As the world of education advances, it becomes increasingly necessary to cater to different learning styles in order to give students the best possible learning experience. While teachers still provide the best way to reach students, a unique and catered learning environment can be created through the use of a dedicated chatbot.

Here we speak with Travis True, Curriculum Technology Specialist for USD 501 Topeka Public Schools, about the benefits of implementing chatbots in the classroom, how teachers can set up chatbots, and why education should lean further into its innovative phase when it comes to technology.

Creating A Chatbot To Support Education

One of the main issues for teachers is the lack of time they have to dedicate to actual teaching. Most free time is often derailed by administrative busywork. However, a classroom chatbot can help to enhance the learning experience for students while also giving teachers an extra set of eyes, ears, and hands during the day.

“Chatbots, in the educational realm, give teachers an opportunity to create a personal learning environment for the student,” says True. “They get to manage what information is provided. They can upload their own information on what the chatbot is going to feed information from.”

And how can a chatbot work in education but outside of the classroom?

“At a school or district level it can allow building principals and district leaders to set up tools that parents or even staff can use to help find information quickly,” says True.

An example of this is True’s implementation of a high school handbook into a chatbot.

“One thing I’ve been testing and building is a chatbot that has one of our high school’s student handbooks uploaded to it,” says True. “The thought is that we put it on this website and make it available [for that high school]. Then it becomes a 24/7 tool that students and parents can use to ask questions about what’s in the handbook.”

Having the ability to easily access any specific information that you’re looking for can help save time while also allowing for better overall use of the resource.

Chatbots Inside the Classroom

Being able to pare down complex information is useful, but what about how chatbots can help students make strides with their education?

“Teachers can personalize those chatbots to kids who struggle with learning a concept,” says True. “They can also set up a chatbot for those kids who need a more advanced learning tool.”

Students who need a more specialized touch with their education can receive that attention with a chatbot. And, as True points out, creating one isn’t a difficult task for educators who have access to AI-enabled platforms such as SchoolAI or MagicSchool.

“The tools that the teachers have access to are pretty straightforward,” he says. “They enter instructions, standards, and how the chatbot is going to interact with the students. On the student side, there is a learning curve, because you have to ask good questions to get good information out of the chatbot. That’s a good skill for students, knowing how to ask good questions to get good answers.”

And in the event there needs to be a change in the information a chatbot provides (or what it responds to), it isn’t hard to keep up with changes.

“There’s always going to be some maintenance and some tweaking that needs to happen,” says True. “The tools that the teachers have access to (such as SchoolAI and MagicSchool) keep logs of every interaction. Teachers can go in and see how the students are interacting with those [tools].”

From there, a teacher can make the proper adjustments to have the chatbot serve students more effectively.

Embracing Game-Changing Edtech

The use of technology in education is not new, but adding AI has opened up so many doors to how we cater education for our students and teachers.

“This is a game-changer technology,” says True. “It’s moving a lot faster than Google did [when it came out]. We need to embrace it as educators and leaders. We need to embrace it because it is not going away. But we also need to teach kids how to use it correctly. It’s another pillar of digital citizenship. AI literacy, right up there with cyber bullying and using the internet correctly.”

Having all of this wonderful education technology is great, but it is important to teach students how to properly use what they have in order to give them the best chance of success going forward. Chatbots can do just that and much more.

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Education has been the beneficiary of recent leaps and bounds in technology, but the overall approach hasn’t really changed over the years. A prominent achievement gap still persists in education, and although teachers becoming more personable with their students may help, is that truly the answer we need?

Here we speak with Dr. Yong Zhao, Foundation Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas, about why there is a need for a stronger emphasis on personalized education, how AI can help, and how the sharing of ideas between educational leaders can help push education forward.

Zhao will be the keynote speaker at Deeper Learning New York 2025 this July.

The Benefits of Deeper, Personalized Learning

We all remember learning a certain number of subjects while in school, but how often were any of these topics set up to specifically cater to each individual student? As Zhao explains, there has been a stagnation in the educational space for years, one that sparks questions about the importance, and efficacy, of deeper learning.

“If you go to a school, it’s very much the same as 300 years ago,” says Zhao. “The first big problem in education is [that the] government, or state, has always controlled what matters in learning. Nobody is there to be responsible if what we force our students to learn will not matter in five or ten years. And so the first thing I think everybody has to be wise about is to say ‘What is worth deeper learning?’”

So what is the solution that would help advance education?

“What we need is true personalization of learning,” says Zhao. “You enable the students to study what they might be interested in and what they're good at. I emphasize those two points: interest and strength. Every one of us, no matter where you are from, has strengths and weaknesses. We have a jagged profile of competencies, abilities and interests. Then, after you find your personalized path, [ask] where you want to go and what you want to do.”

Understanding the pathway forward can make all the difference when it comes to personalized learning. By focusing on the individual aspects that might help a student realize their full potential in their formative years, it can lead to long-term success.

What Role AI Can Play in Personalized Learning

With the introduction of artificial intelligence in the classroom, new opportunities have arisen for educators to better understand how to help students learn in more effective ways. As Zhao states, while AI is great for some tasks, there needs to be human interaction to steer student and teacher interaction.

“Teachers use AI to create lessons for students,” he says. “Students use AI to do the homework. Teachers use AI to score the homework. No human beings are involved. We really want teachers ready. Teacher roles have to shift a lot because students need teachers in the age of AI for social and emotional support, and for guidance.”

AI will still be there to do some of the heavy lifting, but if a teacher is not in the traditional role in a classroom, then what are they doing?

“[Teachers] can help the children find opportunities,” says Zhao. “What we need our teachers to do in this new age is not to teach, but to support, to coach, to facilitate, to manage. And that changes our thinking about schooling.”

In a more supportive role, teachers can help students to personalize their education path instead of simply following along with an existing curriculum that doesn’t feature the subjects in which they have interest.

The Benefits of Sharing Innovative Ideas

If it seems like education hasn’t moved forward in some time, it’s because many of the siloed practices that existed years ago still persist today. Zhao suggests it’s important to bring together innovative minds to discuss potential advancements in the educational space.

“The first thing is not only to get new ideas–I think the first thing is really to gain courage if you want to change,” says Zhao. “School leaders, like principals, superintendents, they are actually quite lonely. They cannot necessarily share. They may be meeting challenges. This is a private place for them to play with ideas, gain courage, and hopefully [bounce their ideas off one another].”

Collaborating with like-minded individuals can help advance the innovative spirit in education, normalize taking chances in a traditionally static space, and build courage and camaraderie among decision-makers. With more interactions such as these,more ideas to bring education into a brand new light can be forged.

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School curriculum can be effective for many students, sometimes for most students. However, when individual attention is needed, a personalized approach might be necessary to achieve the desired results. In a technologically advanced time, the use of AI can greatly improve individual learning for students.

Here we speak with Mariana Aguilar, VP of Education and Operations for GoGuardian, about how individualized learning can take the next step with the inclusion of artificial intelligence.

MARIANA AGUILAR WILL BE SPEAKING AT EDTECH WEEK

How Has the Student/Teacher Dynamic Changed?

Over the years, the relationship between students and teachers has evolved along with how we view education overall. From the pandemic and remote learning to class size and neurodivergent learners, there have been many factors that influence how teachers interact with students.

“I think a lot of what we’re seeing, especially post-pandemic, is that the weight of responsibilities on teachers is greater than ever before,” says Aguilar. “As a former teacher, I know firsthand how challenging being a teacher is. There’s teaching a new concept, managing a classroom, supporting students’ emotional wellbeing, engaging with parents, making sure that all students have their different accommodations, especially for students with special needs. There is a whole group of things teachers have to do outside of actually teaching material.”

So where does AI fit into the dynamic?

“Teachers are burnt out. They’re overwhelmed,” Aguilar explains. “We’re seeing teachers leave the profession in large groups and this creates even more pressure on the system. So I think where we have an opportunity to create an impact through AI is that AI offers an opportunity to alleviate some of those challenges by addressing and accelerating the ability to work on some of those additional pieces. That could mean the ability to create instructional materials like a test, or create a lesson, or grade some papers. That could also mean leveraging AI to provide explanations to students who might be struggling with something. A teacher can only provide so many explanations.”

With teacher responsibilities being expanded regularly, having a way to alleviate some of that pressure could lighten the load for teachers and provide them with some insight into their students.

Can AI Help Remedy Student Struggles?

AI technology may have huge implications for teachers when it comes to helping them handle their administrative work loads, but what about when it comes to interacting with students? Teachers often have multiple duties that might not allow them adequate time to assess the individual needs of their students. AI can help teachers in this regard, says Aguilar, who offers an example of when could happen what standard a student is struggling with is identified.

“So in a previous world, a teacher would have to manually grade or assess this,” she says. “It would include an overall view of what the class was struggling with and make a teacher have to look at each student individually. That’s an incredibly time-intensive process. So in one of our products there’s actually the capacity for a teacher to say, ‘I want a standards intervention practice set,’ and automatically [AI] will generate a practice set based on the standards that the majority of the class is struggling with in seconds.”

In essence, a process that used to take hours out of a teacher’s day can now be accomplished in minutes by AI. This can help to give teachers back valuable time to focus on other tasks or connect better with students and cater to their individual needs.

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HOMER is a digital learning tool aimed at helping preschoolers develop their drawing, literacy, and musical skills.

The company behind this offering says that since 85% of brain development takes place before age 6, this is the target for developmental support with HOMER.

The idea was to create an app that encapsulates all that young minds need to grow and develop well, while also being easy enough to use so that parents can also utilize this tool.

Begin is the company behind the HOMER app, which is also known for creations such as CodeSpark Academy, Little Passports, and KidPass. So with plenty of experience, this app is built with the right focus.

This guide aims to lay out all you need to know to get started with HOMER.

What is HOMER?

HOMER is an app built by Begin that aims to help preschool children learn. Primarily, this is designed to support students from age three up to around eight.

The app focuses on a number of areas to help a child develop a well-rounded skillset. This platform specifically offers learning in the areas of drawing, literacy, phonics, song, stories, and more.

Since the lessons are personalized to age appropriate levels, this can offer a steady learning experience that is challenging without being off-putting. That's key for engagement at this age as it kids are having fun and are eager to bring themselves back for more as they continue to progress naturally.

According to Begin, this app increases early reading scores by 74%. But it does also focus on social-emotional learning to offer a well-rounded experience.

How does HOMER work?

HOMER is sectionalized so kids can work on areas they need or want, which include reading, math, SEL, creativity, and critical thinking. Kids can pick an area of interest to have the lessons built around that, from space and sports to princesses and vehicles.

Lessons, which are research-built, are then adapted to the child. The levels continue to increase in complexity as kids master the one they're on, making for a steady progress in what feels like a natural pathway.

In reading, for example, kids are given a lesson before having the chance to play games that put that into practice and finally have a review of the section before moving along. The systemized nature of the lessons helps kids learn letter sounds, capitalizations, and word recognition while also working on comprehension.

For teachers, this is individualized and so makes for self-guided learning. Although stories could be read as a class to learn that way.

What are the best HOMER features?

HOMER is primarily built to teach reading and math although the SEL content is also excellent. The scaffolded phonics lessons are so well developed that students can progress on an even path that feels perfectly challenging while staying fun. Also, the use of well-known stories and characters can help to engage kids with a bit of familiarity and a sense of recognition.

It's HOMER'S ability to combine the child's learning level, age, and interests to get a personalized learning experience that is crucial to the engagement this app offers.

The method used works well with the age group by working on a four-step technique. This begins by introducing the area, then offering practice opportunities before having them apply that learning in a familiar context, and then finally preparing them to transfer those skills into the real world.

How much does HOMER cost?

HOMER is a paid service but it also offers a free 30-day trial to give it a go before you decide to commit to the subscription-style payments.

The Annual plan is the most affordable at $79.99/year, which works out at $6.66/month and a 51% saving. This gets you unlimited access to the app, up to four child profiles, offline activities, resources and play tips from learning experts, plus no commitment and the ability to cancel anytime.

Go for the Monthly plan and it's $12.99/month. This gets you all the above only with the ability to pay month to month as you need.

HOMER best tips and tricks

Go home
For younger children this can be a useful home working task to set for self-guided extra learning.

Group up
For in class use getting students into groups with similar abilities can make for a good way to get used to the app with support of others.

Test out
Use the monitoring features to see where students are at so you can offer testing in class to see how well they are mastering the new skills.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
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IXL, a grammagram for "I excel," is an online learning platform that offers practice learning for students. The idea is to cover a variety of subjects with plenty of questions and answers to help students progress.

The system offers more than 9,000 skills and is used by 16+ million students worldwide. This covers math, language arts, science, social studies, and more.

Thanks to curriculum-based learning, combined with analytics for teachers, this offers individualized guided learning with direct feedback.

This guide aims to lay out everything you need to know about IXL to see how it could work for your class.

What is IXL?

IXL, at its most basic, is a targeted learning tool. It offers experiences for students, tailored to their age group by specific subject and topic. By offering analytics and recommendations, it is able to help support teaching and learning with a very focused outcome.

IXL is web-based but also has apps for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, and Chrome. Whatever way you get to it, there are nearly all the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) covered for K-12, plus some Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for grades 2 to 8.

While there are plenty of high school subject-specific lessons, in game form, you also have access to games that focus on the fundamentals, too.

Both math and language arts cover pre-K right up to grade 12. The math side offers equations, graphing, and fraction comparisons, while the language work focuses on grammar and vocabulary skills.

Science and social studies each cover grades 2 to 8 topics, while Spanish offers Level 1 learning.

What's new in IXL?

The IXL offering is now available in more than 80 languages for more accessibility and uptake, internationally, than ever.

At time of update, over 150 billion questions have been answered by the 16 million students that use the IXL service.

IXL Focus Zone is a newly added section that gives teachers greater control over how students spend their time. They pick which subjects and grades and how long students should practice.

Families can now receive email reports from teachers to see how their child is progressing.

To help track student proficiency, the Skills Practiced and Student Summary teacher reports now feature proficiency metrics.

IXL continues to update the platform regularly, which you can follow here.

How does IXL work?

IXL works by offering skills that students practice, one at a time, earning them points and ribbons when they get questions correct. Once 100 points are collected for a certain skill, they are awarded a stamp in their virtual book. Once multiple skills are mastered, they can earn virtual prizes. The SmartScore goal, as it's known, helps keep students focused and working toward a target.

The SmartScore adapts based on difficulty, so it's not discouraging to get something wrong but rather adaptive to help each student progress to the next level of difficulty suited to them.

Lots of drill-and-practice options are available to allow for independent work, making this a great option for remote learning and homework-based schooling. Since IXL offers plenty of feedback, it's possible to help students improve very rapidly with specific, targeted training.

Teachers can recommend or assign specific skills to students. They're given a code that they can enter, then they're taken to those skills. Before starting, students can select "learn with an example" to see how the skill works, showing them how to solve a problem. They can then begin practicing at their own pace. The SmartScore is always viewable to the right, going up and down as correct and wrong answers are entered.

What are the best IXL features?

IXL is smart, so it can learn what a student needs to work on and offer new experiences to suit their needs. The built-in real-time diagnostic evaluates learners on a deep level to work out their exact proficiency level in any subject. This then creates a personalized action plan that can be used to guide each student so they're working on the best possible growth path.

If stuck during a skill, it's possible to scroll to the bottom where other skills are listed, which can help to build up knowledge and understanding so the student can better take on the skill at hand.

Recommendations work as a way to pick up skills that may help complete blank areas in which students could benefit from expanding their knowledge and skills. This is a great way to work using the app, anywhere and anytime, to help students learn independently while still being focused on curriculum-specific goals.

The analytics from all this student-specific data can be used by teachers, clearly laid out, to help them see where students need to focus. This shows both parents and teachers where the student is having trouble and how prepared they are to meet learning standards. For teachers, there are both class and individual reports that include item analysis, usage, and trouble spots.

How much does IXL cost?

Pricing for IXL is widely varied depending on what is being sought. The below are prices per family, however, children, schools, and districts can apply for a specific quote that may represent savings.

A single subject membership is charged at $9.95 per month, or $79 annually.

Go for the combo package, with math and language arts, and you'll be paying $15.95 per month, or $129 yearly.

Core subjects all included, with math language arts, science, and social studies, cost $19.95 per month, or $159 annually.

Pick a classroom specific package and it'll cost from $299 per year, going up depending on how many subjects you use.

IXL best tips and tricks

Skip a level
The "jump a level" skill can be used to see tougher questions, ideal to help test a student at a higher level, or access these for class wide use as a group.

Use Classroom
Since the system integrates with Google Classroom, this can be a great way to share specific skill-based improvement areas.

Suggest a skill
Teachers can share a specific skill, which might not automatically be assigned, in order to direct as student in an area they feel may be beneficial.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
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Personalized learning is being prioritized in districts, schools, and classrooms across the country yet educators don’t always mean the same thing when they use the term. 

“Personalized learning means lots of things,” says Bill Bass, Instructional Technology Coordinator for Parkway School District in Missouri. “The idea that it is just one definition is really tough to get your arms around.” 

A recent survey conducted by PowerSchool as part of its Education Focus Report confirmed this by showing a variety of perceptions when it comes to the idea of personalized learning. 

Defining Personalized Learning

When it comes to defining personalized learning, 54 percent of the 1,194 respondents said it meant “differentiated instructional strategies based on student.” Respondents were asked to select all the terms that applied and 43 percent said personalized learning was “using data to drive instructional practices and shifts.” Another 43 percent said it was “using adaptive learning technology to empower student learning.” 

Additionally, 36 percent said personalized learning was “elevating student voice and choice in learning,” 34 percent said it was “incorporating cultural relevance into instruction,” and 28 percent of respondents selected “competency-based education.” Overall, 54 percent also selected “all of the above" (respondents could select multiple options so the totals add up to more than 100 percent).

Ryan Imbriale, vice president of Education Solutions for PowerSchool, says that in addition to the survey, focus groups that were conducted as part of the report highlight the differing definitions around personalization. “When you talk personalization, it's everything from differentiation that happens in the classroom to using data to make decisions about an individual student or groups of students and elevating student voice,” he says. “And it's about using technology. And in addition to that, it's all of the above."

Bass, who is quoted in the report, agrees. “Personalized learning is this idea of we want to create learning opportunities for students that are going to be of high interest to them, that are going to be self-paced to a certain extent and allow our students to get to mastery,” he says. 

In addition, personalized learning puts students in the driver's seat. “One of the things that we can get to is helping our students identify the things that they love, that they're passionate about, and then capitalizing on those interests in order to help them find their way, whatever their way is,” he says. 

Personalized Learning in Practice  

To implement personalized learning in Bass’ Parkway School District, an elementary school is dedicated to the practice. The school serves as something of an educational incubator for educators district-wide who get the chance to see what personalized learning looks like in practice. 

“What we're doing is we're giving our teachers permission to expand beyond what they would normally be doing in a more traditional classroom,” Bass says. Students at the school are encouraged to make their own meaning out of the work that is being done, project-based learning is emphasized, and student voice and choice is facilitated. In addition, student learning outside of the classroom is celebrated and multiple forms of assessment are explored to give students choice in how they demonstrate their learning. 

The hope is that having these practices centralized at one school will encourage other schools and individual educators to adopt these. “It creates multiple points of entry at the teacher level, as well as at the building level, in order to take things that align with what they're doing in their building already, and then layering on top some of these personalized learning attributes,” Bass says. 

When it comes to exploring personalized learning and student voice in education, Bass says it’s important for educators to remember students have inherent abilities. “In education, we're pretty arrogant when we say things like, ‘We're going to give our students voices,’” he says. “The bottom line is they have a voice, we just have to provide them the opportunities in order to use that voice and to develop that voice.”

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“My background has traversed from working with our earliest learners to heading innovative coaching teams performing impressive turnarounds at K-12 districts to my current position as Urban Leadership Director preparing the next generation of superintendents,” said Professor Frances Gipson of Claremont University in her presentation during Tech & Learning’s recent “Future-Proofing Your District” virtual conference. “But above all, I am Team Kid. If it helps kids learn, I am all about it. One of the things I have stayed keenly aware of throughout my different roles is that the school is really the heart of the community.” 

So what happens when that very heart of the community faces unprecedented challenges and suddenly skips a beat? Or when newly formed robust learning centers and support systems holding together precarious educator-learner relationships are broken and forced into a new remote reality? 

“This is where we can think beyond the brick and mortar,” said Gipson. “When you think of the concept of community, with the right technical supports, it can really morph into a wraparound offering connectivity, becoming a more dynamic system that can truly support our learners as they become the next group of leaders in our country.” 

Here are five steps for district leaders preparing for community schooling, and what that means moving forward:

1. Move from Existing State to Desired State

When forging a modern learning system, a futuristic leader is not afraid of breaking through the walls of the past. They need to become a change agent and create disruptive learning opportunities, and opt for a catalytic way of reflecting, resourcing, and developing the knowledge, skills, and dispositions for a learning system. Adaptivity and flexibility are at the core mindset for these leaders, and essential for their learners’ mindsets.

One way leaders create inclusive and collaborative spaces is by increasing voice and agency. Agency helps learners to meaningfully change conditions in their lives and community. It provides purposeful initiative. Schools can serve as models of equity to assure that every student will have a positive and empowering learning environment. Both capacity and conviction for “living in the system” and “disturbing the system” are critical to ensure that our communities are at the center of all decisions.

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2. Advocate and Propel Policies with Personalizing Features for the Learning Environment

Future ready education leaders will find ways to provide a personalized learning experience for students at every age. These leaders will do the same for all stakeholders in education, providing customized training and learning opportunities. They’ll also do the same thing for themselves. Using research and promising practices, they will invite curiosity and create rigorous learning environments suited to the authentic interests of students. 

These leaders need to become equity champions. They should take active steps to dismantle the deeply ingrained structure of inequitable schooling, keeping a mind to elements of access and opportunities for acceleration. We must attend to the nuances of learning and leading, and be prepared to be nimble in meeting the needs of today’s learners in a rapidly changing knowledge economy.

3. Connect, Design, and Lead

One can’t underestimate the importance of adaptivity and leading with love when it comes to creating the ideal modern learning system. Complex problems don’t offer simple solutions, so polarity management is key to meeting and adjusting. Connecting with the community in order to design a learning setting for success is crucial. 

With ever-evolving innovations in edtech, our system has become more data rich than ever—a natural edge in designing a personalized modern learning system. Precision and resourcing is more readily available than ever before so we can better differentiate to address the needs of the “whole.” Schools and communities can be informed by voice, as well as by accompanying “big data” systems that merge sources for data-influenced action. Breaking predictable patterns and relying on personalized innovation can keep a “Team Kid” approach with students firmly at the center of the design.

4. Invite Innovation, Curiosity, and Creativity

Lead with instruction, lead with equity—it’s not just about leading with a tool. ISTE Standards, Linda Darling-Hammond’s Deeper Learning, and Quaglia’s Voice and Aspirations Framework offer resources and practices to include in a modern holistic learning system. 

Technology’s role in this change is to equalize the playing field in the classroom, giving every learner the opportunity to access individualized learning. Technology is an accelerator, therefore we must first lead with the best instruction. 

ISTE offers a roadmap for education with standards that are organized to rethink teaching and learning with a strong sense of agency for the learner.

5. Schools as the Heart of the Community

We must be beacons of academic optimism, integrating community-aimed systems of support that include wellness and are trauma-informed. These systems should also offer multitiered accelerations and mastery-learning options, include social-emotional learning for everyone in the nested learning community, and have a goal of economic connectivity for families, caretakers, and community partners. 

The forward-thinking community school serves academic needs, with hubs for both learning and wellness—a model of schooling that address the whole child.  

Frances Marie Gipson is a clinical associate professor of education in the School of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University, and also serves as director of the Urban Leadership program. Most recently, Gipson served as the Chief Academic Officer (CAO) for the second-largest school district in the nation, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). As a leader of leaders, she oversaw the instructional plan and capacity building for more than 600,000 students in preschool through adult school programs – across over 20 departments.

As of 2020-21, 14.5% of all U.S. students were special education students (ages 3-21). That translates to more than seven million who need teachers with specialized training to help kids with physical, emotional, mental and behavioral disabilities. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates that these students be educated with non-disabled peers to the greatest extent possible, in the least restrictive environment, and these apps and sites for special education can help. 

When teachers improve their ability to engage and educate special ed learners, they’re simply fulfilling another version of individualized learning. Fortunately, in addition to graduate-level coursework, there are several high-quality online resources to help any teacher learn the theory and practice of working with kids with disabilities. 

The following sites and apps provide lessons and activities for special needs learners, as well as professional development tools for teachers. All are free or modestly priced. 

Best Sites and Apps for Special Education

Better Lesson Instructional Strategies
Explore a broad range of instructional strategies that, although diverse, all aim to support individualized learning. Choose from social-emotional learning, culturally responsive teaching, competency-based learning, and more. Within each category, learn how to plan, practice, and implement several related strategies. For example, SEL offers detailed guidance on self-regulation, self-awareness, and collaborative conversations. A rich resource for all teachers, not just special ed. 

Sen Teacher  
Hundreds of free learning materials for special ed, including customizable printable downloads and interactive games in math, science, sensory/art, and assistive technology. Simple to use, and no account is needed.

TPT: Free Special Education Lessons and Activities  
Created, tested, and rated by your fellow teachers, these free special education resources are searchable by subject, grade, standards, and formats. Browse the handwriting practice, sight word activities, life skills, money math, and more to find exactly what you need for your classroom.

MakeBeliefs Comix for Students With Special Needs
Learn how teachers across the country are using MakeBeliefsComix to help students with a variety of disabilities—from autism to stuttering—learn and thrive.

Autism Circuit Tools
This site provides a diverse range of tools to help students make decisions, modulate their behavior appropriately, and understand consequences. Autism Circuit offers guidance and brief videos demonstrating how teachers can use tools such as choice boards in their classrooms. Other tools help students communicate, manage emotions, behaviors, and schedules. 

Do2Learn
Do2Learn is a nonprofit website providing free resources, tools, and activities to support educators in teaching children and young adults with special needs. The site includes interactive games, visual aids, and printable materials to engage learners of all ages and abilities. Educators can access a variety of lesson plans and curriculum ideas to create more inclusive and supportive learning environments. 

Microsoft Learning Tools Immersive Reader
OneNote Learning Tools provides a free immersive reader to help students boost their reading skills. Want to try it first? Just enter your own text into the box and start reading. Choose male or female voice, font and text size, background color and line focus. Other features allow you to assign color to parts of speech and display words in syllables. Click on any word to view a visual representation and to hear the word spoken. Translates words and entire documents into dozens of languages. Very cool tool, and super easy to use!

Paul V. Sherlock Center on Disabilities Adapted Literature and Lessons  Nearly 500 classic, popular, and/or educational works of literature adapted for students with special needs. The works include digital books, movies, videos, music, and PowerPoint presentations that aim to help students with visual and other disabilities. Want to create your own adapted literature? Check out the Creating Your Own Adapted Literature Webinars explaining how to do so. Free, no account required.

Mindful Schools  
Features 10 free mindfulness classes for kids, including activities, mindful movement, and read-alouds. Courses for educators cover mindfulness basics, how to implement mindfulness in the classroom, and self compassion (a must for teachers!).

Otsimo Special Education iOs Android
Developed by Zafer Elcik for his young autistic brother, the Otsimo app features a gamified, personalized curriculum for special education. Games focus on everyday basics such as clocks, weather and clothes as well as the alphabet, music, and colors. To view the app games, visit the website here. To play games, you’ll need to download the free app. 

Voice Dream
A suite of award-winning apps—Reader, Writer, Scanner—that provides text-to-speech reading, writing, and scanning capabilities in 30 languages. 

AAA Math
A no-frills K-8 math practice site that offers thousands of interactive math lessons, from addition to geometry to statistics. It’s easy to use -- just click on any topic or lesson and start practicing. Lessons are served in small, attainable blocks, which aids in preventing frustration. Plus, kids get immediate feedback on their answers. Free, no account needed. 

BoomCards Special Education Decks
Great collection of Boom Cards decks covering a wide variety of useful topics such as identifying public bathrooms, WH questions, verbs, modes of transportation, compare-contrast exercises, and more. Many are free or modestly priced, and all are sortable by grade, subject, and cost. Free account required. Want to learn more about how to use Boom cards? Check out What is Boom Cards and How Does It Work?

Autism Focused Intervention Resources and Modules
Free modules to help educators and caretakers learn about autism and evidence-based practices. Also available for $35 are continuing education credit modules that cover topics from cognitive behavioral intervention to video modeling. 

Paths to Literacy Lessons and Materials
Fine collection of lessons, manipulatives, hands-on activities, videos, and more to support teachers who work with students with visual disabilities, including deafblind students and those with multiple disabilities

SENict Teaching Activities
Free downloadable exercises curated to aid young people in advancing their accessibility skills via assistive technology, encompassing switches, touch devices, pointing devices, and eye gaze systems. Download each exercise individually or purchase a convenient memory stick loaded with 600+ activities, training videos, and teacher supports for £25 (about $31 U.S.).

Starfall
A well-designed, ad-free site that focuses on making reading and math fun for students pre K-3. Starfall’s founder Stephen Schutz struggled with dyslexia as a child and created Starfall to help kids learn to read—and learn to love learning. Art, music, poetry, riddles, and more keeps kids engaged in the interactive material. Four membership levels range from $35 annually for home use to $355 for a school membership. Each section also includes clearly marked free content, so it’s easy to browse the site and try it out without an account. 

Reading Rockets Reading Intervention Videos
These highly instructive free videos feature literacy expert Linda Farrell working with struggling readers on specific reading goals such as mastering the alphabet, multisyllabic words, and blending sounds. Each video is accompanied by professional development guides as well as commentary by Farrell. Be sure to explore the entire Reading Rockets website for a wealth of additional literacy guides and resources. 

• Best Deaf Awareness Lessons & Activities 
• Top Sites for Differentiated Instruction
• Using the Metaverse to Help Students With Intellectual Disabilities 

To share your feedback and ideas on this article, consider joining our Tech & Learning online community here.

Content-integration platform Symbaloo today announced that it is offering its PRO version to all educators at no cost for the duration of the school closings caused by the coronavirus. Existing users can upgrade to PRO with no additional charge, and educators without existing accounts can sign up for free. 

Symbaloo allows educators to create webmixes and Learning Paths for students. Webmixes are collections of links to websites, videos, documents, and articles that function as a homepage for educators. 

Learning Paths are board game-style online lesson plans that encourage students to continue learning at their own pace. Educators can build paths by adding videos, documents, assessment questions, articles, and educational games that guide students from start to finish. Learning Paths also provide educators real-time analytics showing students’ progress, time spent on assignments, and how they’re doing on assessments. 

For educators who are new to the platform, Symbaloo has created a series of video tutorials to help them get started. If they don’t have the time to create their own content yet, they can find a wide variety of open-source educational resources in the Symbaloo Marketplace. The platform has a gallery of 400,000 webmixes and 7,500 Learning Paths that are searchable by grade level and subject. 

Educators can distribute webmixes and Learning Paths through Google Classroom or by sharing a link with students via email or social media. Students can start learning right away, without setting up an account. 

The Archdiocese of Chicago has adopted Curriculum Associates’ i-Ready Diagnostic for Grades K–2. The Archdiocese will implement the online program as a formative assessment for both reading and mathematics starting in the 2020–2021 school year.  

The implementation of i-Ready Diagnostic across Grades K–2 comes after a multiyear pilot of the program. During the 2018–2019 school year, the Archdiocese of Chicago used the program in 15 schools and then expanded to 81 schools during the 2019–2020 school year. 

The Diagnostic provides educators with actionable criterion-referenced and normative data. Teachers administer the Diagnostic at the beginning of the school year to chart a course for their instruction and to personalize i‑Ready instructional paths. A midyear and end-of-year Diagnostic helps students and teachers measure growth and have data chats. Teacher-led and online instruction continues throughout the year to help students address their learning gaps and access grade-level learning. 

To learn more about i-Ready, visit i-Ready.com/Empower.

National Geographic Learning has partnered with not-for-profit assessment organization NWEA to help teachers assess student proficiency and personalize learning paths across K-12 reading instruction. NWEA assessments will be integrated with National Geographic Learning’s Panorama reading program, giving teachers insight into what each student knows and how they can differentiate instruction.  

Starting this fall, the MAP Growth assessment from NWEA will be administered as a benchmark test and then paired with National Geographic Learning’s skill lessons to give teachers the ability to use the MAP Growth results to create customized assignments for students. Educators will have access to progress reports up to four times a year to offer ways to close achievement gaps.  

National Geographic Learning’s Panorama reading program uses fiction and National Geographic nonfiction, as well interactive text and video, to help students learn how to read science and social studies content. 

For more information, visit NGL.Cengage.com/panorama.

Teachers are always concerned about “adding one more program” to their plates. So, as our district team researched the merits of personalized learning, we saw that implementing a personalized learning program could help us reach several of our instructional objectives without additional burden on our teachers. In fact, if we implemented a comprehensive program with fidelity, teachers would have more tools, training and technology to help them differentiate instruction. 

We wanted to:

—Train teachers how to differentiate instruction and provide technology to help them

—Have students take more responsibility for their own learning

—Close reading gaps for our struggling students

Muscogee County School District is near Fort Benning, Georgia. As a military community, a large percentage of our 31,500 students are transitory. Also, we have a 24% poverty rate, and 78% of our students are on some kind of meal assistance program. The district felt that it was critically important that personalized learning ensured that our students did not have gaps or redundancies in their instructional programs.

Fortunately, we received a grant from the governor’s office that allowed us to pilot personalized learning in second and third grade in three of our more challenged schools last year. We had already done the background research on the devices we wanted to use from durability and capacity standpoints; we selected Chromebooks and piloted a personalized learning initiative. The program results were impressive in terms of student engagement, and our teachers reported a greater sense of efficacy. The results confirmed our theory that personalized learning would help us achieve our goals, so the school board gave us the go-ahead to move forward districtwide.

Ed Elements helped us plan and execute the rollout of devices. We piloted the 1:1 Chromebooks in second and third grade last year at three schools; we just deployed Chromebooks in all middle schools at the beginning of the current school year; and we plan to deploy them to all of our high schools in January 2020. Then at the beginning of next school year, we will issue Chromebooks to all elementary students—completing the 1:1 rollout.

Choosing Reading Curriculum and Supplemental Programs

When I first arrived as superintendent and reviewed the reading gap data, I was concerned that there was not a standard approach to literacy instruction throughout the district. In addition to the gaps and redundancies in our instruction, we were also transitioning from a low-level statewide assessment to a much higher level assessment.

All of this was the catalyst for searching for a curricular reading backbone. We chose one product for the district, but even as we standardized the reading curriculum, we saw that teachers needed more assistance with differentiating instruction. Many teachers were challenged by how to fully utilize different aspects of the reading program because these topics were not a part of their pre-service teacher education. So, we wanted to address that, while at the same time teach the scientific aspects of reading. We also needed something to help us differentiate instruction and provide quality Tier 1 instruction that aligned with our MTSS scalability from Tier 1 to Tier 3.

The district developed pacing guides and we continued to use the supplemental resources we had found successful. Although we had a solution to serve upper-level reading, we still had a need to provide support for lower grades. The grant allowed us to use Lexia Core5 Reading to focus on grades K–2 at three high-need schools. After the pilot results, we decided to implement Lexia more broadly and use it with our struggling readers in all elementary grades.

The Right People with the Right Plan for Personalized Learning

Last year’s pilot got off to a strong start because we worked with early adopters in our district who volunteered to be part of the pilot. You have to be comfortable with the concept of personalized learning and interested in learning yourself. Teachers attended a boot camp where they learned about implementing personalized learning and what that really meant. Differentiation is part of personalized learning, but the terms are not synonymous. The boot camp training helped teachers really understand that, and they became better teachers. It is possible to personalize learning without technology, but using technology that offers explicit, systematic instruction frees up time for teachers to address the individual needs of each student and provide higher-order feedback.

What we saw from our pilot last year was that students began to take more ownership in their learning, they were more engaged and behavior significantly improved at those three schools. One of the outcomes of the pilot was that we saw the ownership of the learning move from teacher to student. 

The instructional software is great for generating immediate feedback about the student relative to mastery, but using the higher-order feedback—the information that teachers gain from the software to work more effectively with individual students—that is the real art of teaching. We’re providing both the art and science of learning through personalized learning. The results speak for themselves. In one of the pilot schools, 100% of the students closed their learning gaps and achieved their progress goals as defined by the state. The other two pilot schools had similar results.

Moving Forward

Nothing begets success like success. The early adopter teachers in the pilot received all the training and support they needed to be successful. This year they are working with colleagues to help them achieve similar results in fourth and fifth grades in those same schools. After seeing the success that their peers had last year, there is an organic excitement and energy around personalizing learning. The teachers are carrying this forward. It’s not a mandate from the administration.

We have also been working with our local university, Columbus State, from which 65% of our teachers have graduated. Pre-service teachers take part in the professional training from EdElements. We include them in this approach to teaching so they can hit the ground running as beginner teachers in our system. This has been a win-win for us. We provide a bridge for them from college students to first-year teachers, and they come out better prepared and knowledgeable about the process and resources we utilize. The hope is that they will be more successful in their early careers, and we will reduce the turnover that often happens in the first three to five years of teaching.

Our district is enthusiastic about this shift to personalized learning, and Lexia is a big part of it. Core5 is research-proven and now classroom-proven in our district. We believe in balanced literacy, in which phonics and decoding are so important, and it does this very well. And, of course, the information the program provides to teachers gives them tremendous insight into the needs of each student. We are helping students build a learning path and supporting their personalized learning through our technology and devices. I think this is an efficient and effective way to supplement our reading instruction and help students close their reading gaps. 

Technology in education, like most other areas of education, has fads, buzzwords, and trends that come and go often. There have been many predictions in the past regarding the future of technology in schools. This list contains a variety of trends that did not meet expectations, but also did not completely flop. The primary focus is on K-12 education, but there will be a few exceptions that apply to education at all levels and in general.

1. Virtual Reality (VR) & Augmented Reality (AR)
   It still seems that the price tag still remains a major barrier of entry for Virtual Reality. Once this barrier is breached, then the issue becomes finding sufficient appropriate learning materials that use the virtual reality components in an efficient and effective educational manner. Augmented reality has become more widespread due to lower barriers of entry, but many implementations of AR could be seen as a simple short-term use gimmick. On top of the barriers of entry, there are also reported issues of headaches and motion sickness which make the selection of VR/AR less desirable to some. While there surely are many people that successfully use both AR and VR in their classrooms, it will likely take further improvements in the technology, more development of appropriate educational programs that can be used on a VR/AR platform, and a lower price point to make this trend reach its full potential.
   
2. Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD)
   The idea of having students bring their own devices to school is a very polarizing issue.  Some think it is a great idea to have students connect their education to their personal devices since they spend a lot of time on them anyway.  Others would say that it is a terrible idea, since the school may not be able to adequately monitor exactly what the students are doing on their devices since they are not school-issued and maintained.  Part of the reason why this may have not caught on to a higher degree could be because of the issue of what to do with students that do not own their own device, or whose parents do not permit them to take their devices to school.  This adds another layer of required management.  Some schools may collect old devices and enable them to be used by students without their own devices, or schools may purchase several loaner devices, but doing so undermines the concept of BYOD to a certain degree.  This is a trend/prediction that could go either way.  Schools could make a push to gather and repurpose used devices for students that do not have the ability to bring their own device.  On the other hand, schools could all together ban the use of personal devices (specifically as it relates to the educational experience) and only allow for school-owned devices to be used in schools.
   
3. Interactive Whiteboards
   This is a trend that I feel has already hit its peak and will begin to fade.  For many students in a 1:1 device environment, the need to have a central presentation location seems to be diminishing.  The expense of purchasing and maintaining the equipment can be high, compared to programs that can allow one computer to share a screen with a class of students on their own devices.  The fate of this trend seems largely tied to a variety of other trends in education that place priority on individualized learning over large group lecture-style learning.
   
4. Computer Labs
   While still somewhere in the middle, this seems to be a trend that is on its way down.  1:1 devices, inexpensive laptops, tablets, BYOD, and other related tech trends all seem to point towards the end of single-purpose computer labs.  While there is certainly still a need for students to learn computer skills, a dedicated lab of computer seems like it will soon no longer be the place.  Students may be able to get a better learning experience in any learning space with their own device and a teacher guiding them through productivity apps, computer science, and/or basic functions of a computer.  There will certainly be exceptions to this.  Rather than eliminating the space altogether, these spaces seem to be prime for morphing into STEM labs and maker spaces.  
   
5. Wearables
   I have predicted it in the past as an upcoming tech trend in education.  But its not quite there yet.  This can include a huge variety of tech-enhanced items including smartwatches, enhanced virtual glasses, and assistive technology for individuals with disabilities.  There still remains relatively high price points for these devices, and many are small and have the potential to be easily lost or damaged by students.  These issues seem to be preventing wearables from becoming a bigger trend in educational technology than they have been so far.  I still feel that this category has great potential to become a major tech trend in education in the future.

Dr. Lahullier is the Coordinator of Technology Services for the Rochelle Park (NJ) School District.

Catalyst, a global community for education leaders, concluded its launch event series across four continents last week, finding that education leaders around the world share similar challenges and concerns about prevalent nonacademic topics that impact student learning. 

Event gatherings were held in Sydney, Johannesburg, London, and Washington, D.C., attracting education leaders from the national, district, and school levels. Since its launch in October, Catalyst has attracted 400 participant members across 18 countries in four continents. 

Regardless of locale, education culture, and school structure, four consistent challenges emerged:

1. Implementing social and emotional learning programs to meet the needs of all students. 
2. Creating a culture of equity and building student agency.
3. Future-proofing technology purchases to support emerging instructional trends, including personalization and differentiation. 
4. Creating immersive learning spaces that improve student learning.

“Action and outcomes, rather than solely knowledge sharing, are at the heart of our Catalyst community,” said professor and researcher Stephen Heppell, cofounder of Catalyst. “We see too often that educators are isolated — in their own states, provinces, or countries. They’re facing largely the same challenges but working independently to solve them. Catalyst provides a home for problem-solvers to work together, developing and sharing effective, pragmatic, and tested solutions.” 

Through in-person meetings and an online hub, Catalyst links education innovators with experts and each other to jointly create, implement, and refine new approaches to tackling some of the most complex challenges in the sector. The next series of Catalyst events will take place in the beginning of 2020 at major conferences worldwide — bett, FETC, TCEA, didacta, and SXSW EDU — where attending educators can easily participate and contribute to the conversation around these pressing education issues. 

Catalyst’s international roster of founding partners includes Jaime Goldstein, Director of Strategic Projects and Innovation Grants, the Harvard Initiative for Learning & Teaching; Nancy Conrad, founder of The Conrad Foundation; professor and researcher Stephen Heppell; education strategist Ken Shelton; SMART Technologies; and Learnit World Limited. 

Education leaders and those interested in driving change in education globally are invited to join the Catalyst community for free at www.educatalyst.com 

Welcome to School Tools. This daily blog is a vital addition to Tech & Learning that will highlight, examine and explain the newest and most important educational technologies. From notebooks, tablets and projectors to apps, online curriculum and Web services, look for School Tools to tell you about the latest in educational technology as well as what works, what doesn’t and what deserves to be in the classroom.

By scouring the Ed Tech landscape, we intend to bring you the most interesting and innovative products for the classroom and presenting them in plain English.  Most days you’ll find descriptions of cutting-edge teaching technologies and once a week there will be an in-depth review of a key classroom product. We intend to get personal and be your stand-in for making these key classroom buying decisions. Our goal is to become nothing short of fostering a better classroom experience for teacher and student. 

Calling, Calculus Tutor

Pearson Aida Calculus

Getting help to confused calculus students may be no more than a phone away with Pearson’s Aida Calculus app. By mixing traditional math education with a heavy dose of artificial intelligence Aida creates a personalized approach to the material. The app, which works with iPhones and iPads, but not Android phones and tablets, includes helpful videos, offers positive feedback on what students did correctly and helpful tips when students are stumped. It’s free to use until the end of 2019.

The idea of personalized learning reaches an “inflection point” today as PowerSchool, a leading provider of student information systems (SIS), completes the acquisition of Schoology, a leading K-12 learning management system (LMS). In an interview with Tech&Learning on Friday, PowerSchool CEO Hardeep Gulati and Schoology CEO and Co-Founder Jeremy Friedman discussed how the merger will give school administration, faculty, and parents more features and functions to manage student progress without disrupting their current workflow, instead making it more efficient. 

Schoology’s LMS will continue to function as a distinct product within PowerSchool Unified Classroom and will receive up to $100 million in research and development funding to deliver the current roadmap and new innovations. “In fact, the combination of resources will give customers even more customer support,” says Gulati, “This addition will all be part of the natural upgrade process.”

The company’s combined technologies are intended to enhance the ability of districts and educators too:

• Centralize key aspects of learning to get a complete view of every student, giving teachers all of the tools they need in one unified solution 

• Embed formative assessments to allow real-time feedback and adaptation of individual learning plans 

• Empower teachers with their own professional learning based on students’ instructional needs 

• Put parents, teachers, and students on the same team with one source of real-time collaboration and communication 

• Develop personal learning paths based on specific student needs and information across student information system (SIS), learning, assessment, special education, and teacher professional development enabling them to learn in their own way based on their learning styles 

Also announced today are plans for simplified workflows between Schoology and PowerSchool’s existing core solutions. The company will also continue to support the broader education technology ecosystem through open standards-based and out-of-the-box integrations with all SIS platforms, Google, Microsoft, and other third-party education tools, as well as providing more robust benchmark and summative assessment with PowerSchool Performance Matters, special education, and gradebook tools. PowerSchool is also committed to supporting industry-leading open standards, such as OneRoster and LTI from the IMS Global Learning Consortium and Ed-Fi. 

“Our customers have been telling us they are excited about our roadmap and have been asking us to deliver a more unified solution with additional capabilities. We are excited to provide that to them on a much greater scale with the investment we get by being part of PowerSchool, and some of the additional capabilities that our customers wanted will become a reality,” says Friedman. 

Renaissance® today announced that it has acquired Schoolzilla, a company known for its data-driven dashboards that integrate multiple sources of student data, including attendance, suspensions, course grades, and more. By adding student learning data from Renaissance’s assessment, literacy, and math programs to Schoolzilla’s dashboards, school and district leaders can gain the insights needed to evaluate trends in student attendance and achievement.

Schoolzilla’s dashboards enable education leaders to track daily progress toward goals around metrics such as chronic absence, grades, assessment growth, and college readiness. The customizable dashboards can aggregate data from over 135 education data sources, including student information systems, assessments (including interim, formative, and state assessments), behavior management systems, and more. Data can be viewed either for the current academic term or longitudinally to compare growth within grade levels and across years. 

Classroom educators can also use Schoolzilla dashboards to understand how groups of students, as well as individual students, are doing on these same metrics and then pinpoint opportunities to strengthen teaching and learning.

Schoolzilla customers will continue to receive the support and service they have come to expect and love from the company. 

One of the benefits of a technology-rich classroom environment is supposed to be better opportunities to personalize learning for all students. But what does that look like in practice? In October, over fifty leaders from districts around the country (and a few from Canada) met to discuss what personalized learning looks like in their districts. The Tech & Learning Leadership Summit gave participants the chance to network, learn with and from each other, and learn about programs that might be useful for them and their districts.

The weekend started off on Friday with a huge welcome and a bus ride. Participants met with scientists at Argonne National Laboratory to learn about technology use at the highest level. One group of leaders got to learn about the supercomputer on campus, while the other group explored the Advanced Photon Source, or APS.

Argonne National Laboratory is getting ready for a large remodel, and participants were treated to a discussion about all the upgrades that are on the horizon. The new supercomputer, Aurora, will be the fastest in the world. The rebuilt APS will allow for calculations that are ten times more precise and produce thousands of times more data. Companies that use space at Argonne for research will be able to work faster than they ever have before. The possibilities are endless with these new improvements, and the excitement was evident on the faces of all who spoke about it.

After a tour of the facilities, participants were able to have a discussion about the educational opportunities for everyone—from pre-K to postgraduate students. Argonne National Laboratory is leading the charge to bring STEM education into the classroom and to help students find their spark in whatever way they can. Megan Bruozas, manager of Argonne’s educational programs and outreach, introduced ideas tied to courses of study for different age levels and discussed the individualized attention that can be given to students in the workshops and camps the Laboratory offers. The bus ride back to the hotel was lively with discussions about opportunities for students, possible partnerships, and excited techies geeking out over the things they had just seen.

Saturday morning began with an animated keynote by Alex Seeskin around the idea of adult relationships easing transitions for students. Seeskin’s work with the Urban Education Institute, in partnership with Chicago Public Schools, has been instrumental in opening people’s eyes to the idea that factory-based education no longer makes sense and that relationships and autonomy now drive student success.

The very idea that students can move through our current education system unscathed seems almost laughable after listening to Seeskin’s talk about his co-authored report “Practice-Driven Data; Lessons from Chicago’s Approach to Research, Data, and Practice in Education.” The lack of preparation for transitions—from class to class, teacher to teacher, and especially year to year—is a large part of why some students aren’t able to be successful in high school or beyond. Seeskin suggests that schools and districts plan for tough transition periods in a way that lowers as much of the risk of failure as possible.

The table discussions after Seeskin’s talk centered around data—its use, place, and abuse in the public education sector. Groups were lively and informative, with many leaders sharing about their districts and learning about successes in others.

The remainder of the day was split between working groups and vendor discussions. Participants had a choice of eight different working groups with collaborative discussions led by a Tech & Learning editor. Topics ranged from learning spaces to emerging technology and touched on ideas including personalized learning, student data privacy, and changing teacher pedagogy.

Vendors showcased wonderful new tools meant to streamline school processes and eliminate red tape. Technology resellers, Internet filter providers, and vendors of online portfolio platforms and single-sign-on solutions were all on hand to walk participants through demos. The theme of the weekend was “How can we make your lives easier and your students safer?”

The discussion groups were designed to include a mix of people with different roles from districts of different sizes. This recipe provided for rich discussions of what worked, what didn’t, and why. The digital citizenship discussion, in particular, was energetic to the verge of heated, with every single participant in the room agreeing on one thing— they all want what is best for their students.

Really, the idea that all participants want what is best for their students seems to be what this weekend boiled down to. Every educational leader there was eager to learn what they could take back to their districts that would make a positive impact on students’ lives.

From the Argonne National Laboratory supercomputer to the keynote celebrating successful transition models to dinners around tables with newfound friends, this weekend was about relationships. What’s the relationship between a supercomputer named Aurora and the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne? What’s the relationship between a well-supported high-school freshman and their success rate as they think about college?

While personalized learning can be enhanced by technology, isn’t it, at its core, about getting to know someone else? It’s about finding out what makes them tick and their priorities. Then technology can be called on to facilitate creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. Tools are the how, but personalized learning has to come from the who and the why. Who are your students as learners, and why do they want to come to school? Thank you, Tech & Learning, for helping leaders bring it back to why we are here—to help students learn how to be successful.

Nikki Schafer is an Instructional Technology Specialist in Omaha, Nebraska, where she lives with her husband, two little girls and two large dogs. Nikki has a bachelors in Music Education from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, a Masters in Instructional Technology from the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and is currently working towards a Masters in Educational Leadership with Doane University.

While most US high-school students aspire to earn a college degree, less than one in three succeed. One of the primary goals of the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project is to empower K–12 educators with the research, data, and resources they need to move more students to and through high school and college.

“Our work is research based and practice driven,” says Alex Seeskin, director of the To&Through Project and one of the authors of “Using Data to Improve Schools from the Ground Up.”

Knowing that data can be critical for educators as they help students learn and achieve their potential is one thing, but applying the often overwhelming amount of data in practice is another. “We’re data rich and information poor,” says Seeskin. He identifies some key areas of focus for districts as they seek to harness the power of data: identifying barriers to student success, building systems to curate data, professional learning—and patience.

SMOOTHING TRANSITIONS

“One of the biggest problems facing schools is the transitions students have to navigate all the time—between grade levels, schools, and even classes,” says Seeskin. “Students are vulnerable at each one of these, as they move from one set of relationships and systems to another. It’s hard to personalize experiences for students when we don’t know what challenges or successes they faced in the last grade, school, or class. When a student moves from a math to an English class, for example, the English teacher often has no idea what’s happening in that math class and how that student is interacting with material in math.”

It’s critically important, therefore, for teachers to look at data together. Only when they have a holistic picture of each individual student can they personalize learning and offer the support students need. This is especially true of SEL, says Seeskin. “We encourage schools to build these structures and to make it a priority for teachers to talk together about common students and shared groups of students.”

Research also shows that a student’s GPA and attendance are much better indicators of future success than test scores, which tend to predict test scores, Seeskin says. “So we need to understand and pay attention to those indicators as we intervene and personalize work with students.”

CURATING DATA

“Schools and practitioners often feel they’re drowning in data, and time is a valuable resource,” says Seeskin. “The key is to help them curate the data so they know what to pay attention to when—at different times of the school year, for example. We need to build tools that funnel the right data to schools and practitioners—and that also funnel the data they don’t need away from them. Data needs to be understandable and accessible so teachers can make decisions quickly.”

Practitioners need support as they learn to use data and make these data-based decisions. Professional learning should include a technical component as well, Seeskin says, to ensure that the technical problems most schools face don’t sabotage adaptive learning. Trust and collaboration are also key building blocks to success. “There needs to be trust between the system and practitioners and discussions around who’s best equipped to make decisions at different levels within a district,” says Seeskin. “And it’s important to take time to consult with other schools facing similar challenges.”

PLAYING THE LONG GAME

“This is incredibly challenging and complicated work, and there are very few easy answers,” says Seeskin. “I see this a lot—a school can have all of the data and resources they need, but they don’t see immediate change and go looking for a silver bullet. I see systems and schools ping-ponging between new initiatives every year. That type of change is frustrating, exhausting, and often demoralizing.”

Instead, he says, schools need to be comfortable with somewhat slow, incremental progress. “We have to play the long game and build systems and structures and a culture that enable us to invest in process over results. We have to have patience. We can’t change a school in a year. When you take the longer view, you begin to think about gaining trust and buy-in from those who matter most and crafting solutions alongside them.”

This patient view of the bigger picture applies to every step of the process, beginning with the launch. “I’m a huge believer in starting with one thoughtfully chosen school, grade level, or even teacher rather than launching a new initiative across 100 schools tomorrow. There’s real power with starting with an N of 1 and going slowly, recognizing that there will be failure. It’s probably not going to work the first time, but that just means you haven’t figured out how this approach works in your context. When the system is willing to iterate with the first school, by the time they get to the second or tenth school, the intervention is more mature, and they’re able to offer better guidance and respond more quickly. When you give interventions or initiatives a chance to adapt to the surrounding context, they work much more often.”

The research, stories, and resources at https://toandthrough.uchicago.edu illustrate how To&Through’s research-based and practice-driven work is impacting schools and students.

We are excited that #TLTechLive is back and  to have the opportunity to share at Austin Live  September 20th during a session on “Personalizing PD,” In today’s digital world, it doesn’t matter if your district is one-to-one or working towards increasing learning tools because students have devices in the palms of their hands. We learned that students will be more engaged in any project if they can use tools for presenting, curating, and sharing information. Well, we feel the same for teacher learning and that will be the topic of our session. How many staff meetings or professional development days have you sat in and felt the content was broad but not very deep. This style of PD is designed to give as much information out in the same way regardless of the audience or participants. This style of professional development doesn’t work for teachers any more than it does for students. 

In our roles, we have talked to many educators, and they agree that differentiating instruction and material for students based on different needs, interests, strengths, and approaches to learning to maximize learning. We agree and feel the same goes for teachers. So why design staff meetings and PD with a “one size fits all” approach? 

Teachers enter the profession with a variety of backgrounds, paths, and an array of unique skills. If we encourage teachers to be lifelong learners, we have to then design and provide readily available ongoing professional learning. Not only continuous, but sessions that address their requests, interests, strengths, and needs.

One of the central goals of professional development is to help teachers bridge the gap between current practice and desired practice. Learning new strategies and transferring those skills into the classroom requires time and effort. Traditional professional development sessions are built for one session for all participants, whereas personalized PD is ongoing and individually designed.

Designing a day with all of a school’s teachers in a room for one day and offering strategies is no longer an effective option. Instead, attention must be paid to the broader context of each teacher’s classroom needs. So how do we make this idea a reality? We will be sharing some of these strategies in Austin at Tech and Learning Live.

We have found that teachers are self-driven and desire to learn at the moment as they are preparing for upcoming units. Professional Development becomes relevant, immediately applicable, and desired. There are many different tools we use to share content with our teachers to reach them where they are as they plan. 

District Example

Something new we are trying in EMS ISD this year is to allow our teachers to complete a form requesting specific support during our campus tech training days. Instead of having teachers sit through a full conference period and listen to information that might not pertain to them, we are personalizing their training based on their requests. We are finding that this builds relationships at a faster rate due to teachers feeling valued. We realize their time is valuable, and we want our time with them to be meaningful and purposeful. We use Microsoft OneNote for delivering our content to all staff members. Each school has a campus OneNote, and that allows us to add information that we need to present to teachers and even makes the content interactive. Even if we aren’t able to meet with the entire staff, the content is available for them to access. Based on teacher requests, we create a table with meeting times and specific topics that were requested in addition to links and added resources. 

In our session we will share many ideas to personalize professional development and share tools to turn ideas into action.

Click here to view our slide deck for session

OneNote for Organization

OneNote is a digital Trapper Keeper. It’s the perfect one-stop-shop to take notes, store documents & resources, & collaborate with peers or students. And it’s FREE! 

Resources:

• Click here to go through our OneNote training
• Click here for a Wakelet all about OneNote + Wakelet and how they work together
• Become a OneNote Ninja with this PD Collection
• Click here for OneNote video resources for teachers
• Click here for resources to use Open Up in the classroom
• Click here for Pintrest resources for One Note

Wakelet for Content Curation

Wakelet allows you to create, curate, and share web content easily. You can build collections of websites, videos, PDF’s, tweets, articles, links, text, and more. And it’s FREE! 

Resources:

• Click here for a Wakelet all about Wakelet
• Click here for the Educator’s Guide to Wakelet
• Click here for Wakelet resources for educators
• Click here to read how Wakelet works in classrooms
• Click here to read how Wakelet enhances curation of content
• Click here to read how Wakelet enhances curation of content for elementary learners

Padlet for Educator Voice

Padlet is a free web-based tool used for personalized and interactive professional development. Padlet provides tools to fit the needs of personalized PD. This flexibility creates a balance of online and face-to-face faculty discussions and learning. Facilitating PD with Padlet also provides modeling of a strategy teachers can take back to their classroom and use with students.

When you facilitate PD using Padlet, you are empowered to develop resources before, during, and after a session. Participants can contribute using text or expand their participation with links to websites, documents, photos, or even video. Participants or the facilitator can also share relevant material to Padlet after the session has concluded.

All participants in a professional-development session have something to contribute. Padlet gives them a way to share their voice. For further support, check out these helpful resources

• Click here for an article on how to use
• Click here for 20 useful ways to use Padlet in class now
• Click here for a video tutorial on how to use Padlet
• Click here for 30 creative ways to use Padlet for teachers and students

Flipgrid for Staff Meeting PD

Flipgrid is a platform that creates a culture of collaboration and innovation because teachers are not only sharing new learning, but they can also respond to each other or follow up in person. Flipgrid, a free tool that can be used to deliver personalized PD and increase teachers’ opinions of connectedness in the online space. Flipgrid works similar to a discussion forum, but for PD instead of a question prompt from the instructor, the session facilitator can deliver content and then have participants build off of the training and post responses. With Flipgrid participants can respond to each other’s posts, and you have created continuous learning online.

Creating personalized PD using the video style exchange allows teachers to work at their own pace and to get to know other participants by watching videos. This level of collaboration increases communication efficiency because participants will be able to show body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice, just like a face-to-face PD.

To get started with this tool, check out these resources:

• Click here for “getting started with Flipgrid”
• Click here for Benefits of Flipgrid Video Recording
• Click here for A Complete Guide to Using Flipgrid – 12 Tutorial Videos
• Click here for How To Use Flipgrid: A Guide For Teachers
• Click here for Flipgrid in PD

Using Twitter for PD

It’s a free Social Networking service that allows users to send and receive messages known as “Tweets” sometimes called “Microblogging”.

• Messages are restricted to 280 characters
• Tweets can be public or private
• Usernames use @ Handle
• People who follow your Tweets are your “Followers”
• You can also be “Following” other Twitter users
• RT (Re-Tweet) Forwarding someone else’s Tweet to your Followers
• DM (Direct Message) Sends a private message to a specific person. You can only send a DM to someone who follows you

The five E’s of Twitter

• Engage: post, follow, retweet, talk to authors, colleagues
• Explore: get ideas, hashtags, resources
• Explain: tweet what you’re doing, connect with community
• Evaluate: reflect on practices, stay current
• Elaborate: retweet with comment, engage in chats

Resources:

• If you don’t have a Twitter account – use www.twitter.com and you can set one up.
• School vs. personal
• Create a twitter handle, something that tells about you or your role.
• Click here for a site to help you choose a Twitter handle.
• Form letter to inform families  click here
• 280 characters packs a powerful punch as tweets can be text, images, video, or links
• Click here for twitter resources on Pinterest
• Peruse this list of Educators on Twitter and follow them
• 50 Educators to follow from teachthought
• Click here for 26 Must Follows on Twitter from the @teachbetterteam (I am a little bias to this list)
• What’s a #Hashtag?
  • Click here for video
• Click here for video
• Social Media in Education: Resource Toolkit
  • Click here for article
• Click here for article
• Making the Case for Social Media in Schools | Edutopia
  • Click here for article
• Click here for article

YouTube for PD

Create your own channel for district/school announcements; use to articulate school initiatives, PD, referendums, support for budget, etc. Using YouTube for PD will allow for sessions without face-to-face time or having presenters in the room. Becomes efficient use of time and reflection. Why start a channel?

• It gives you a voice to bring about awareness to your passions
• Builds your brand
• Connect with other professionals and those with your same passions
• Offer you the ability to contribute to your learning community with quality videos offering tutorials, thoughts, advice, or ideas

Use the below resources to start your own channel for PD or for your school/classroom.

• Click here for 10 things you needs to know starting a YouTube channel
• Click here to watch  video about starting on YouTube
• Click here for resources to use YouTube in your classroom
• Click here for ideas for YouTube and flipped lessons

Subscribe to our channels

• Click here for Jenallee show
• Click here for the X-factor
• Click here for Jenallee Blog

Virtual PD

Holding an online professional development session with participants based in different locations can be efficient, but challenging. Often participants can experience connectivity problems and communication delays. Another concern is the structured manner of content delivery and multiple people can speak at the same time. Following these steps can maximize learning and minimize distractions.

PD Preparation:

• Schedule training using an online tool: As with any teacher training, it is essential to schedule the date and time and invite participants.
• Set the agenda in advance. Your agenda should list the time to keep you on pace as the moderator. Include the agenda in the calendar invite. You might also create and share a link to a cloud tool where participants can add notes and share resources.
• Assign Roles: Besides thinking through purpose, norms, materials, facilitator agenda, technical, scheduling, and communication – you also should assign roles. Identify different people to assume different roles to help keep the training on track. Roles may include:
  • Facilitator/Moderator:
  • Notetaker
  • Technical support
  • Small group facilitator
  • Timekeeper.
• Facilitator/Moderator:
• Notetaker
• Technical support
• Small group facilitator
• Timekeeper.
• Practice with the technology

Step 2: Execution

• Start on time: It is unprofessional to the teachers who log in on time to wait, and it adds a negative spin to the PD before it starts.
• Introductions: Welcome participants into the training to both introduce let others know who is in the virtual PD if they are not all in the same room.
• Use names: Using names (or group name i.e., High School Math team) when addressing a person or restating a point from that person will help participants remember who is in training and assist participants with staying connected to the PD.
• Incorporate the Mute Button: If you have a large group of participants together on the screen at the same time, there could potentially be a lot of background noise and become a distraction. It is perfectly OK to mute all of your participants while you are talking.
• Keep a forward pace: In an in-person training, you have the luxury of cues like smiles or the flipside sighing, eye-rolling, dozing, or seeing people check their phone. So, be mindful of the time and the agenda, so the training doesn’t get away from you.
• Questions and Answers: Leave time for Q/A. Once you have finished showing your presentation or sharing ideas, and still have everyone in the hangout, be sure to open up the “virtual floor” for questions and discussions in case there are points to clarify or add to.

Post-Session

• Ask for feedback. Participants will appreciate it and validate their input and time. It also gives you a chance to improve on the experience.
• Post the training online: If the software allows you to record the training, send everyone the link after the session. If you created a shared Google Doc, share this link with attendees.
• Self-Evaluate: Take time to reflect. Your goals of leading an online PD are no different than in-person. Make sure to reflect after the session.

When you moderate and online training, you need to take a few steps to ensure success. By preparing correctly, participating fully, and following up, your online sessions can be just as successful as training in a room with colleagues.

Remember:

• Speak clearly
• Wear earbuds with a microphone
• Maintain eye contact by looking into the camera
• Dress appropriately
• Have fun!

Preparing in advance and ensuring that your PD session is well structured, moderated, and well-communicated will allow your training and processes to be an extremely effective platform for connecting your school professional development.  

Online PD sites:

• Google Hangouts can have a video group chat for up to 10 people for free with your Gmail account.
• Join.me is a free tool that allows you to hold an unlimited number of meetings with up to 10 participants per session (one organizer plus 9 participants)
• MeetingBurner hosts up to 10 attendees for free with no ads. Share your screen with any or all participants. Works with all phone platforms.
• Zoom is free for unlimited number meetings up to 50 participants. Each session can last up to 40 minutes. Each session can have video conferencing, web conferencing, and group collaboration.
• Skype is a free, web conferencing tool that allows screen sharing. Skype requires participants to download software and sign up for a Skype name.

As instructional leaders, we are continually aiming to motivate teachers to think differently with their lessons and create personal opportunities for learners. As leaders, we have to model through the way we facilitate professional development and staff meeting. We owe it to our teachers to design professional development and provide relevant information to them in the same way. The tools outlined provide resourceful methods for staff to participatory in PD in a way that traditional programs don’t offer, plus they model strategies for teachers to take back to their classrooms and put into action with their students. 

Dr. Matthew X. Joseph is currently the Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment in Leicester Public Schools. He has been a school and district leader in many capacities in public education over his 25 years in the field. Experiences such as the Director of Digital Learning and Innovation, elementary school principal, classroom teacher, and district professional development specialist. His work and experience focus on supporting teaching and learning. Follow Dr. Joseph on twitter at @MatthewXJoseph or read his blog techinnovation.live.

Jeni Long is an Instructional Technologist with Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD in Ft Worth, TX. Jeni is a MIE Expert and Trainer that enjoys training teachers in person, online and through her web show and blog. She is passionate about technology integration and making learning accessible for all. Jeni has served in education for 21 years as a Math teacher and as an ELA and Science Curriculum Specialist. Jeni has presented across her district, at her Regional Service Center, at FETC, TCEA, TIA & in Central America.

Sallee Clark, former Pre-K teacher and librarian, is an Instructional Technologist with Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD in Ft Worth, TX. She has served in education for 15 years and has trained thousands of teachers in person, online, and through her web show and blog on the benefits of implementing technology within their classrooms. As a MIE Expert and Trainer, Sallee has enjoyed presenting across the 26 schools in her district, at her Regional Service Center, TCEA, FETC, TLA, TIA, & across Central America.

McGraw-Hill today announced the launch of the first annual ALEKS All-Star Educator Awards, a new awards program honoring outstanding educators. The inaugural 2019 program will recognize one K-12 teacher and one higher education instructor who have used ALEKS to achieve exceptional results.

For 20 years, McGraw-Hill ALEKS® has helped educators in math and chemistry to zero in on which topics students understand and which topics they need help with. Based on the theory of "knowledge spaces" from cognitive science, ALEKS (Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces) uses artificial intelligence to create personalized learning paths for K-20 students. The adaptive platform recently won three CODiE Awards as a top educational technology product, and a Digital Edge 50 Award for the development of a machine learning tool called ALEKS Insights.

Starting today, McGraw-Hill will begin accepting nominations for the ALEKS All-Star Educator Awards at https://www.mheducation.com/aleksallstars.

Nominees can be any educators who have demonstrated any of the following:

• Used ALEKS to reshape the way they interact with students in order to drive more effective teaching and learning
• Measurably improved outcomes for students using a combination of ALEKS and other teaching techniques
• Helped increase STEM success rates for all students, no matter their backgrounds
• Gone above and beyond to help unlock the potential of learners at their schools using ALEKS
• Demonstrated an innovative and unique teaching style using ALEKS

Nominators can submit up to 500 words explaining how an educator meets or exceeds these requirements. Nominators will also have the option to submit a video or photos as part of the submission. The winning educators will each receive a $1,000 donation from McGraw-Hill to an education-focused non-profit or charity of his or her choice, a $250 gift card and a collection of professional books. Winners will be announced by early November.

Education Elements is offering a grant to help principals implement lead student-centered learning initiatives.

The Education Elements Grant for Personalized Learning Schools will provide a principal with $3,000 to use toward classroom redesign or programs that will directly benefit student learning and outcomes, 12 months of access to Education Elements’ Personalized Learning Toolkit and six hours of virtual support with an Education Elements consultant. Principals can apply through Sept. 30, 2019. For more information or to apply, visit:http://bit.ly/PLGrant.

The Personalized Learning Toolkit provides school leaders with resources to implement personalized learning using Education Elements’  four-step methodology for change. It helps them plan, design, and launch a school- or district-level student-centered, personalized learning initiative. The toolkit includes:

• Customizable meeting and workshop agendas, slides, resources, and an implementation plan to guide the personalized learning initiative
• Materials for teacher and leadership team workshops to help staff understand what personalized learning is and how and why it helps students
• A School Reflection Journal to understand readiness for this instructional shift, guide reflection, and monitor progress
• A Resource Library with best practice examples from schools and districts around the country

Today IXL Learning, the K-12 personalized learning platform, announced the release of the IXL app for Android phones. Featuring IXL’s complete curriculum of more than 8,000 skills across math, English language arts, science, social studies and Spanish, the IXL Android app can be downloaded for free on the Google Play Store.

With this release and the recent release of IXL for iPhone, the IXL app is fully available across all major mobile devices including iPad, Android tablets, Kindle, and Chromebook. 

On IXL, personalized questions adapt to students' current level of understanding, introducing concepts at the perfect time and at the right difficulty level. 

Along with IXL’s curriculum, the IXL Android phone app offers a number of mobile-only features. For example, handwriting recognition allows students to enter their answers to math questions by writing on the screen. The app also displays a real-time progress bar that displays how close they are to achieving their next milestone. The SIIA CODiE Awards has recognized this mobile interface as the Best Educational App for a Mobile Device for two years.

The IXL app is free to download and features 10 practice questions each day for students not subscribed to IXL. IXL members can sign in through the app and practice unlimited questions across all grade levels and subjects. Learn more about IXL's capabilities and download each app at www.ixl.com/apps.

How do you reach all of your students?

Personalized learning continues to be a frequently discussed topic in the world of education. With ever-rising class sizes and teachers racing against the clock to get through curriculum each school year, the idea of personalizing a student’s pathway, while attractive, is often viewed with scepticism.

In my sixth-grade math classroom, I have the opportunity to work with about 150 students a day. How can teachers focus on getting students what they need, when they need it, if it feels like their classrooms are filled with a never-ending assembly line of students?

When I was studying to become an educator, I learned all about these “new” and “progressive” techniques to reach all students. Ideas such as mastery learning, standards-based grading, individualized conferencing, and student reflection and goal setting echoed up and down the halls of the university. But it seemed that only schools that met certain criteria—with supportive administration, flexible scheduling, collaborative colleagues, small class sizes, and so on—could implement these ideas. If I didn’t end up in the “perfect” school, would these data-supported best practices not be accessible to my students? The reality is, if we’re basing our best practice techniques on only working in the most ideal setting, are we basing our students’ potential success on a flawed schema?   

There is a way to reach all students and get them the support they need to succeed and master content standards. All that’s needed is a framework. 

Let’s explore the top three things necessary to master personalized learning: 

Student Ownership

Students who feel ownership in their learning journey are more likely to stay engaged and focus on their personal growth. The two easiest ways to build student ownership are through incorporating student choice and targeting teacher-student feedback. 

Student choice can take many forms. Often student choice involves learners identifying the medium in which they wish to prove mastery—for example, writing a paper or creating a presentation. Challenge yourself to offer choice in your classroom in additional ways as well. These may include seating, learning pathways, practice opportunities, or independent or collaborative spaces. 

Educators can easily build student ownership into their classrooms by changing the language they use throughout the learning experience. For example, a teacher might ask students: “Do you feel prepared to prove your understanding on this target? I have a formative assessment ready for you.” Or the teacher could say: “You are going to take this formative assessment today.” In both instances, the student will complete the quick formative assessment to evaluate their understanding. However, the first teacher allows students to reflect and make an active choice about their readiness for the evaluation. This small change allows a student to explain if he or she doesn’t feel prepared while also putting ownership for the student’s next steps in their hands. 

Educators can also encourage students to advocate for themselves. In my classroom, students pace themselves. They complete formative assessments when they feel they’re ready and conference individually or in small groups to evaluate their understanding. After the formative assessment is turned in, students update what we call a Tracking Page to advocate for their needs. This is a living document that tracks student success throughout their learning. Colors are used to communicate students’ next steps and progression toward mastery. 

This ownership shift makes an impact on a learner’s development and also sets a culture for a personalized classroom. 

Student Goal Setting & Reflecting 

Personalized learning allows students to gain the support they need, when they need it, to master content. Daily goal setting and reflection, therefore, make personalized learning much more effective. Through this five-minute process, students evaluate their work session while also documenting their progress towards understanding the content. 

Consider having students answer the following questions as they move throughout their learning each day:

• What did you work on today?
• How did your work session go?
• What went well today and what could have gone better?
• Did you fully understand the information you focused on today?
• New goal: what, when, and how?
• Why is this a strong goal?
• Who can help you accomplish this goal?

This purposeful moment of reflection can be completed in a variety of ways and is another opportunity to offer students choice. Using a tech tool like SeeSaw, students can choose a different medium of reflection daily. SeeSaw offers video recording, typing, painting, and more.

Student Scaffolded Pathway

A specific learning pathway for a student must be more deeply developed than a checklist. Therefore, using best-practice techniques, like scaffolding information using Webb’s DOK, should be an intentional component of your personalized student pathway planning.

Consider using scaffolded targets—allowing students to begin by identifying components of the content. Then they can work toward using their understanding of the information to create and design new elements.

Conclusion

Each one of these elements is essential for a personalized approach. However, as with anything in education, a few other nuts and bolts are necessary to get your airplane flying without complication. One of my favorite personalized learning mastery frameworks, one I use in my classroom every day, is called The Grid Method. This framework is not just content driven—allowing teachers to take any curriculum and scaffold it using Webb’s DOK—but it also approaches the implementation element as well (I like to call this the triage system). 

My classroom was transformed four years ago when I finally took the leap toward a more mastery-focused, student-driven classroom. Was it a challenge? Sure. But isn’t everything worth doing a challenge at first?

Don’t let fear end your exploration. Solutions exist, and you’re capable of reaching all of your learners. You just need a framework.  

After eight years of working alongside school leaders, and a year of testing, Education Elements is announcing its Personalized Learning Toolkit. The toolkit helps school leaders take a do-it-yourself approach to planning, designing, and launching a school- or district-level student-centered, personalized learning initiative.

During its work with more than 750 schools and 140 districts, Education Elements designed a four-step methodology for change – Plan & Align, Foundations, Design/Launch, and Support, Reflect, and Iterate – and ongoing face-to-face consultative support.  For schools purchasing the toolkit, there is an initial consultation and setup with an Education Elements personalized learning consultant, then it provides the same four-step methodology and provides the leader with everything needed to guide professional learning of their staff and inspire change.

The toolkit includes the following:

• Customizable meeting and workshop agendas, slides, resources, and an implementation plan to guide the personalized learning initiative
• Materials for teacher and leadership team workshops to help staff understand what personalized learning is and how and why it helps students
• A School Reflection Journal to understand readiness for this instructional shift, guide reflection, and monitor progress
• A Resource Library with best practice examples from schools and districts around the country

To learn more, visit https://www.edelements.com/personalized-learning-toolkit.

At the October 2019 Tech & Learning Leadership Summit, attendees will have the opportunity to listen to and share about the many ways districts are using data to personalize learning.

CLICK HERE to see the complete agenda!

                           ______________________________________________________

CatchOn, a data analytics tool, announced today the deployment of its new  technology which provides secure collection of application and software utilization data across all major operating system platforms. Designed to support today’s device-agnostic, anytime/anywhere learning environments, CatchOn provides administrative and technology leaders actionable intelligence and data analytics across all platforms and school devices.

CatchOn requires no virtual machines, hardware, or additional authentication process or captive portal to capture and deliver comprehensive data analytics on applications used across district devices, both at school and at home. 

“Learning doesn’t stop when students leave the school building," says Michael McKerley, CTO and Vice-President at ENA.  “In today’s connected world, it’s essential that districts have 24x7 access to the data being generated on all school devices inside AND outside of the classroom. CatchOn’s advanced agent technology provides districts with the metrics, insight, and reporting they need without requiring extensive technical resources from the district.”

“In order to personalize and enhance their learning environments, districts need to see what online apps and resources are being used in their schools, and CatchOn provides them with that much-needed visibility,” says Jena Draper, General Manager of CatchOn. “This advanced agent technology is a game-changer in the way actionable data is compiled from all school devices and delivered in clear and concise dashboards and reports to district leaders, instantly providing them with the information they need to improve instruction, assess return on investment, and inform professional development and student data privacy practices.”

In the latest addition to CoSN’s Driving K-12 Innovation series, the organization today published the second of three new reports, titled Driving K-12 Innovation: 2019 Accelerators. The report examines the top five most impactful technology megatrends driving the needs and skills that are expected of K-12 students and educators. 

Selected by an international advisory board of more than 100 distinguished edtech experts, the top accelerators are: Learners as Creators; Data-Driven Practices; Personalization; Design Thinking; and Building the Capacity of Human Leaders.

The new report takes a closer look at two of the top five accelerators and provides real-world examples of their impact on learning:

• Learners as Creators —By focusing on learning that utilizes doing and making, rather than simply understanding facts and concepts, educators can ensure that students acquire a skill set to solve real-world problems using invention and innovation moving forward.
• Personalization — This accelerator encompasses the societal shift toward tailor-made student-teacher interactions and away from one-size-fits-all education. Using technology in education can amplify personalized learning spaces and pinpoint students’ immediate needs on a more granular level.

Driving K-12 Innovation is the successor to the K-12 edition of the NMC Horizon Report series — a forward-looking edition co-founded and co-led by CoSN that ran from 2007–2017. CoSN released the first report Driving K-12 Innovation: 2019 Hurdles in January. The last report on “tech enablers” is expected this summer, along with a toolkit.

For more information on the series and to read the reports, visit: cosn.org/k12innovation.  

The Expo Hall showcased even more edtech tools that are changing and enhancing today’s learning. When you walk on to a vendor floor at a large national convention two things happen:

1. You get overwhelmed with the magnitude and don’t know where to start.
2. You could get swallowed up by the big name vendors with larger booth and tons of conference swag. 

[Report from ASCD, Part 1: Sessions Covered, Classroom Coding, Leadership Strategies and More]  

Sometimes the small booth with a small or no table can be the exact resource your classroom needs. Below are just some of the standout products from smaller or lesser-known companies, but get to know them because they will help your instruction, student learning, and growth.

Freckle is a tool that allows for differentiation in Math, ELA, Social Studies, and Science. Freckle’s power is that the tool takes the manual work out of differentiation so teachers can focus on the important work of helping students grow. The tool helps reaching every student at their own level. You can even get a free teacher account at www.freckle.com. 

Flocabulary is an online learning tool for all grades that uses educational hip-hop music to engage students and increase achievement across the curriculum. Flocabulary uses standards-based videos, instructional activities and student creativity tools to supplement instruction and develop core literacy skills. Check it out at https://www.flocabulary.com.

Gab-on: Communication between family and children is decreasing and I saw a tool that is trying to support an increase in home communication.  GAB-on! is the first platform I have seen that links a child's school day to a conversation starter at home. It's not a report from the teacher or school; it's a conversation between student and family. Students enter GABs  about their day, in live time while they have meaning and relevance. GABs are hints/cues about what a student is doing that remind him/her what they did, later in the day. GABs also prompt families to ask more specific questions about their student’s day to increase conversational productivity, student voice and improve achievement. Check it out at https://gab-on.com.

Milestone C: I stopped at the booth and was impressed how this program brings internship-style experiences into the classroom by simulating technology career tracks. They have half-year courses, multi-year learning tracks, and supplemental modules to support schools and districts nationwide. Additionally impressive was the staff. They had engineers, scientists, aviators, and seasoned educators on the team to develop learning products designed for and aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards. Visit them at https://www.milestonec.com.

Empatico: I saw this great display about global communication and had to check it out. Empatico is a free tool for educators to connect their classrooms with others around the world through live video and activities designed to foster meaningful connections among students. I was impressed at how simple the virtual connections were to make to classrooms by combining everything needed in one platform. They connect classes with  a partner classroom, live video, file sharing, and standards- and research-based activities. Empatico empowers educators and students to explore the world through experiences that spark curiosity, kindness, and empathy.  Check them out at https://empatico.org.

Alive Studios: I walked by the Alive studio booth and was quickly drawn in by the interactive visuals and graphics. Once I was at the booth it wasn’t just “cool” graphics; they create supplemental resource kits that use Augmented Reality to enhance the learning experience for all types of learners. Each resource kit supports multiple learning styles by appealing to students through sight, sound, and interactivity. Alive Studios programs are aligned to the Common Core State Standards to root lessons and activities in standards lesson planning to match learning with a purpose. Visit them at  https://alivestudiosco.com.

Writable: Writing is an essential element in learning and finding a digital tool to support that need is important. I learned by stopping at the Writable booth that this tool is a guided writing practice program that connects any style of instruction to a cycle of authentic feedback and revision. I learned that the tools can build more independent, reflective writers, and helps schools assess & monitor writing growth. Visit Writable at  http://www.getwritable.com.

Sibme was not a learning tool but caught my attention. It is an online video coaching and collaboration platform designed to improve professional practice. Sibme enhances classroom observation, allowing teachers and instructional leaders to record classroom instruction for the purpose of reflection, conversation, and feedback. Check it out at https://sibme.com.

Podcasts from Experts: Ryan McHale, the host of Pondering Education, (@PonderEducation) recorded, posted, and tweeted interviews with many featured speakers. Check out all ASCD podcasts at http://ponderingeducation.com.

There is never a dearth of great ideas at national events like these and ASCD Empower19 did not disappoint. Read more of my ASCD takeaways @MatthewXJoseph and click here read how to turn ideas into actions from events like ASCD.

Edgenuity, provider of online curriculum and instructional services for the K-12 market, has announced a partnership with the Institute for Teaching and Leading (i4tl). 

As part of this partnership, i4tl studied schools that are implementing digital curriculum and content in personalized learning environments. The report, The Intersection of Personalization, Technology, and Leadership: Research into Customized Learning, identifies best practices for the design, implementation and continuous improvement of digital learning models through case studies of schools at various levels of implementation.

The study also explores the experiences of students, parents, teachers, and administrators across a variety of learning environments to understand perspectives through the lens of each stakeholder group. The i4tl and Edgenuity partnership reflects the organizations’ shared philosophies of the importance of broad ecosystem support in transforming the K-12 classroom.

Following publication, Edgenuity and i4tl will present their findings through a series of webinars, workshop sessions and presentations at conferences and symposiathroughout the year.

Personalized learning seems to be one of the key buzzwords in today’s educational lexicon. Just as ubiquitous access and engaged learning had their time in the limelight, “personalized learning” seems to be what many school leaders are looking for today. What does it mean? According to the Glossary of Educational Reform personalized learning refers to a diverse variety of educational programs, learning experiences, instructional approaches, and academic-support strategies that are intended to address the distinct learning needs, interests, aspirations, or cultural backgrounds of individual students. It I the opposite of “one size fits all learning” where all students work through the same materials and take the same assessments. 

Many commercial software products tout the ability to personalize learning. In most cases by reviewing student performance data and then using a variety of analytics to modify the content provided to any given student. However, the individualization is usually only partial as the student’s interests are not necessarily being considered, only their individual performance. Many virtual schools present themselves as being exceptionally good at providing personalized learning. Personalized learning must go beyond simply adjusting the instructional modalities used and embrace the need to engage the interests of the individual learner as well. 

Some examples of personalized learning include Khan Academy, the Loudon (VA) Public Schools which uses #LoundonPL to identify personalized learning initiatives, the Lindsay (CA) Unified School District, and the Winnetka Public Schools where Carleton Washburne, the superintendent from 1919 to 1943, developed the Winnetka Plan, which provided an individualized learning plan for each child. 

The Next Generation Learning Challenge (NGLC) is trying to identify the most effective methods for the future of education; personalization being one facet of their work. There is no doubt personalized learning will continue to expand over the next few years, the key will be how schools embrace all facets of their learners when making decisions about individualization.  —Steve Baule, Educational Leadership Professor at the University of Wisconsin – Superior 

Verso Learning, provider of classroom feedback and collaboration tools, will be showcasing their education tools at this year’s upcoming FETC conference.

In its latest update, Verso has added a new feature designed to collect student-to-teacher feedback at the end of a lesson to enable formative assessment. Exit Tickets elicit student responses to questions related to a lesson or activity and provide the teacher with immediate feedback on the extent to which their students have understood a learning intention, what strategies were most effective in the lesson, and how the students felt about their learning. 

Verso also enables teachers, coaches, and mentors to share insights and provide structured feedback for other teachers. Teachers build lessons using Verso’s lesson builder, then use feedback from  those sources to refine and improve their pedagogical approach and lesson designs. 

At FETC, Phil Stubbs, Verso’s director of  education, will be presenting two sessions about how this cycle of feedback gives students ownership over their own learning:

Using Vocabulary to Design the Journey from Surface to Deep, a collaborative workshop demonstrating research-based strategies for transferring ownership of learning from teacher to student and developing deeper connections to learning

Collaborative Classrooms: Surface to Deep in 50 Minutes, focused on simple strategies to more fully engage students in their own learning. 

MobyMax is a huge, popular K-8 website. It's so big in fact that it can be a bit tough to wrap your head around. Check out this super quick overview that goes over the site's key features, including its teacher dashboard, cross-curricular games and lessons, and customizable activities.

For more, check out the full review of MobyMax on Common Sense Education. 

Learning company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt today announced that it has acquired adaptive learning solution Waggle. Integrating Waggle’s platform with HMH’s core curriculum programs and services intends to create  classroom-based personalized learning experiences for students across the spectrum of learning needs—those above, on and below grade level. 

Waggle’s web-based adaptive learning platform provides differentiated Math and ELA instruction for students in grades 2–8. Waggle analyzes student decisions, learning behavior and progress to provide each learner the right challenge at the right time. 

With the integration of Waggle, HMH will create a connection between its core content and adaptive supplemental offerings by aligning Waggle’s capabilities with HMH’s Into Reading, Into Literature, and Into Math programs. Using real-time data and insights, Waggle will help teachers identify student learning gaps and direct them to HMH instructional content.

Additionally, HMH will continue to offer Waggle as a stand-alone supplemental solution for classrooms, regardless of core program of study. 

By Jerri Kemble, Assistant Superintendent, Leading, Learning & Technology (Lawrence Public Schools, USD497)

Click here to read Part 1 of this series

Seven school districts in Kansas have a different look and feel this school year. These “Mercury” school districts, named after the seven Mercury astronauts, led the “Moonshot” Redesign for the Kansas State Board of Education. 

The Board, along with the Commissioner of Education, Dr. Randy Watson, have encouraged school districts to redesign the way they are doing business. Watson is asking school professionals to focus on the future for Kansas students. He cites statistics on the future of work from a Georgetown University study that shows that 70% of Kansas jobs will require more than a high school diploma. Couple this prediction with the dismal  Kansas Post-secondary success rates that show that of 100 Kansas graduates 86 will graduate from high school, 69 will attend a 2-4 year post-secondary institution, 45 of those original 100 will complete one year of college and a mere 31 will earn a post-secondary credential with labor market value. Kansans know something needs to change.

The seven Mercury schools that have taken on the redesign challenge are creating schools based on the needs of their specific students and families, instead of the agrarian calendar that has determined school schedules in the past. 

One of the Mercury schools is the Wellington School District, an agriculturally-based district in southern Kansas. Their redesign began when the superintendent held community discussions with parents and business leaders to ask what skills their students needed after graduation. 

Wellington students were not scoring satisfactorily on ACT tests and state assessments, they were showing a rising need for social-emotional support, and office referrals were on the rise. It was obvious that students were not being prepared for the world of work or post-secondary education. 

The staff, armed with this data, began looking for new ways to educate their students. They visited schools across the country and became interested in Summit Learning, a free program that is focused on the four principles of Kansas school redesign: student success skills, community partnerships, personalized learning, and real-world learning applications.

Today, teachers in Wellington are helping students build life-skills like self-regulation, goal setting, and time management while learning through projects instead of chapters in a textbook. Students learn at their own pace through a digital platform that has replaced the four core content classes of English, math, science and social studies. Teachers guide students individually and spend less time in lecture-style groups. Social-emotional needs are being addressed and student internships with business and industry mentors are giving students experiences in their areas of interest. Introducing this kind of change required extensive parent and community conversations, as well as 50 hours of training for the teachers.

Stephanie Smith, assistant principal of Wellington High School, felt that the success has come through the support of the district office, the community meetings, and the teachers looking at the data and realizing that change was needed. Smith notes that it has not been easy to make a change of this magnitude. Not all teachers or all parents have been supportive of the change, but the further the school gets into the redesign process, the more evident it is that the changes were necessary. 

When asked about the lessons she has learned, Smith notes that this kind of second-order change is difficult and it requires perseverance. “We know now that we can adapt and change. I had every faith in our teachers, and I knew they could be leaders and change agents. The delivery of the learning is the thing that has changed, but not our passion for teaching children. We now educate the whole child instead of one academic content at a time.”

Jerri Kemble is the Assistant Superintendent, Leading, Learning & Technology for Lawrence Public Schools (KS), which serves approximately 12,000 students in 22 schools. 

Lumen Touch, an all-in-one enterprise management system for school districts has integrated Foundry in its Lumen Touch enterprise system. Called Bright FOUNDRY, it provides a learning management solution designed for project-based and personalized learning, and is available to all Lumen Touch customers.

[35 Resources for the STEAM Classroom: Putting the Arts in STEM]

For more information about Bright FOUNDRY, by Lumen Touch visit www.lumentouch.com.

For more information about Foundry’s Deeper Learning solutions, visit www.projectfoundry.com.

Follett today announced that it has acquired Fishtree, an adaptive learning platform that streamlines both the technical integration and educational adoption of personalized learning in school classrooms. Follett will integrate the machine-based learning tools of Fishtree within Follett’s Destiny content and resource management platform used by more than 70,000 schools and school districts across North America. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

[Make the Most of Your Budget with These Great Products: Makerspace Product Roundup 2018]

The Fishtree platform brings together district-wide resources for every subject, aligns them to any standard or competency and then personalizes the experience for each student based on specific learning profiles.

Educators can build engaging lessons with resources from digital texts, user developed content, open resources and real-time content. These resources are automatically aligned and lessons personalized with deep insights into achievement gaps and efficacy. Teachers can build their own assessments, draw from other assessments, and auto-build assessments from content.

When you enter Dr. Lou Lahana's Tech Cafe at PS/MS 188, you aren't entering a classroom with a teacher preparing students for the future. Instead, you enter a space where social activists are working hard doing the real work of making the world a better place today addressing causes about which they are passionate. Lahana is a self-described passionate educator in search of technology to support talent development and social action in teens.Here is how he does that.

If students aren't sure about which cause they want to address, that's okay. Dr. Lahana has collected research and resources on numerous causes such as those below. The resources are always being updated by Lahana and the students.

Once the issue and tool are selected, students use them to select their own project and tools to make real-world change. But how does Lahana manage to conduct a class where students own and lead the learning? Where every student may be working on a different project, with a different tool?

The Key to Differentiation

Dr. Lahana's key to differentiation is the students. In Lahana's class it is students who rise up as the resident experts. Lahana's job is that of a conductor and environment creator. He points the students to the right resources and experts in coding, jewelry making, clamation, music and movie making and more. Then he ensures students have the environment conducive to learning. This means there is a sound studio to make music, a wood working area, sewing machines to create wearables, a place to bake clay for claymation, 3D printers and more.

[Keep Students On the Cutting Edge of Learning]

In short the students are empowered to own the learning and help one another to make the world a better place.Here are some of the projects students have addressed.

Gun Control

Students organized to march in support of those affected by the Parkland shooting and against the NRA. These 5th-8th grade students created compelling signs, marched, and listened to speeches. This movie which captured the event features a song performance by one of Lahana's students, Kayleen who used Soundtrap to create her song. Her track is available for free download at: soundcloud.com/techbrarian/sets/social-action-1

Building A Greenhouse

This student wanted to address animal cruelty in the food industry by creating a greenhouse that produces fruits and vegetables students at the school can eat rather than meat. He used a 3D printer to prototype the greenhouse. He used the woodworking tools to make planters for the greenhouse that currently stand in the school's schoolyard with plants.

Tolerance for Wearers of the Hijab

This student knew that other students didn't understand her and possibly misjudged her because she wore a hijab. She decided to make a movie inviting others to wear a hijab, explain how they felt, and she explained what it meant to her.

Deter Cigarette Use with a Smoke Detecting Shirt

This student wanted to address the dangers of smoking. He coded an Arduino to create a shirt that can detect smoke. When it does, it lights up with sayings to embarrass the smoker such as "stinky breath," "yellow teeth," or "lung cancer."

Your Turn

What do you think? Are there ideas here you could consider using with your students? Are you already doing this type of work? What excites you about it? What challenges do you see?

Lisa Nielsen writes for and speaks to audiences across the globe about learning innovatively and is frequently covered by local and national media for her views on “Passion (not data) Driven Learning,” "Thinking Outside the Ban" to harness the power of technology for learning, and using the power of social media to provide a voice to educators and students. Ms. Nielsen has worked for more than a decade in various capacities to support learning in real and innovative ways that will prepare students for success. In addition to her award-winning blog, The Innovative Educator, Ms. Nielsen’s writing is featured in places such as Huffington Post, Tech & Learning, ISTE Connects, ASCD Wholechild, MindShift, Leading & Learning, The Unplugged Mom, and is the author the book Teaching Generation Text.

The world of edtech is resplendent with acronyms and phrases for techniques that will “revolutionize” or “reinvent” education. Likewise, there are always critics ready to punch holes in those ideas. “Personalized learning” is one such phrase that gets tossed around in the Tech&Learning newsfeeds lately. This recent Hechinger Report piece breaks down the conversation: “Some educators support the philosophy behind personalized learning but worry that schools are focusing on the technological aspect — resulting in classrooms that depend too much on kids learning alone in front of a screen.” On the same day, Rick Hess posted some back and forth of a recent column he wrote for EdWeek: “The common thread is a sense of relief that there's a platform where people are sharing uncomfortable truths about personalization.” Thomas Arnett, senior research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute, tackles the issue with some constructive strategies on the 74 here: “By adding personalized learning to teachers’ workloads without changing how schools are organized, schools face a great risk that their attempts to personalize learning will fall short of their promise.” What’s your take?
—Kevin Hogan, Content Director

[Create Games For Any Curriculum With Aris]

IMS Global Learning Consortium announced the winners of its annual awards during the Learning Impact Leadership Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.Beatriz Arnillas, senior educational advisor, itslearning (formerly the director of education technology at Houston Independent School District), and Lenny Schad, chief technology information officer, Houston Independent School District were awarded the 2018 William H. (Bill) Graves Leadership Award.

"Beatriz and Lenny envisioned and guided the development and implementation of an integrated digital ecosystem at Houston ISD that enables personalized learning for all students and has been used as a model by K-12 districts across the country." said Dr. Rob Abel, chief executive officer, IMS Global Learning Consortium.

[ISTE 2018 Cheat Sheet]

In addition to the Bill Graves Leadership Award, IMS announced the winners of this year's Learning Impact Awards program, which recognizes outstanding, innovative applications of technology at an educational institution to support and improve learning based on evidence of impact.

Out of the 26 finalists, eight medalists were selected for their outstanding achievement:

• Blackboard Ally — Blackboard (Video, Paper)
• Georgia Virtual Total Learning Architecture — PCG Education and Georgia Department of Education (Video, Paper)

2018 Gold Medals

• Developing Learners' Soft Skills With YouSeeU — YouSeeU (Video, Paper)
• Supporting the Selection of Quality Digital Resources: HISD App Toolbox — Houston Independent School District Education Technology (Video, Paper)

2018 Silver Medals

• Maplesoft Online Learning Courseware at University of Waterloo — Maplesoft and the University of Waterloo (Video, Paper)
• TAO Assessment Platform in New York City DOE — Open Assessment Technologies and New York City DOE (Video, Paper)

2018 Bronze Medals

• IM Road Safety Savvy — Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore, Singapore Road Safety Council, Singapore Police Force and FXMedia Singapore Pte Ltd(Video, Paper)
• Using LMS Interoperability to Power and Drive Student-Centered Learning — itslearning and Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township (Video, Paper)

An analysis of the 2018 winning projects will be presented in the annual Learning Impact Report to be released in the fall. Nominations for the 2019 competition will open in January.

Some interesting articles coming from odd sources over the Tech&Learning newsfeeds this weekend. Mike Silagadze, Co-Founder and CEO at Top Hat, on Forbes, share his vision on the future of education and technology: “By incorporating digital quizzes and assessments, videos, simulations, and gamification elements into course content, educators can create a dynamic learning experience for each student on an individual level. By capitalizing on the digital habits of students, the classroom can be filled with interactivity regardless of the class size or topic.” Mark Johnson in The National Review promotes the value of personalized learning: “Today’s adaptive technology allows us to personalize our news, shopping, media, and even fast-food orders. We must now employ this innovation in our schools to personalize education for our students.” And The Hechinger Report breaks down how tech can help reach students whose first language is not English.
—Kevin Hogan, Content Director

[New Tools for Schools]

McGraw-Hill Education today announced the launch of Redbird Language Arts & Writing, a new personalized learning program that helps students master language arts concepts and build foundational writing skills. The new program combines writing analysis technology, interactive practice and personalized learning. The supplemental curriculum, for grades 2-7 and at-risk secondary students, is available to U.S. schools nationwide.

[Literacy Tool Offers Wealth of Free Lesson Plans, Activities]

Redbird Language Arts & Writing delivers immediate feedback and charts an optimized path through the program based on each student's skillset and level of progress – while providing educators with data-driven insights about their students' learning.

The Redbird Language Arts & Writing program offers instruction in five key areas – parts of speech, sentence structure, sentence composition, paragraphs and reading – through a combination of concise instruction, interactive practice and lessons rooted in real-world topics. In addition, using adaptive learning technology, students are placed at the level in which they are ready to learn and at a pace that is individually tailored to meet each student's needs.

To find out more about Redbird, visit www.RedbirdLearning.com.

Henry County Board of Education (HCBOE) and K-12 analytics platform BrightBytes, today, announced the expansion of a multi-year partnership in support of the district’s efforts to scale personalized learning through an eight-year initiative that will utilize 36,000 devices to create a 1:1 computing environment across grades 3-12.

BrightBytes’ platform was selected, in part, due to its ability to measure and report on dimensions of student growth and success that extend beyond traditional academic factors.

“BrightBytes helps us to be able to measure the things we value -- metrics that matter -- that aren’t measured well anywhere else,” says Aaryn Schmuhl, HBCOE Assistant Superintendent for Learning and Leadership Services. “The data is clean and clear, the insights are helpful, and it is all in one place.”

It is with great pleasure and satisfaction, that I am holding A Guide to Documenting Learning: Making Thinking Visible, Meaningful, Shareable and Amplified in my hands! I could not help myself capturing the moment I received the first hard copy from the publisher.

The book has been in the making for over 10 years as I was working in the classroom as a world language teacher, later on as a technology integration facilitator, then 21st century learning coach and now through my work as a consultant and learning coach. Together with my co-author Janet Hale, it took over a year to write. You can read more about that time in When a Blogger Writes a Book, where I documented (!!) the process and my learning.

If you are considering reading, reading or already have read the book, Janet and I have a companion website to serve as a hub to connect, share and amplify the documenting learning experiences, tips and resources. You will also be able to find a Bonus Chapter, a Blogging Challenge and Discussion Questions. By contributing, you will connect with other readers, put into practice what you are reading in the book and become part of crowdsourcing best practices in documenting learning from around the world.

Check A Guide to Documenting Learning out on Amazon or directly on the publisher’s Corwin Press site. We would really appreciate, if you leave us a review, document your thinking and learning as you are reading the book. We are looking forward to seeing you share your own documented learning journey in turn on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using the #documenting4learning hashtag; or by mentioning @documenting4learning on Facebook or Instagram, and @doc4learning on Twitter.

Janet has been sharing selected quotes from the book on social media to whet your appetite for more Documenting Learning :).

cross posted at langwitches.org/blog

Silvia Tolisano is a Curriculum21 faculty member, author of the book Digital Storytelling Tools for Educators and founder of the Around the World with 80 Schools project. Read more at langwitches.org/blog

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly.

Mindprint Learning

Expert feedback and tools designed for individual learner profiles

Pros: An incredible number of resources, strategies, and suggestions for teachers and parents based on a student's learning strengths and challenges.

Cons: The sheer amount of information provided might be overwhelming for some.

Bottom Line: This extraordinary tool uses normed digital assessments to create a specific learning profile and provide authentic tools for individual learners.

Read more here.

By Common Sense Education

According to a 2016 survey by OverDrive and ASCD, educators agree that ebooks and audiobooks have the advantage over print materials when it comes to delivering individualized instruction. Students can absorb content at their own pace and explore learning online or offline with familiar devices like Chromebooks or tablets. For younger students, ebooks offer a gateway into technology. OverDrive Education offers over two million titles, and their ebooks come equipped with features such as an exportable note-taking and highlighting tool, and a built-in dictionary.

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND A LINK TO THE STUDY GO TO
http://www.techlearning.com/blogentry/11160

Adaptive learning in mathematics is the wave of the future,” says Spencer Hansen, principal of Centerville (UT) Junior High. Educators across the country are riding this wave into the future of learning—in math as well as in language arts and other subject areas. They’re finding that improved adaptive learning technologies offer unique benefits and options for learning, in addition to valuable data and efficiencies. This collection of success stories showcases schools and districts that are celebrating achievements gained through the efforts of dedicated staff implementing adaptive learning strategies.

ACADEMIC PRIDE AND PROGRESS

For Browne Education Campus, the impetus to embrace adaptive learning technologies came abruptly. When Browne (K–8) was named one of the District of Columbia Public Schools’ 40 lowest performing schools in 2012, Principal Andre Samuels and staff began working with Education Elements to assess, plan, and implement both solid PD and innovative adaptive learning strategies.

The results speak for themselves. In 2015–16, 81 percent of students met their end-of-year target of one or more years of growth. And according to Education Elements’ 2015–16 impact report, Browne’s “K–8 growth was equal to 151 percent of targeted growth, which means that students showed 50 percent more growth than average.”

A ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE IN EVERY CLASSROOM

Although these are impressive numbers, for Samuels and staff they are only the beginning—and an encouragement to continue vetting, piloting, and reassessing programs and instructional models to determine which work best for which students. As class lead and math department chair Brandon Johnson emphasizes, asking the key questions each year to make instruction even better is critical, as is monitoring and determining how best to use the available real-time data. Marcia Cole, technology instructional coach and blended learning department chair, notes that it takes time to build this mindset shift.

Cole likens their context to a “one-room schoolhouse, where on any given day you have K–6 in any classroom.” With such a diverse body of learners it’s a challenge, she says, “to provide quality instruction and ensure achievement and equity.” Johnson agrees. “Engaging 17 students between the first-and fifth-grade levels with content in a short time” is a monumental task.

DATA PRIDE

But Johnson has seen equally monumental growth in his students as they’ve used adaptive learning technologies. In addition to end-of-year data showing that they improved one grade level or more, he witnessed a shift between September and November as students became more comfortable with their new autonomy. He watched them begin to take risks and speak out as they grew into independent learners able to assess their learning and what they needed to do to grow. An interactive data wall in his classroom, where students can update their progress after each adaptive learning session, fosters healthy competition and student pride.

This sense of pride extends throughout the school. Even first graders approach Cole in the hallways, eager to share their i-Ready scores or their Lexia levels. While this knowledge of their data is indicative of both efficacy and engagement, Cole says, it’s also a challenge “not to be overly focused on what adaptive technology says about you as an overall student.” While adaptive learning is only one ingredient in Browne’s remarkable revitalization, technology, combined with strong leadership support and effective teaching, is playing a part as their story unfolds.

TOOLS THEY USE

BROWNE

► Achieve3000
► Blendspace
► Discovery Education
► EduCanon
► Educreations
► GoFormative
► i-Ready (including Teacher Toolbox)
► Lexia
► Nearpod
► Read 180
► Reflex Math
► Spelling City
► System 44
► Zearn Math

EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION + ADAPTIVE LEARNING TECHNOLOGY = SUCCESS

At Centerville Junior High (CJH), part of the Davis (UT) School District east of the Great Salt Lake, nearly a thousand students in grades 7–9 enjoy access to computer and iPad labs and laptops, and they will soon have Chromebooks to complement their learning as well. Principal Spencer Hansen says that an annual review of their five-year Comprehensive Technology Integration Plan enables them to remain flexible in response to rapid changes in edtech.

One of the ways CJH is implementing adaptive learning technology is through the use of ALEKS, an online tutoring and assessment program, to supplement math instruction. All math teachers have used ALEKS weekly since 2014, and assistant principal Cheryl Mays says the school also uses the program in their credit recovery program and has secured licenses so students can practice and learn new math skills over the summer.

With its initial knowledge checks, individualized learning paths, and topics, “which are like individual modules that break down skills and concepts into smaller chunks that students are able to work through in order to relearn,” math department chair Bill McKay says that ALEKS “has actually made adaptive learning extremely easy.” To do what the program does—to evaluate individual student data, gather curriculum for each student’s needs, assess, and repeat in a continuous cycle—would be time-consuming and untenable. Students are clearly engaged, as well. “All of my students spend time outside of class working in the program,” McKay says.

REMEDIATION, ACCELERATION, AND RETENTION

Anyone who’s been a student can identify with the sinking feeling of falling behind. Often students who are behind in math don’t even try, McKay says, “because they don’t understand the preliminary steps … They then shut down and try to fly under the radar hoping nobody notices.” But with the adaptive program, he says, “students feel they are given something they can actually figure out,” and they can build confidence as they ask questions, try again, and receive immediate feedback.

At the other end of the spectrum, teacher Jeffrey Wilkinson explains, the program enables advanced students to work ahead. “Then,” Wilkinson says, “when we get to those topics as a class later on, I already have a handful of kids in the class that know what to do and they can support the others.” Teacher Markie Broderick also notes that, because students can choose to work on topics in any order, a lot of the time they will be reviewing and so they “retain information better because they are able to get a spiral review.”

McKay credits the program with playing “a large part in how our students have improved with their end-of-year testing,” and Hansen affirms that “adaptive learning in mathematics is the wave of the future.”

TOOLS THEY USE

CJH

► ALEKS
► Chromebooks
► HMH “Collections” eTextbook
► Holt McDougal online history texts
► iPads
► Laptops
► Safari Montage
► TED Talks
► Utah Compose

BUILDING A BRIGHTER FUTURE

PUTTING THE DISTRICT ON A DIET

When Sancha Gray took on her new responsibilities as director of curriculum and instruction at Asbury Park (NJ) School District (APSD) in 2014, she inherited lots of deficiencies in this high-poverty district—and lots of intervention programs as well.

Gray likens the challenge to dieting. “If you try to do the Atkins and the South Beach diets at the same time and introduce carbs in the induction phase of Atkins, you won’t lose weight,” she says. In the same way, using pieces of different programs across the district was ineffective. With over 75 percent of students below grade level, and with these deficiencies compounding annually, APSD needed to stop the hemorrhaging immediately.

So the district decided on a one-program diet. They chose Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)—based on Gray’s previous experience with the solid, research-based product as well as on her meeting with their sales rep.

Read 180 was one of APSD’s umpteen programs, and the sales rep told Gray, “We won’t support you any more with PD.” Taken aback by this brazen statement, Gray listened. “You’re not using it,” the rep continued. “Tell me what we need to do to get you to use it.” The district now uses HMH’s full suite of products and support services.

SWIMMING, READING, AND ADULT LITERACY TOO

Asbury Park began by launching a comprehensive literacy initiative for Pre-K–12. An adult literacy component aims to close yet another loop for families. Gray’s enthusiasm is infectious as she describes some of the district’s new initiatives, including a successful Pre-K summer program combining swimming lessons with engaging academic instruction. In this shore community, Gray says, “Our superintendent believes our students should know how to swim—particularly in light of the fact that the incidences of drowning are higher in Black and Hispanic communities.”

In addition, following a successful pilot, APSD is introducing a comprehensive math program this year and is also piloting a comprehensive technology initiative, with a view to introducing devices district-wide next year. The method makes sense—having used the programs successfully for two years, with solid PD support, teachers will have the confidence and curiosity to explore further learning possibilities in their classrooms with their new devices.

A WONDERFUL PROBLEM

Gray is cautious as she shares evidence of success, and she emphasizes the importance of accessing multiple data points. She says the work is “yielding positive results because of the relationships being fostered through rich, qualitative feedback during our stakeholder focus group meetings.” In one school in an area of town with the highest poverty and crime levels, 99 percent of kindergarten students are entering first grade ready for first-grade content. On one unannounced visit to a classroom in this school, Gray and Superintendent Lamont Repollet were “dumbfounded” by the rich, thoughtful student-to-student discourse.

Another sign of success is the “wonderful problem” that teachers now need to use adaptive learning programs not only for remediation but also for teaching students ready for on-grade-level content. Focusing on PD so that building principals are instructional leaders is also key, Gray says.

So it’s back to the dieting analogy—rapid weight loss is not sustainable, and neither are rapid results at the expense of solid learning and PD, but Gray is confident that with a steady diet of hope and opportunity all students will have a brighter future.

TOOLS THEY USE

APSD

► Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s full suite of programs, including:
► Big Day
► iRead
► System 44
► Read 180
► English 3D
► Collections
► Math 180

DREAMS CAN COME TRUE

100% NEED, 100% SUCCESS

In some ways, Seatack Elementary, An Achievable Dream Academy in Virginia Beach (VA), is like many other schools across the nation. They’re 1:1, and students use a variety of devices and programs to enhance learning. Seatack has a dedicated instructional technology specialist and SMART Boards in each classroom. Instructional staff are able to be responsive to student data because of the training they’ve received in programs like Velocity, TenMarks, and Achieve3000.

But 100 percent of Seatack students qualify for free or reduced lunch, 83 percent live in single-parent households, and 9 percent live in no-parent (guardian-led) households. Seatack Elementary is one of three An Achievable Dream Academies (AADA) in Virginia. Through unique public/private partnerships and a steadfast belief “that all children can learn and succeed and that education can break the cycle of poverty,” these schools translate dreams into a powerful reality with a 100 percent on-time graduation rate.

GETTING UP TO SPEED WITH VELOCITY

Lee Vreeland, vice president of academics, gives two examples of how adaptive learning has helped make a difference for Seatack students. First, their third-grade classes were the beta testers for Velocity last year. Vreeland says that teachers “quickly saw the potential for the program in the way it guides the students through their work,” providing scaffolds “in the forms of instructional videos, mental models for attacking a problem, hints and tips, and instant feedback.” In addition, with the option of personalized instruction for each student, teachers can work “individually or in small groups with other students who need guided teacher intervention.”

Second, using Google Classroom for collaboration has helped students to take ownership of their learning in new ways. Small groups of Seatack third graders, for example, gathered information about simple machines, took pictures, and shared what they’d found with the class. “This allowed for the students to be the facilitators in the activity and for the teacher to be a guide and offer assistance when it was needed,” Vreeland says.

Securing buy-in from leaders by showing them the education-enhancing potential of these programs, Vreeland says, as well as being deliberate in terms of expectations and planning implementation and monitoring usage and progress, are all key to success.

Adaptive learning programs are embedded into the daily schedule at Seatack and also into extended-day classes. Providing access to technology and personalized learning is one part of helping these students achieve their dreams.

TOOLS THEY USE

SEATACK ELEMENTARY

► Achieve3000
► BookFlix
► BrainPOP
► ConnectED
► Core Clicks
► Davis Digital
► Discovery Education Science Techbook
► FASTT Math
► Fraction Nation
► GAFE
► Imagine Learning
► National Geographic Kids
► NBC Learn
► PebbleGo
► Reflex
► Seesaw
► SmartyAnts
► Storia
► TenMarks
► TumbleBooks
► Velocity
► Wixie

Facebook has helped develop the “Summit Personalized Learning Platform,” an online tool that the social media giant built collaboratively with Summit Public Schools, a nonprofit charter school network with headquarters in Silicon Valley. The new Summit Personalized Learning Platform reportedly allows students to select their own projects and work at their own pace. The initiative began with a partnership between Summit Schools and Facebook in 2014 and will expand this year to more than 100 new schools. In a Facebook post, Diane Tavenner, CEO of Summit Public Schools, writes, “Bringing personalized learning to classrooms is hard work and people should expect that it will take more than one year to see progress.”