Tom Vander Ark: The New Normal Summit and the 3 'Cs' of Education

Next week, I’ll be heading to the New Schools Summit–the Sundance of edreform. I wrote a blog post for the New Schools Venture Fund, a group that helps education organizations and schools develop strategies, business, financial, and technology plans.
In that post, I said that this summit will be different. It’s the first summit held under “new normal” conditions. We went over the cliff. We are getting ready to live with less and many have more cuts to come. The hangover of the Great Recession took its toll on education, but for some leaders it forced a new round of learning as a result of asking difficult questions.
But, I continued in the post, we’re still fighting old battles framed around obsolete schools. It’s time to forge a “new normal” vision around the power of personal digital learning and reframe old problems around new opportunities. It’s time to invent new ways to boost learning productivity and operating sustainability. State and districts policy makers should focus on reducing barriers to online learning and should use the 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning to create a 3C framework:

-- Customized learning. Personal digital learning allows each student to vary learning by level, time, location, pace, and increasingly by mode.
-- Continuous feedback. Personal digital learning provides students and teachers continuous feedback. A typical fifth grade’s 5,000 keystroke day will provide lots of feedback and building a smart learner profile that helps to customize learning.
-- Competency-based learning. Personal digital learning allows students to advance based on demonstrated performance. A competency-based system requires frequent and on-demand assessments

Click here to read my complete post and to learn more about the summit.