This tool has been created to support teams when using The Learning Accelerator (TLA)’s Data Advocacy Guide. This workbook intends to foster productive dialogue within stakeholder groups to guide the collection and analysis of data to better advocate for the needs of students.
Leaders of virtual and hybrid programs can use this checklist to audit their program’s edtech stacks. This tool is designed to produce actionable insights about where edtech products support overall virtual and hybrid program quality. Additional information about the drivers of virtual and hybrid program quality can be accessed in The Learning Accelerator (TLA)’s report, Driving Quality in Virtual & Remote Learning.
We know the importance of learning experiences that happen beyond the confines of a traditional classroom. But how might federal policy support such experiences to prepare young people for life after high school? That’s where work-based learning comes in – a strategy designed to help students connect what they learn in the classroom with what is expected in the workplace by integrating learning with real-world applications in partnership with industry professionals.
While momentum is growing at the local and state levels to design and implement PK-12 through workforce pathways to support work-based learning, there is still much work to be done in creating truly supportive policy environments. This set of federal policy recommendations outlines how enabling policies could further incentivize and focus increased resources on pathways and work-based learning.
Hilltown Cooperative Charter Public School created a survey using Google Forms to learn more about how families were receiving information about the school’s events, announcements, and opportunities to be involved. The survey included demographic information so the staff could disaggregate the data and determine whether any trends were apparent within specific subgroups of their school community.
Planning is a critical cornerstone of educators’ work. To increase effectiveness in lesson planning, this worksheet helps educators apply steps from strong instructional design to improve backward planning and increase opportunities for student application, practice, and feedback.
Based on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, the UDL Guidelines serve as a tool to help educators and other members of the education sector implement best practices when designing teaching and learning experiences, with the goal of providing multiple means of engagement, representation, action, and expression to develop learners.
The Understanding By Design (UbD) framework is a planning resource that supports the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. UbD leads teachers through three stages when designing learning experiences:
Identify desired results (understanding and application of learning),
Determine assessment evidence (evaluation), and
Plan learning experiences and instruction (i.e., backward-planning)
By utilizing UbD, teachers can effectively engage learners in developing their understanding and application of key topics and content.
The ADDIE Model for instructional design helps educators to create meaningful learning experiences and training programs through five steps:
Analyze
Design
Develop
Implement
Evaluate
These steps can be used – sometimes in a nonlinear fashion – to ideate, create, and refine effective learning experiences.
This resource presents a framework (The 4Ps of Creativity) and protocol to help educators iteratively design new learning experiences that nurture student creativity. This tool also includes reflection and feedback protocols for students as well as leaders and coaches.
Cambridge Public Schools created a series of asynchronous learning modules that provided their teaching staff the option to select which edtech tools they wanted to learn more about, when/where they wanted to engage in training, and how fast they wanted to complete the module based on their skill and comfort level. Each learning module included teacher shares, a reflection journal, tutorials, how-to guides, and tasks to practice specific features or demonstrate mastery. Upon completion of a learning module, participants execute a final task and turn in a module submission form.
The asynchronous learning modules were built in Google Slides. This particular example is a learning module for Desmos, a popular math edtech tool.
