Pearson's Virtual School Operator Opening Physical High Schools Blended Learning | News Pearson's Virtual School Operator Opening Physical High Schools By Dian Schaffhauser05/29/12 Education publishing and technology company Pearson will be opening physical versions of its virtual schools in five cities starting in August 2012. Connections Education, a business Pearson acquired in September 2011, has announced plans to create Nexus Academy charter schools in three cities in Ohio and two cities in Michigan, catering to grades 9 through 12. Up to now, Connections Ed has focused on providing virtual school options for traditional school districts and other education entities. The new schools will be tuition-free and open enrollment public high schools, limited to serving between 250 and 300 students. The focus will be on college preparation. Curriculum will come from Pearson as well as McGraw-Hill, the companies said in a statement. Each school will have a school board and will be authorized through charter school organizations in each state.
Grad Engineering Programs Probe Intersection of Science, Art When engineers seek solutions to a problem—such as how to build a bridge to traverse a river—they tend to draw upon designs that have worked in the past. It takes an artist to provide a "more creative approach," says Christie Lin, a graduate engineering student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By collaborating, engineers and artists can push the limits of what is already known about their respective fields, explains Lin, who studies nuclear engineering at MIT, where she is also part of the Art Scholars group. Margaret Duff, a doctoral student at Arizona State University's Fulton School of Engineering, agrees with Lin. "Engineers tend to make very small, incremental improvements on things that have already been done, and they don't really allow their creativity to take full force," she says. Both Lin's and Duff's schools are part of what some are calling a new movement in engineering schools toward the interdisciplinary study of science and art. [Learn about design M.B.A.'
BadgeStack BadgeOS™ is a powerful free plugin to WordPress that lets you easily create achievements and issue sharable badges as your users succeed. Activate the free BadgeStack extension to instantly create Levels, Quests and Badge Achievement Types — and start badging! Each BadgeOS site can be customized to your goals, community, visual identity, and the right mix of social and self-directed activity. You define the achievement requirements and choose the assessment options. As members progress, they earn digital badges they can share anywhere, from Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, to their own blog, or resume. Ready to Build? Get it Now Want to Know More? Dive Deeper Need Expert Help? Reach Out Many organizations are using BadgeOS to enable achievement recognition and community engagement.
The IB Career-related Certificate (IBCC) Life in the 21st Century places many demands on students. Enabling students to become self-confident, internationally minded learners must be integral to their education. The International Baccalaureate (IB) has developed a framework of international education incorporating the vision and educational principles of the IB into local programmes to address the needs of students engaged in career-related studies. *This video will shortly be available in French and Spanish The IB Career-related Certificate (IBCC) increases access to an IB education and is specifically designed to provide a flexible learning framework that can be tailored by the school to meet the needs of students. What is the IB Career-related Certificate (IBCC)? The IBCC’s flexibility allows schools to meet the needs, backgrounds and contexts of students with each school creating its own distinct version of the IBCC. The IBCC framework is built around three interconnected elements: The IBCC enables students to:
How Creativity Works': It's All In Your Imagination iStockphoto.com What makes people creative? What gives some of us the ability to create work that captivates the eyes, minds and hearts of others? Jonah Lehrer, a writer specializing in neuroscience, addresses that question in his new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. Lehrer defines creativity broadly, considering everything from the invention of masking tape to breakthroughs in mathematics; from memorable ad campaigns to Shakespearean tragedies. Lehrer joins NPR's Robert Siegel to talk about the creative process — where great ideas come from, how to foster them, and what to do when you inevitably get stuck. Interview Highlights On comparing Shakespeare with the inventor of masking tape "I think we absolutely can lump them all together. "... On how Steve Jobs redesigned Pixar studios to maximize collaboration and creativity On forcing people to meet and mingle ... even if it's in the bathroom " ... Nina Subin/Courtesy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt "It's near midnight.
Gaining Some Perspective on Badges for Lifelong Learning I first read about the idea of Open Badges back in the middle of last year. It excited me. One thing I’ve always been interested in is how to shift the power dynamic within classrooms towards learners in a positive way. Changing (or at least providing additional) ways for students to demonstrate their knowledge, skills and understanding is one way to do that. Using Mozilla’s Open Badges infrastructure, any organization or community can issue badges backed by their own seal of approval. Learners and users can then collect badges from different sources and display them across the web—on their resume, web site, social networking profiles, job sites or just about anywhere. In a previous post on DMLcentral I tried to reframe the debate around badges by showing that we do, in fact, have a problem with assessment -- and education more generally. Getting Practical (and Visual) The Importance of Context Applying badges to existing learning and teaching scenarios is relatively unproblematic.
The Role of Tech vs The Purpose of Education Working in the field of digital media and learning, where the important role of new technologies in learning seems self-evident, the slow pace of change in mainstream education can feel frustrating. Responding to this challenge, we give a lot of attention to thinking about ways to support and encourage teachers to make greater use of the opportunities presented by digital media, but perhaps we should spend more time considering how and why technologies come to be used, or not used, in the first place. Ambitious Goals for the Transformative Potential of Digital Media Enthusiasm for the use of digital media in education stems from a number of very different places. Whatever the reasons behind enthusiasm for using digital media in education, it can quickly turn to frustration at what can seem to be a distinct lack of progress in mainstream classrooms. A Bolder Sociological Imagination is Needed Rewriting the Narratives of Technology and Education
When Will Blended Learning Be Mainstream? By Alan K. Rudi At the CUE conference this month, a questioner asked our Panel a simple question about blended learning – What is your prediction for when blended learning will be a mainstream application in education? A simple question, but it does not have an easy answer. First, when we look at the rate of technology adoption (or the number of years a new technology takes to reach 50 percent or more of its targeted users), it is significantly faster today at 25 years than during the last century which averaged 60 years. And information technologies are faster than the average with the PC and cell phone at an adoption rate of about 15 years, and the Internet at about 10 years. Education technologies like Learning Management Systems, Simulation tools, Games, Online applications, videos, new blended models, etc., are all rapidly emerging now as critical tools demonstrating the ability to improve learning outcomes as quality continues to improve. The trend lines are accelerating.
Leveling Up Updates Support the n00bs: Community Design for Inclusivity A common topic of discussion among our team of Leveling Up researchers is how communities maintain different barriers to entry. Every community, be it an online forum for Worldwide Wrestling enthusiasts, One Direction fangirls, or Starcraft II players, has its own etiquette and sets of rules for entering the community and becoming a full participant. But for platforms that wish to continually attract a new and engaged user base, designers must think through how to minimize barriers to entry. The Powerful Combination of Interests and Peer Culture The connected learning model emphasizes the importance of peer culture and interests in fueling members’ participation and learning in the rich activities and opportunities these communities create. Supports for Help and Feedback in Peer-Supported Communities Tracking “Interests” in Interest-Driven Learning Communities Why the interest in interests? A new year and a new book Figure 1.
"Connected Learning" Connected Learning: Designed to ‘mine the new social, digital domain’ SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Citing an ever-widening gap between in-school and out-of-school learning experiences, a team of researchers today introduced a model of learning -- ‘connected learning’ -- that taps into the rich new world of information, knowledge, and online collaboration available to youth and learners. The connected learning model, which is anchored in a large body of research on how youth are using social media, the internet and digital media to learn and develop expertise, also seeks to respond to deepening fears of a class-based “equity” gap in education that, without intervention, is likely to be accelerated by disproportionate access to technology and new forms of knowledge sharing. Interest-powered...Research has repeatedly shown that when a subject is personally interesting and relevant, learners achieve much higher-order learning outcomes. ...and the embrace of three key design principles: S.
competition winners will use Mozilla software to supercharge learning The Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition winners were announced yesterday at the Digital Media and Learning Conference in San Francisco. The winners—awarded grants ranging from $25,000 to $175,000 —will use Mozilla’s new free and open source “Open Badges” software to issue, manage and display digital badges for learning across the Web. The competition brought together Web developers, designers and technologists with educators, online learning innovators and collaborators that range from NASA, the U.S. Department of Education and the Girl Scouts of America to Intel, Disney-Pixar and Motorola. The goal: explore how digital badges can provide learners of all ages new ways to gain 21st century skills, harness the full educational power of the Internet, and unlock career and learning opportunities in the real world. Why digital badges for learning?
Digital Media and Learning Competition Connected Learning Connected Learning is a set of principles designed to nurture the kind of students that can thrive in the 21st century. By the time today’s first graders graduate high school, there will be whole new industries we can’t even imagine today. Connected Learning fosters the adaptive, lifelong learners that can flourish in a world of rapid technological change. More... Project:Connect - Hack for a Better Web Hackathon to create a more equitable, social, and participatory internet.
Digital Badges for Learning I'm excited to be here to celebrate the launch of the 2011 competition, and its potential to propel a quantum leap forward in education reform. We're on the verge of harnessing education's power to unleash the full measure of human potential. I want to commend the MacArthur Foundation's thoughtful and forward-thinking approach to educational philanthropy. The MacArthur Foundation and its partners – Mozilla and HASTAC, hosted by Duke University and the University of California Humanities Research Institute – are working together to provide venture capital for technology innovations that can dramatically improve educational access and quality, in America and around the globe. This year's efforts will expand the hub of digital media projects and products, and the record of success begun in 2007. President Obama and I see building a world-class public education system as an economic, civic and social imperative. This administration has a systemic, cradle-to-career vision for reform.