York, but they look for new homes in Spanish-speaking countries around the globe. After discovering her students were fans of HGTV's 'House Hunters International,' Bethlehem Central School District Spanish teacher Jessica Westervelt developed a lesson in which her class […]
For the first time in the United States, a charter-based district will be accountable to its local school board, as the Louisiana Legislature voted in May to reverse the 2005 state takeover of most of New Orleans' public schools. Senate Bill 432 transitions 52 Recovery School District charters back to the oversight of the Orleans […]
In Baldwin Community Schools, students had been returning from summer break having lost more than six weeks of learning—two weeks more than is typical. The district is located in the lowest-income county in rural Michigan, where 94 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Superintendent Stiles Simmons resolved the learning loss issue in […]
In seeking to save money while also boosting teacher recruitment and retention, the Pierce City R-VI School District in Missouri switched to a four-day school week this school year. The time is made up by extending the school day 30 minutes. It increased learning time by 20 hours. "We want to create a culture where […]
