Karen Cator of Digital Promise reflects on the state of Ed Tech in 2015.  Milpitas' stance on Ed Tech is to allow the best technologies to be available to both students & teachers while maintaining a continuum of core applications that are used district-wide.  
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"Two years ago, I wrote a post for LinkedIn in which I asserted that education is having its Internet moment. Broadband, Wi-Fi and powerful mobile devices were becoming more accessible, the quality of digital content, learning apps, and tools was getting better and better, and I called for readers to accelerate innovation and scale up adoption of technology in education.
I haven't changed my opinion, and the numbers bear me out. The global education technology market is massive and continues to grow. According to Flybridge Capital Partners – which put together a fun and enlightening Ed Tech Market Map – education technology companies sell more than..."

Read on @ LinkedIn

"A growing number of American schools are ditching the 19th century—when it comes to the school calendar that is.  Twice as many schools today have a longer school day or year than just two years ago and, for the first, more of them are traditional public schools than charter schools, according to a joint report released Thursday by the Boston-based National Center on Time and Learning (NCTL) and the Denver-based Education Commission of the States.

Of the 2,009 schools that had expanded learning time last year, 1,208—or 61 percent—were regular public schools. That's almost a total flip from 2012, when there were 1,079 schools with additional time and 56 percent of them were charters.

The number of students attending charter and non-charter extended learning time schools has also doubled during that period, from 520,000 to nearly 1.2 million. 

Jennifer Davis, president of NCTL, said the shift indicates that charter schools are fulfilling their mission as centers of innovation in education whose successes can be models for traditional public schools.

"Every high-performing charter school in America has more time," Davis told Education Week. "That's the only way they have been able to show that kind of educational gains for their students."

An interactive database developed by NCTL shows that schools in 44 states and the District of Columbia have added at least 30 minutes to their school day or 10 days to their academic year.  

Some have gone well beyond that. So far, 41 schools in five states increased the school year by..."

Read more @ Education Week
Related article | Longer School Year: Will It Help Or Hurt U.S. Students?

"In the following thought experiment, you are asked to assess data about two states and identify the one in which an average child is likely to achieving more in school. Created by educator and researcher David Berliner, it reveals just how off-base current school reform efforts have been in targeting what the real problems are that keep students from..."

Read more @ Washington Post

Dr. Harvey Perkins speaks about meaningful change in school systems and encourages us to think about thoughts such as "Don't confuse your school improvement plan with school improvement."

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