Archive for December, 2009

The Making of a National Curriculum: Setting Standards

by Cheri Lucas

In striving for more accountability in schools, policy-makers keep bumping up against the same problem: a lack of consistency between what we expect children to learn from state to state. If there is no nationally accepted curriculum, then there can be no national standards by which to measure student learning. A new project called the Common Core State Standards Initiative is out to change all that, with a set of proposed standards in math and language arts for kindergarten through grade 12. The goal of these standards is to establish more uniform expectations for students across the nation, in order to make them more college and career ready. Forty-eight states are involved in the effort, led by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the Council of Chief State School Officers, Achieve, ACT, and the College Board.

This is the first step in what will be a long process to reach an agreed upon set of national standards, but, according to the Parent Teacher Association, it’s a step in the right direction. “The great benefit of the standards is that they will ensure a level playing field among states, school districts, and schools that will give all students the opportunity to be ready for their college and career,” said PTA President Charles J. Saylors.

Some believe that this will lead to greater access for parents. “Right now, parents are informed of progress, but not part of the instructional conversation,” said Mark Luetzelschwab, PhD, the senior vice president of product development and marketing at BrainHoney, an organization that assists teachers in organizing lesson plans, tracking student progress, and ensuring they’re teaching to state standards. “Having access to these standards makes it easier for you to be part of the instructional conversation. If you knew what objectives your child is covering this week, and were provided relevant information for these objectives, you could be significantly more involved in your child’s learning,” said Luetzelschwab.

What would these proposed standards mean for your child? In language arts, your child would be expected to show mastery in reading, writing, speaking and listening – interrelated skills needed for success not just in college, but also in the workplace. Students must read and evaluate literature; the document cites the novel Pride and Prejudice as an “illustrative text,” or an example of material that shows the level of complexity your child must tackle when she reads. (The document authors chose the Jane Austen novel as exemplary material because of its multiple plotlines, style and word choice particular to a time period, and subtleties in the characters’ relationships.) Other illustrative texts include a Walt Whitman passage, a sample business memo, nonfiction (or “informational text”), and multimedia sources, such as a web version of the front page of the New York Times.

“Text analysis is a critical skill, and these are all valid examples of text that need to be analyzed in college and the workplace,” said Luetzelschwab. Other material he suggests for textual analysis includes “threaded” discussions, email chains, and disconnected conversations – day-to-day correspondence your child will encounter in college and in the 21st-century workplace.

In mathematics, students would be expected to develop a deep understanding and mastery of linear and exponential functions, familiarity with other families of functions, and apply algebraic, modeling, and problem solving skills – but not develop in-depth technical mastery. According to the authors’ research, the U.S. curriculum in math is a “mile wide and an inch deep,” compared to standards in other countries in which students master fewer topics. Surveys of college faculty show the need to move away from high school math courses that survey advanced topics, for example, and toward a deeper understanding and higher mastery of fewer, but more fundamental skills at the core of advanced mathematics.

This proposed shift in mathematics means that your child would be expected to have a solid grasp of essential math concepts, giving her the foundation she needs to apply knowledge to real-world problems. “One of the most critical skills we can teach is the connection of the abstract world of math to the physical world,” said Luetzelschwab. ‘It’s very different to ask someone to find the maximum y-value of a quadratic function than to ask them to figure out how high they can throw a baseball based on measurements – and then make them validate it, model it, and find out why or why not the model and reality match up.”

While language arts and math standards are divided into sections “for the sake of clarity,” the document says, the skills outlined are truly interrelated. Reading, writing, and speaking and listening, for example, are modes of communication applied at once. But while all skills are interconnected, breaking down the objectives into categories is reasonable, said Luetzelschwab, to simplify the process of measuring if the objectives are being met. “However, just because the objectives are organized in this manner does not mean the curriculum should also be organized in these neat little buckets,” he added. With these standards, your child’s teachers should align their activities to standards from multiple categories and implement a multi-model strategy that includes observation, homework, quizzes, and standardized assessments to track her progress, he suggested.

According to the draft, students who meet the core standards are ready to compete and collaborate in a global, media-saturated environment. “The skills outlined are clearly aligned to skills that modern employers are looking for and the skills that are required to excel in college-level courses,” said Luetzelschwab. But what’s lacking, he added, are objectives addressing cooperation, teamwork, leadership, information retrieval and analysis, creativity, and problem solving.

While the proposed Common Core Standards help define what your child is learning, standards alone do not change things, cautions Luetzelschwab. “If you look at improvement in five steps – define, measure, analyze, improve, and control – the standards provide the most critical ‘define’ step,” he said.

So, what happens next? Research- and evidence-supported feedback from the public is being accepted until October 21st. After this, the standards will be reviewed by a committee. To put in your two cents on the standards initative, click here.

Cheri Lucas was a writing aide at Corte Madera Middle School for six years. She is currently working as a freelance writer and editor in San Francisco.

Visit Education.Com

Listed in the October 2009 issue of Learning Magazine

BrainHoney is a free, personalized learning platform that helps teachers track grades, differentiate instruction, and monitor students’ progress against state standards. It consists of a gradebook, objective mastery charts, automated assessments, assignment tracking, online discussions, and other learning management tools for grades K-12. Drag and drop standards into your schedule to build curriculum maps. Register at www.brainhoney.com.

Manage Classroom Online

BrainHoney is a new online service from Agilix Labs that offers one place for K-12 teachers to organize and manage all their important information. It provides and electronic grade book, curriculum mapping, formative assessments, dashboard data and more. The site is pre-populated with every state’s eucation standards, so teachers can align their coursework and see (and share) how their students are faring prior to statewide tests.

For more information visit: brainhoney.com/about.html

For more information from this media outlet visit: Tech & Learning

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

BrainHoney Delivers Free Personalized Learning Platform

Orem, UT, June 26, 2009 ‐ Agilix Labs, Inc announced the release of BrainHoney – a free personalized learning platform that combines critical elements of an online gradebook, state‐standards alignment, curriculum mapping, formative assessment and learning management into a single teacher‐friendly platform.

“All teachers should have free access to the best student‐centered, standards‐ aligned 21st century teaching and learning tools available” said Curt Allen, CEO of Agilix. “Every classroom, blended, and online teacher in the country can benefit from BrainHoney – and it only takes a minute to sign up.”

“BrainHoney helps teachers know what their students know and enables intelligent intervention – laser‐focused, timely response to the students who need it the most.” said Dr. Mark Luetzelschwab, Senior Vice President of Agilix. “For the first time, teachers can easily align ALL types of activities – projects, websites, assignments, direct instruction, etc ‐ to state standards, and then report progress against those standards without any additional effort other than maintaining a traditional gradebook”

“BrainHoney is an exceptional learning platform” said Rebekah Richards, Principal and Chief Academic Officer of The American Academy Online High School. “Teachers save time and effort while being more responsive to student needs. The BrainHoney dashboard gives teachers the data required to make intelligent interventions to help students succeed.”

Teachers at MaryMount School who got a four‐week sneak preview of BrainHoney were excited about BrainHoney: “Wonderful”, “BrainHoney is a magical system!”,”We want BrainHoney forever!”

“One of the most exciting things about BrainHoney is the way that the content and assessments are aligned using the objectives as the intermediary.” Said Dr. David Wiley, professor at BYU and founder of the Open High School of Utah. “BrainHoney allows you to do the kinds of things a tutor would do that you could never do [before] with a classroom of 30 students.”

“We are looking for innovative solutions, and we see BrainHoney as one of those innovations. It is going to change the world.” said Robyn Bagely, chair of Parents for Choice in Education.

BrainHoney is a modular system developed on the assumptions that students learn at their own pace, learning takes place both inside and outside of a classroom in many different forms, and that all learning can be aligned to objectives. It consists of a seamless integration of curriculum mapping for all 50 states, a gradebook, objective mastery charts, automated assessments, assignment tracking, online discussions, and other learning management tools. The platform is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese.

BrainHoney is free to all K‐12 public school teachers in the United States of America. Teachers join BrainHoney by selecting their school on BrainHoney’s website, then choosing their grade level and/or subjects. The state standards aligned to those subjects (specific to the teachers’ locations) are automatically connected to their gradebooks and teachers simply drag and drop standards onto their schedules to build curriculum maps. Teachers then add activities, assignments and assessments to their schedule; BrainHoney automatically aligns these to state standards to generate views of standards coverage and student objective mastery.

Schools can upgrade to the BrainHoney School Suite, which enables the administrator dashboard and daily drill‐down reports of individual and aggregate student progress against state standards, allows integrated registration and data exchange with student information systems, provides single‐sign‐on through SAML, Active Directory, SharePoint, Live@Edu, CAS, or others, and allows customized login pages and user interfaces.

More information can be found at http://www.brainhoney.com or at booth 3264 at NECC.

View in PDF format.

About  Agilix  Labs,  Inc

Agilix Labs, Inc. is transforming education through BrainHoney, its personalized learning platform. BrainHoney (www.brainhoney.com), the latest offering from the creative team that has delivered innovative educational solutions for nearly a decade, provides student‐centered, objective‐aligned learning that improves student achievement, increases teacher productivity, delivers administrative insight, and enables parental involvement. Based on an open technology architecture, BrainHoney is the only learning solution that works seamlessly across classroom, hybrid, and online environments. Individual teachers, schools, and districts can experience the power of BrainHoney either online at www.brainhoney.com or through a growing network of education resellers. Agilix delivers its software applications to hundreds of thousands of users in countries worldwide. Founded in 2001 by the team that created Folio and MyFamily.com, Agilix is based in Orem, Utah, USA. For more information please visit http://www.agilix.com.

For More Information

Contact:

• Mark Luetzelschwab
• Agilix Labs, Inc
• (801) 932 1441 (P)
• (801) 437 2052 (F)
• pr@agilix.com
• 733 E. Technology Ave
• Orem, UT 84097
• http://www.agilix.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

 BrainHoney, not LMS, powers progressive online high school

Orem, UT, May 30, 2009 — The innovative American Academy Online High School (TAAS) announced the selection of Agilix’s BrainHoney – an innovative alternative to a learning management system (LMS) – as their core learning application.

BrainHoney provides individualized learning and ongoing standards-aligned formative assessment for classroom, hybrid, and online students. Teachers and administrators efficiently and effectively track individual student progress. The innovative design incorporates a gradebook, content, assessments, state-standards, and assignments with tools that make it easy to teach students across multiple sections, each working at their own pace.

“BrainHoney is great!”, said Rebekah Richards, SVP of Academic Affairs and Principal of TAAS. “My teachers – who have previously used all major LMS systems – can’t thank me enough for making the switch to BrainHoney. It saves them time, effort, and they are much more organized.”

Not only are her teachers pleased that they have tools to make their job easier and more effective, Ms. Richards also has a much better grasp of the day-to-day status of her students and teachers: “Best of all, I get the data I need to make sure my school stays on course. We can now truly deliver our school-as-a-service model as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

As a modular system, BrainHoney fit in easily with the TAAS enterprise technology. Built on web-services technology, “BrainHoney is an open, extensible platform with complete API access. Integration with our student records systems has been easy and straightforward.” said Gregg Rosann, CTO of TAAS.

“We are thrilled to have such an innovative group like the American Academy as one of our partners” said Mark Luetzelschwab, SVP of Agilix. “They have a great, easy-to-implement student-centered solution that serves both individuals needing a degree and high schools who need to supplement their offerings with online courses.”

For additional information or to learn how BrainHoney can help you integrate formative assessment and individualized learning at your school, college, or online program, contact sales@agilix.com.

For additional information on how to partner with The American Academy Online High School to supplement your high school offerings, contact sales@theamericanacademy.com.

 About Agilix Labs, Inc

Agilix delivers formative assessment and individualized learning solutions based on the belief that the future of education is an equitable, learner-centric, objective-aligned, lifelong learning model that adapts to a changing world.

Agilix’s most recent product – BrainHoney – is a quantum leap forward in student-centered, objective-aligned learning that will enable the shift to individualized learning in classrooms, schools, colleges, and online learning programs.

Agilix was founded in 2001 by the same core team that created Folio and MyFamily.com/Ancestry.com – one of the largest online communities in the world with over 16M registered members.

View in PDF format.

Contact:

• Mark Luetzelschwab
• Agilix Labs, Inc
• (801) 932 1441 (P)
• (801) 437 2052 (F)
• pr@agilix.com
• 733 E. Technology Ave
• Orem, UT 84097
• http://www.agilix.com