In this episode, we chat with Laurie Wolfe, Chief Academic Officer at Gem Prep Online, about their whole-community approach to preparing students for college, career, and beyond, emphasizing unique partnership opportunities, family engagement, flexibility, and supports to help students at every level of their learning journey.

In this first episode, we chat with Megan Palevich, former Head of School at Laurel Springs School about their fully virtual K-12 program that emphasizes personalization and one-to-one work between students and teachers, flexible schedules to accommodate learners whose schedules or needs don't align with traditional seat-time requirements, and a strong community among staff, students, and families.

In this episode, we chat with Justin Louder, Associate Vice Provost for e-Learning at Texas Tech University K-12 (TTU K-12), about their long history of service to students who have sought out flexible options for their learning, and how their program operates through a student-centered lens to help learners work flexibly to engage while facing physical and mental health challenges, career obligations, and other obligations, as well as their orientation toward immersive community exploration and engagement in the context of virtual learning.

Sustainable change in education begins with sharing your needs and vision for what is possible. Although this might seem obvious at first, there are ways we’ve seen leaders supercharge their approach to the task, integrating history with a collective vision for change to lay the foundation for strong change that sticks. In this post in […]

On this final episode of What Will We Take With Us?, a series featuring our conversations with education leaders across the United States on how they grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic in K-12 education, we speak with Scott Muri, Superintendent of Ector County Independent School District in Texas, about how leaders worked to make the most of the pandemic to accelerate the implementation of goals that benefitted the entire school community, ranging from expanding connectivity and internet access, to focusing on personalized professional development, to forging stronger, more meaningful connections between schools and student families.

On this episode of What Will We Take With Us?, a series featuring our conversations with education leaders across the United States on how they grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic in K-12 education, Ann Ertl of Hopkins Public Schools details the innovations made by this Minnesota school district, including the use of outdoor learning spaces, inquiry-based learning models, partnerships with community organizations, and an ongoing feedback model that allowed the school to adjust new practices.

On this episode of What Will We Take With Us?, a series featuring our conversations with education leaders across the United States on how they grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic in K-12 education, Kristen Watkins of Dallas Independent School District shares with us the creative ways they developed to engage students through project-based learning, community partnerships, and family connections, as well as how they refined their personalized approach to professional development.

This post was originally published on the Digital Learning Collaborative blog. The inaugural Digital Learning Annual Conference (DLAC) took place on April 1-3, 2019, and one of the highlights of the event for me was the prominent and focused conversation around research and evidence. In fact, DLAC kicked off with a research community meeting, which […]

The Learning Accelerator’s (TLA) Innovation Directors Network (IDN) recently finished its second convening in Dallas, TX. Once again, we were inspired, energized, and humbled by the amazing group of 13 system-level leaders and innovators who attended. We enjoyed two packed days of exploring, connecting, sharing, learning, and observing some best practices at Dan D. Rogers […]

New framework catalyzes community input on 21st century education Cupertino, CA — February 2, 2016 — A unique partnership among the Colorado Department of Education, The Colorado Education Initiative, and The Learning Accelerator, today released an action-oriented toolkit that helps school districts understand the importance of community collaboration as a key to innovation. The free […]