Category Archives: Uncategorized

What is accountability?         “Own your own learning, become better at it.”         “Reliability, you can get your work done in a good way.”         “To speak up for yourself.”         “Mutual trust between educator and learner.”         “The willingness to ask questions and take action for yourself.” These thoughts, by students from Northern Cass School District, north of Fargo,Continue reading “Rural Places, Big Visions – a visit to Northern Cass School District”

Next week in Dallas, GSV will convene innovative and forward-thinking minds in education, business, technology and industry for the inaugural SMU+GSV Mission Summit. The three-day conference is packed full of powerful keynotes, networking opportunities and interactive sessions aimed at accelerating ideas that combine purpose and profits and changing the world for good. Getting Smart is proud toContinue reading “SMU+GSV Mission Summit: On a Mission to Change the World for Good”

Our goal for students with disabilities is to lay a foundation for personalized learning pathways. But first, we must dismantle the longstanding myths that constructed the barriers we will have to tear down. So, let’s start with the facts. FACT: 14% of all U.S. students have a disability.  And this doesn’t include the 2.7% of students who haveContinue reading “Special Education Myth Busting”

“The ability to take data — to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it — that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades.”    – Hal Varian, chief economist at Google Data is everywhere. K-12 students need to learnContinue reading “Data Science Must Be Embedded in K12 Education”

You’re from Hawai’i?” is usually quick to be trailed by paradisiacal comments. Yet, it would be foolhardy to not consider how even the regular reflection, refraction, and dispersion of light require rain to result in multicolored circular arcs across the sky. Such realization and a bend on reality are at the foundation of Alek Kaune’sContinue reading “Durable Skills in Action”

By: Nick Gross Trying to build future readiness and prepare kids for the workforce is nothing new. Traditionally, educators have taken an approach that looks something like this: First, they present students with existing careers. Next, they narrow the focus by matching existing student strengths with current careers, and then building new strengths based onContinue reading “When Preparing Kids for Their Future, Should We Lead with the Destination?”

This is the second of a two-part series on ASU’s Universal Learner Courses. In Part 1, we introduced Arizona State University’s Universal Learner Courses (ULCs) offered through the Accelerate ASU program, in addition to learning how college in the high school can help with closing the opportunity gap by making college-level courses available to every highContinue reading “How High Schools Can Successfully Accelerate College Pathways”

NAF, a national nonprofit that began in 1980, brings education, business, and community leaders together to help students become college, career, and future ready. NAF takes a three-prong approach: industry-focused curriculum, work-based learning and real-world industry connections; all of these together help students visualize and create their future. NAF is not extra, it is totallyContinue reading “Communities Develop Their Future Workforce Through NAF Academies”

By: Matthew Leader One of the things I most appreciate about working at High Tech High (HTH) is that, in addition to teaching middle and high school students throughout my tenure, I’ve been able to help other teachers incorporate project-based learning (PBL) into their own practice. PBL is an integral part of our approach to teachingContinue reading “From Designing Project-Based Learning to Designing Professional Development”

A few years ago, Dr. Jal Mehta, Harvard GSE, and Dr. Sarah Fine, High Tech High GSE went In Search of Deeper Learning. They didn’t find much, at least not at scale in big systems. They did find bright spots but it was usually individual teachers doing cool things often around the edges of big systems and inContinue reading “Inviting Learners into Work That Matters”