Technology in Education

Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction

20111116 TeachersintheAgeof[pdf] Though some observers pit technology against teachers, this report by co-directors Bryan C. Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel proposes that “digital education needs excellent teachers and that a first-rate teaching profession needs digital education.” In the digital future, teacher effectiveness will matter even more than it does today. While the roles of teachers and other adults will change dramatically, what will increasingly differentiate outcomes for schools, states, and nations is how well responsible adults carry out the more complex instructional tasks. At the same time, technology has enormous transformative potential to extend the reach of excellent teachers to vastly more students, to help teaching attract and retain the best, and to boost the effectiveness of average teachers. To realize that promise, though, the nation needs new staffing models, significant policy changes, and a stronger dose of political will to change. The report is part of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Creating Sound Policy for Digital Learning series. The authors also penned a related commentary that appears here.

How Digital Learning Can (and Must) Help Excellent Teachers Reach More Children

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In this post for the Innosight Institute’s Education Blog, Bryan Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel argue that “schools – and nations – that excel in the digital age will be those that use digital tools both to make teaching more manageable for the average teacher, and to give massively more students access to excellent teachers.” While digital learning can help solid teachers become more effective, one of its greatest promises is to enable top teachers – those whose students already achieve well over a year’s worth of growth – to educate more students by freeing up their time, allowing them to teach students who are not physically present, and capturing their teaching prowess by recording videos or helping develop smart learning software.

Encouraging Social Innovation Through Capital: Using Technology to Address Barriers

Encouraging Social Innovation Through CapitalThis report, co-authored by Bryan Hassel for Bellwether Education Partners, examines how technology can optimize the flow of investment capital to drive innovation in public education. As described by Bellwether: “Through an in-depth examination of investing and giving tools and platforms, and interviews with more than two dozen stakeholders, we discovered that there are indeed ways we can better leverage technology to increase and align funding for education innovations. By strengthening content, connecting technology efforts with existing face-to-face networks, and streamlining transactions, we can help create a more rational, evidence-based culture in public education that can effectively attract capital, steer it toward the best ideas and approaches, and ultimately improve student achievement and school productivity.” This is the final paper in the Bellwether Education Partners’ series Innovation for the Public Good: A Case Study of US Education, produced with support from the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning

The-Rise-of-K-12-Blended-Learning-1Blended learning is poised to transform American education by personalizing student learning - uniting the highest-quality online content with highly-effective educators in “live” instruction and supervisory roles. This white paper from Innosight Institute, the Charter School Growth Fund, and Public Impact defines six models of blended learning, provides vivid examples of blended learning in action, and discusses both the technology and policies needed to realize the promise of blended learning. The white paper highlights the importance of creating policy environments that grant innovative educators autonomy, enabling them to design and implement models based on affordable quality and personalization. In these policy environments, the focus of regulation must not be on input-focused rules, but on accountability for outcomes.

Demystifying Special Education in Virtual Charter Schools

demystifyingse[pdf], by Lauren Morando Rhim and Julie Kowal, describes how educating students with disabilities in virtual charter schools entails not only molding state charter school laws to fit a specialized type of charter school, but also adapting federal and state special education guidelines aimed at providing special education in traditional brick and mortar settings. This special report, funded by the USDOE National Initiatives Grant of the Charter Schools Program and administered by the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, is a supplement to a series of special education primers, Primers on Special Education in Charter Schools, created to inform state officials, authorizers and charter school operators about special education in the charter sector.

How Can Virtual Schools Be a Vibrant Part of Meeting the Choice Provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act?

virtualschools[pdf] This paper by Bryan C. Hassel and Michelle Godard Terrell was prepared for the No Child Left Behind Leadership Summit—Increasing Options Through e-Learning in July 2004. It outlines different models for how districts and states could use virtual schools to meet the choice provisions of NCLB. The paper explores a range of challenges districts and states face in using virtual schools for this purpose and proposes solutions.

Literacy Learning on the Net: An Exploratory Study

This paper, published by the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, explores how some schools and teachers are using the Internet in exemplary ways to teach reading and writing across the curriculum.

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