Being a technology teacher, I try to look for tools that engage my students. Some of these tools lend themselves very well to being the foundation of a project, while others serve as brain breaks or class activities. Regardless of what context they’re used for, they all serve the same purpose: student engagement within the classroom. I’ve compiled a list of my top five favorite tech tools for the classroom. Although I teach at the high school level, most of these can be used with elementary and middle grade students as well.

Mastery learning is one of those buzzword phrases in education that pedagogists often toss about in an effort to define and refine good teaching practices. The term goes back to a true icon in the field of education, Benjamin S. Bloom, who suggested that all students can learn and achieve at high levels; they might just require different strategies and time in order to achieve mastery¹.

Mastery is generally defined as “command or grasp of something”². In an educational sense, mastery learning is achieved by an intentional strategy in which teachers decide on specific learning goals, make formative assessments to determine where teaching and learning needs to occur, provide directed instruction, and continue formative assessments and correctives until all students have achieved a preset level of mastery for the learning goals¹. The concept of learning mastery is simple and nearly any educator would agree is desirable. The rub comes in the implementation. Mastery learning is hard work. Fortunately, today’s Internet resources provide a plethora of resources to help make the goal more attainable.

Here’s the most excellent example of stating the obvious in the history of educational research. When an intervention is implemented with high fidelity, it is more effective than when it is implemented with low fidelity. Really, it’s that simple … and obvious.

So, what is this fidelity of implementation thing? Simply put, fidelity of implementation describes the extent to which delivery of an instructional practice adheres to the protocol on which it was developed or field tested. Or as my father liked to say when I was fiddling with assembling models as a kid, “Do it the way the instructions say.”

The essence of learning is change. For learning to take place, there must be a change in behavior, cognition, or emotion. In all cases, learning is change. It's not just a good idea, it's the law. If there is no change, there is no learning.

No, this is not an example of the “appeal to extremes” logical fallacy, also known as reductio ad absurdum. Nor is it evidence that I was raised in a Skinner Box. (The row house in South Philadelphia where I spent my first five years was home to three generations, including a grandmother who was born in Ireland.) Learning equals change.

And neither are your students

Pause for a moment before you continue reading. Think about your friends, your family, your students. Think about yourself. Is anyone average? Of course not. All of us are typical in some ways and not-so-typical in others.

Moreover, this typicality is situational. My wife has spent much of her adult life being the shortest (but cutest) person in the room. My family is relatively tall, and so are our friends. When we visited Hong Kong, she was ecstatic because she was taller than most of the women we encountered. When she went shopping, they had lots of things in her size. (I should add that, despite her shopping disability, my wife has accomplished much in her life, and our house is packed with awards she has won as the CEO of a specialty hospital.)

With these two thoughts in mind—no one is average, and comparisons are situational—consider this question: Why is “average” in the statistical sense such a dominant theme in education? Why do so many people, especially policy makers and politicians, insist on ranking students, schools, teachers, and pretty much everything else on a single number, usually the average? The answer, of course, is because it is easy, and because in the past, looking at averages was a reasonable way to approach some challenges.

An Innovative Approach to Meaningful Embedded Assessment

In recent years, assessment has gotten a bad rap because of overuse and misapplication of mandated accountability tests. All of us involved in education, however, know that meaningful assessment is an important aspect of the learning cycle. We are particularly grateful that, in a time of frustration over isolated testing, embedded assessment is finally getting the attention it deserves.

Simply put, embedded assessments are selected learning experiences that are also used to measure a student’s understanding of the content. The assessment task is embedded in the learning experience.

March is Music in Our Schools Month. Since ancient Greece, music has been an important area of study. The Every Child Achieves Act of 2015 lists music as a core academic subject. So allow me to step on my music advocacy soapbox (we call them conducting podiums) and illuminate both why and how you can support music in our schools.

Advocacy for music in public education is important because it seems that in today’s society, where quality education is summarily evaluated by data from test scores, arts education is constantly threatened.

Among the recent trends in education, few are as notable (for the right reasons) as the growth mindset. This belief is, fortunately, very simple to understand. Mental abilities and other talents can be developed through dedication and hard work.

The opposite of the growth mindset is kind of a downer. It’s called the fixed mindset, and it suggests that intelligence, talent, and other abilities are more or less fixed at birth. It doesn’t matter what you do; you aren’t going to get better. (See, I told you it was a downer.)

While many language skills and comprehension strategies are embedded in daily lessons, teachers know that the overall purpose of each lesson sequence is to understand content related to a theme. The reason for reading a text is clear: The text is worthwhile. It is complex and rich. The topic is inherently interesting—or if it isn’t, yet, it will be once the students know something about it. The reader will be rewarded with understanding, insight, ideas, and new information.

Unfortunately, students who have reading and language comprehension difficulties much more commonly experience comprehension instruction that targets a specific skill or strategy. While the skill and strategy focus seems logical when students lack skills and strategies, what may be sacrificed with well-intentioned intervention organized primarily around specific comprehension strategies is the point of reading—the reward of reading to learn, preferably with peers who are also engaged.

At EdView360, we’re big fans of digital learning. We’ve seen the transformative effect that excellent digital instruction can have on students, teachers, and entire classrooms, and we couldn’t be happier today to be celebrating Digital Learning Day (DLDay).

Now in its fifth year, DLDay is an Alliance for Excellent Education event dedicated to celebrating the very best that digital learning has to offer. As educators, we also see today as an occasion to reflect on the changes that technology is bringing to our classrooms. What makes digital learning so great? And what exactly makes great digital learning?