Reinventing Curriculum | Blog
Here you'll find analysis and views on technology, policy and curriculum in elementary and secondary education by two outspoken technology advocates, Elliot Soloway and Cathie Norris. Reinventing Curriculum is published twice per month. Below you will also find the archive for Elliot and Cathie's previous blog, Being Mobile.
The COVID-19 disruption caught K-12 unprepared and issuing packets of paper, the March solution, won’t work in the Fall. Learning must be continuous, seamless, regardless of location. Time for schools to join the 21st century and use digital curricula. In this week’s blog, we describe classrooms in Michigan that seamlessly weathered the COVID-19 disruption.
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 06/16/20
Continuing with our blogs that investigate SEL (social and emotional learning), in this week’s post, we explore the role that the classroom teacher can play in helping our children develop those critically important social and emotional skills and habits. The blogpost is written by a noted expert on children, teachers, and education, Dr. Shelja Sen, who is based in Delhi, India and is a co-founder of ChildrenFirst, a center that provides children with mental health care solutions.
- By Cathie Norris, Shelja Sen, Elliot Soloway
- 02/17/20
Our children are hungry — food-wise and emotion-wise. Schools have addressed the former and they are starting to address the latter. In this beginning blog post on SEL — social and emotional learning — we define it, raise a few provocative questions, and then we hear from Dr. Tyralynn Frazier, an SEL expert, who explores “SEL and Equity.” A very good place to start!
- By Cathie Norris, Tyralynn Frazier, Elliot Soloway
- 01/28/20
How will changes in human computer interfaces, e.g., incorporation of augmented reality/virtual reality, impact educational technology and the learning experience? Good question! In this week’s blogpost we provide an answer to that good question produced by the 10 members of "Technological Working Group 1" at the EduSummIT 2019 Conference held in Quebec City, October, 2019.
All your carefully prepared, tried-and-true paper worksheets can now be used on the computing devices in your 1-to-1 classrooms! Collabrify’s PDFPal is a free, browser-based app that is truly easy-to-use — and free! Read all about PDFPal in today’s blogpost!
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 09/23/19
We have commented before on the Digital Transformation (DT) happening inside and outside of K-12. Well, sports fans, it’s DT time again! In this week’s blog post, then, we point out two lessons from DT outside of K-12 from which that those in K-12 might well learn.
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 07/22/19
In May 2019, Michigan became the 32nd state to adopt standards for computer science in K-12. In this week’s blog post, we describe those standards, unpack the adoption process, look to the future now the "easy bit" — standards definition and adoption — is done. There is much to learn from Michigan’s efforts!
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 06/03/19
In this week's blog post, we discuss a free, NGSS-aligned curricular unit for middle school — "Health in Our Hands: What controls my health? (HiOH)" — with a particular focus on following question: "How can middle school teachers learn how to lead their students in NGSS-style learning?" There’s a Roadmap for that, as it turns out!
- By Cathie Norris, Idit Adler, Renee Bayer, Elliot Soloway
- 04/23/19
What does Next-Generation Science Standards’ "three-dimensional science learning" look like in the classroom? In this week’s blog, we examine a specific NGSS lesson, implemented in the Collabrify Roadmap Platform, that has third-grade students using their “three-dimensional science learning” to actually build a small toy that moves.
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 04/09/19
OER – Open Education Resources — will play an increasingly important role as schools move to 1-to-1. In this week’s blog post, we describe OER 1.0, OER 2.0 and OER 3.0. Examples of OER 3.0, deeply digital curricula, created by Michigan K-12 teachers, using the Collabrify Roadmap Platform, will be highlighted.
- By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
- 03/06/19