Next Gen Learning in Action
This blog offered perspectives from educators engaged in redesigning the future of public schools. This blog is no longer being updated.
Personalized Learning
Opinion
Scaling Personalized Learning at Distinctive Schools: Going Slow to Go Fast
Scaling personalized learning can benefit from the lessons of early innovators, but investing the next group of educators in both planning and design is crucial.
Personalized Learning
Opinion
Building Empathy With Extreme Users in the Classroom With Design Thinking
All kids are capable of knowing where they are academically and taking the steps to move forward in their education. A teacher's intent to glean from students what strategies they preferred for learning a new skill, practicing that skill, and then demonstrating their understanding of that skill leads to a new way for co-creating learning pathways with and for her students.
Professional Development
Opinion
Getting to Know You: Learner Profiles for Personalization
As more and more educators work to replace factory-model schools with personalized, student-centered learning experiences, knowing our students has taken on new meaning.
Education
Opinion
Little Kids, Big Ideas: Inspiring Project-Based Learning
Four practices help teachers design the kind of meaningful project-based learning that simultaneously reveals children's hidden talents and hidden genius and contributes to their community.
Assessment
Opinion
Greatest Threat to Competency Based Learning Part II
We agree on the need for milestones and accountability, but what are the best measures of whether a school is truly helping its students progress to the next grade level, college or career readiness?
Assessment
Opinion
Assessment as an On-Ramp for Agency and Personalization
When reflection, relevance, and real choice become core design principles for assessment, they can offer powerful on-ramps to move toward student agency and personalized learning.
Personalized Learning
Opinion
Three Steps Toward Building Vista Unified's Three Brushstrokes
In just three years, 100% of Vista Unified School District schools are transforming to Personal Learning pathways for all students. These three steps made the change possible.
School & District Management
Opinion
Educators Are Artists, Let's Act Like It!
The work of next generation learning in Colorado Springs School District 11 has some striking similarities to group painting excursions.
Professional Development
Opinion
Personalizing Adult Learning
One Boston high school developed a system of personalized adult learning when the school used four key culture shift levers.
Professional Development
Opinion
Un-Professional Development
If "PD" conjures memories of being lectured at about stuff teachers don't care about, "Unprofessional Development" can redefine how teachers spend their time learning together.
Student Achievement
Opinion
2 Pillars of Next Generation Schools: Communities of Learning Committed to Broader Outcomes for All
Two core elements point to what school can and should be in order to create lasting change in the lives of students.
Personalized Learning
Opinion
Reflecting on Personalized Learning Research: What We Think, What We Wonder
Taking a practitioner lens to draw reasonable inferences and raise thoughtful questions about personalized learning research.
Personalized Learning
Opinion
Let's Put Personalized Learning in Its Proper Place
In the move toward personalized learning, we risk falling into several age-old traps that reduce a complex, challenging undertaking to a smaller, more easily digestible version of itself.
Personalized Learning
Opinion
Personalized Learning Is a Mindset Not a Prescribed Model
Distinctive Schools understands that a commitment to personalized learning is a collective mindset that translates into structures and practices that evolve over time.