CEO Message: Seizing Today’s Learning Paradigm

Welcome to the inaugural digital issue of The Source.  For more than five years, AdvancED has been publishing the AdvancED Source twice a year for educational leaders around the world.  With each issue, we have received accolades for the content, ideas and innovation presented by our authors.  However, we recognized that printing the AdvancED Source limited our reach and audience.  We asked ourselves, “Why limit the distribution to 30,000 when we can reach over 100,000 educators by publishing the content online?”

Renamed The Source, our new online knowledge resource will include the bi-annual, theme-based publication while also connecting viewers to videos and opinion pieces throughout the year.  Additionally, readers will be able to access back issues of the AdvancED Source and search for topics under pre-populated categories.

For this inaugural issue, we have explored the topic – Today’s Learning Paradigm.  How has today’s digital age student changed the learning environment?  As teachers and administrators around the world are adapting educational cultures, embracing social media, and applying technology and new instructional techniques, students are becoming their own teachers, accessing media for content and knowledge beyond the classroom.  Our authors for the fall 2014 issue explore how classrooms and other platforms of learning are preparing the next generation of teachers, engaging students in defining their own outcomes, integrating technology as a tool for producing and creating, and educating today’s students for their futures.

Cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito in Learning that Connects explores connected learning that allows young people to pursue a personal interest or passion and link this learning to academic achievement, career success or civic engagement.  Ito, Professor in Residence and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning at the University of California, Irvine, also provided a must watch video on students’ new media practices.

We welcome back Gary Marx, president of the Center for Public Outreach, who wrote for one of the first issues of AdvancED Source.  Author of Twenty-One Trends for the 21^st Century…Out of the Trenches and into the Future, Marx examines the realities facing educators and a refreshed paradigm for today’s learning in his article, Getting Students Ready for a Fast-Changing World.

Monica Martinez, author of Deeper Learning:  How Eight Innovative Public Schools are Transforming Education in the Twenty-First Century and former member of the AdvancED Board of Trustees, shares core strategies used by eight public schools that offer an inspiring and expanded vision of what’s possible in schools today.  In her article, she suggests a framework for educators and schools to rise to the challenge of preparing all students for college, careers and the world today.

Assistant Headmaster at the Delphian School in Oregon, Mark Siegel introduces profiency-based education supported by individual academic programs for all students.  In his article, A New Paradigm – Putting All Students in the Driver’s Seat, he discusses how a shift away from time-based learning opens the door for fully educating all.

In The Heart:  An Underused Tool for Digital Learning, Angela Maiers, founder of Choose2Matter, a global movement that challenges and inspires students to work collaboratively to develop innovative solutions to social problems, urges readers to consider that students learn best when focused on what matters most to them.  Award-winning educator, author and speaker Maiers challenges, “students and teachers are using technology simply to do old things in new ways.”

Catherine Saldutti, President of Educhange, Inc., explores what should drive curricular designs in an information age.  Her article, STEM Curricular Designs for an Information Age, suggests how educators can develop an information schema that more effectively delivers STEM education at middle and secondary levels.

Woodrow Wilson Foundation President Arthur Levine examines the critical need to change teacher preparation programs to ensure that the next generation of educators will meet future demands.  In Redesigning Teacher Preparation Today for the Classrooms of Tomorrow, Levine provides key lessons gleaned from several state models for better aligning teaching and learning.

We want to thank each of our authors for their insights into Today’s Learning Paradigm and their contributions to this inaugural, digital issue of The Source.  While we will reach 100,000 educational leaders with a link to this issue, we hope you will help us reach 100,000 more.  Pass along an article or link, share a comment, join our social network, connect with an author, and let us know what you think about our new online knowledge resource. Finally, share this resource with your students and use it to spark a dialogue about their perspective on learning.  After all it is readiness for their future we must ensure.