This month, we are very excited to be joined by the wonderful Bena Kallick, co-founder of the Habits of Mind Institute, and author of the recent Students at the Center: Personalized Learning with Habits of Mind, written with Allison Zmuda. Read more
Marie Alcock

How the Design of Learning Goals Can Launch a Student Quest
Categories: InstructionLearning-goal maps are a way to organize a learning experience that focuses on the demonstration of learning first, then aligns other elements of the experience accordingly. It also creates an opportunity to co-create with students using a student version of learning goal maps.
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Affinity Spaces for Educators: Shift and Deepen Collective Knowledge
Categories: 21st Century SkillsWhen we write and share ideas with the world, we hope it will inspire conversations and new questions about how our work will impact professional practices. This is especially true for blog posts, where we can push the envelope a little further and be provocateurs who launch discourse. With social media, sometimes that discourse becomes more limited, as many readers align themselves with folks who agree with their own thinking. That’s not really discourse, though; it doesn’t push thinking or change anyone’s opinion or create actions toward better ways of doing things. Which brings us to the focus of this month’s blog post on affinity spaces. Read more

The Power of Driving Questions
Categories: InstructionIn our current contemporary educational landscape, it has become more important than ever to invite student voice into our curriculum and instructional decisions. Their voices invite opportunities for personalization, authenticity, buy-in, motivation, and increased performance. Read more

Engaging Inquiry: Bring Students to the Table with Different Types of Questions
Categories: InstructionIn a previous blog post on why games work, we shared our three learner-engagement tenets from our book, The Quest for Learning.
In this blog post, we’d like to revisit Learning Tenet One:
The learner engages with relevant, worthy inquiries and experiences that are interesting or emotionally gripping. Read more