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“Digital or Open Badging is the first real alternative to one-best-answer testing that both has those features and addresses key other learning objectives–and, it must be added, is being adopted in numbers that make its acceptance as an alternative system feasible. With the announcement of the Clinton Global Initiative’s adoption of badges, the Chicago Summer of Learning, and universities, informal learning centers, and many other programs devising new badging systems it is possible that we are on the verge of a major change in “how we measure,” one that better counts what we value and values what we count.”
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Starting With Why: The Power of Student-Driven Learning
“I think teachers and school organizations need to ask themselves the Why questions, beginning with: Why do we own the learning and not our students? Or, as Will Richardson so eloquently posits, Why School?
Why do we have so many students like the one I know, frustrated and bored, just waiting to be challenged? We’ve made education about manipulation and hoops instead of inspiring our students to pursue learning that matters to them — learning that can help them make a difference in our communities and the world.” -
Innovate, Create, Educate: What Happens When Students are Invited to Redesign Learning?
What Happens When Students are Invited to Redesign http://t.co/kSVkhPkHna @boadams1 have U heard abt @stuEdcon https://t.co/WN8qY3u9bQ
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Personalization. | Living the Dream
“Continually shoehorning student learning in a path that a computer decides is necessary is not the most interesting or empowering version of personalization.”
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PROCESS POST: What is a Community of Practice? | Craig Lambert Blog
#FSBL, #YesAnd, #DTk12, #MVPSchool
#FSBL –> #YesAnd –> #DTk12 –> #MVPSchool
HOW MIGHT WE weave together: 1) a blog post about student-driven learning, 2) explorations by a father and two sons, and 3) two incredible educators working to blur the lines between “school” and “real life?”
Learning to ride a bike – old school.
My six-year-old son, JT, is learning to ride a bike. We’ve been so convinced by the compelling and current research coming from folks like Horace Mann and the Prussian Army that we’ve decided to enroll JT in cycling school.
The school’s named “Cycle Riding Ultimately Deconstructed Academy.” Or C.R.U.D. Academy, for short.
JT’s day at C.R.U.D. is organized into several 45 minute periods.
- 8:00 – 8:45 is Handle Bars and Grips
- 8:50 – 9:35 is Pedals and Cranks
- 9:40 – 10:25 is Shifters and Gears
- 10:30 – 11:15 is Balance
After lunch…
- 12:00 – 12:45 is Steering and Braking
- 12:50 – 1:35 is Tubes and Tires
- 1:40 – 2:25 is Frames
Every Friday, JT will take quizzes and tests in each course. Because the school is very cutting edge, we’ll actually be able to see all of his multiple-choice assessments online. I can’t wait to see his performance on the test where he selects the diagram of a person with good balance. And in the fall and spring, JT will take the CRCTs – Cycle Ready Components Test. From those results, not only will we have a better bead on JT’s cycling cognition, but the school will also be able to determine who the best biking teachers are. That’s a win-win.
His mom and I are very excited for the school term to conclude so that we can then take JT to bike with us. He should be so well prepared to put all of those content areas together into an integrated whole. The school told us they wish they could offer such an experiential course, but there’s just not enough time in the day with all of the content to cover. We said we totally understand.
We were thrilled to find a cycling academy that draws from the decades and decades of systemic wisdom from industrial-age structuring of school. I’ll let you know how it goes.
#MustRead Shares (weekly)
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Seth’s Blog: The lab or the factory
I am so grateful to work and play in a lab. #MVPSchool
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“Good teaching is an act of generosity, a whim of the wanton muse, a craft that may grow with practice, and always risky business. It is, to speak plainly, a maddening mystery.”
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What’s the biggest barrier to accomplishing great things?
This Shane Parrish piece on Duckworth and others re: grit, persistence and pro-level learning has me thinking about how we do PD in education. #CoachingForPros
#Pedagography and a spontaneous, invaluable learning session
#Pedagography and a spontaneous, invaluable learning session
This morning, while re-reading and studying Heath Bros. #Decisive (and prepping for upcoming #MVPSchool Leadership Council retreat), I was playing with some new ideas about #PedagogicalMasterPlanning.
Some of my tribe members had teased me about the hashtag #PedagogicalMasterPlanning, and I reached out to these great thinkers by introducing the new hashtag #Pedagography – the art and science of create maps of our pedagogical ecosystems in schools – our teaching and learning landscapes, so to speak.
Adjacent possibilities and some mental playwork deepened and stretched my thinking.
Then, I think we began to check for shared understanding.
And other super-thinkers entered the conversation. We really had quite a Stephen Johnson “coffee house” going – with ideas and hunches colliding to form new ideas and possibilities.
I could have taken notes privately. All to myself. But then I would have missed out on these incredible educators weighing in, inquiring about things, and enhancing my thinking.






