Will Richardson, Author at Modern Learners

Is Twitter the Best Option for Online Professional Development?

Twitter could replace traditional professional development, some have argued. Instead of sitting in day-long workshops, Twitter lets educators reach out in real-time to their peers. It allows them to grow their professional networks, to become “connected educators.” But over the past few months, there’s been growing concern about Twitter. Some say it’s becoming nastier and

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Are You Powerless?

These are not easy times to be in education. Regardless of if you agree with changes in policy and assessment whether you’re in the UK, the US, Australia or almost anywhere else, significant change is afoot in one form or another in almost every state, province and country. New tests, new professional evaluations, new, in

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What You Should Know This Week

Microsoft and Minecraft. Each week, Educating Modern Learners will pick one interesting current event – whether it’s news about education, technology, politics, business, science, or culture – and help put it in context for school leaders, explaining why the news matters and how it might affect teaching and learning (in the short or in the long

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Assessing the Learning Process, not the Product

With a growing fixation on “data,” it’s no surprise that schools feel compelled to focus on outcomes that are measurable. Often that means assessing some product – an essay, a quiz, a project. But what happens when we emphasize instead the learning process and not the learning product? Maha Bali, a professor at the American

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Arrested (Professional) Development

When we talk about rethinking education, our focus shouldn’t simply be on how students learn. Frequent EML contributor Lee Skallerup Bessette looks at how professional development is still often stuck with bad pedagogy and very traditional models of “content delivery.” She also points to some of the new forms of PD that educators themselves are

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What You Should Know This Week

Celebrity iCloud Hack. Each week, Educating Modern Learners will pick one interesting current event – whether it’s news about education, technology, politics, business, science, or culture – and help put it in context for school leaders, explaining why the news matters and how it might affect teaching and learning (in the short or in the long

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Building a Mission and a Vision That Matters

Sure, your school probably has a mission statement. But what does it really mean? Does it really describe the school? Can those who work at and attend your school articulate the schools’ missions? EML co-founder Will Richardson looks at several different schools’ statements to explore the meaning of “mission” and “vision.”

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What You Should Know This Week

LAUSD’s iPad Troubles, Continued. Each week, Educating Modern Learners will pick one interesting current event – whether it’s news about education, technology, politics, business, science, or culture – and help put it in context for school leaders, explaining why the news matters and how it might affect teaching and learning (in the short or in the

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Protecting Student Privacy through More Transparency

As schools’ technology usage grows — whether for administrative or pedagogical purposes — schools’ data collection grows as well. Many schools still struggle with developing “best practices” to protect data security and data privacy. One step to take is to do a better job with transparency, that is, to help everyone, including parents and students,

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Competency-Based Education: A Primer

Although it’s hardly new, “competency-based education” has become one of the latest buzz phrases. Many education reformers are pushing for it, arguing that it can challenge the “one size fits all” model of traditional schooling. EML editor Audrey Watters offers some background on what CBE is, which schools have implemented it, and what its adoption

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Important New Contexts for Leading and Learning

EML co-founder Will Richardson asks if we can imagine a world where, for example, gravity no longer exists. That is, can we imagine a world where everything is changed so utterly that all our expectations, our practices cease to function? And what if that’s the world we’re already inhabiting in education — not one without

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