All the Children are Above Average

“Where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”

Those are the closing words Garrison Keillor spoke each night on his radio show A Prairie Home Companion. He was summarizing the fictional hometown Lake Wobegon – a special place. It’s an interesting concept – this idea that “all the children are above average” and, I believe, can be a detrimental one when viewed through the lens of government-mandated testing.“

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Test Prep with Virtual Tools: 

10 Flashcard Apps for Mobile Devices

Read the rest of the article here!

Seventh Grade studies the environment on 

Cape Cod!

Inter-Lakes STEM team attends 

Boston Museum of Science Gateway STEM Project Spring Progress Session

Share what you and your colleagues are doing!  Send information and pictures to Kathleen Hill!

Competency-Based Individualized Education

System Works


A school in Connecticut improves instruction with

personalized learning.



The new system requires students to meet standards in each subject, such as demonstrating the ability to communicate, problem solve, innovate, analyze, collaborate, understand applications, and demonstrate knowledge.

Read more here

Personalized Learning

Personalized learning is part of our new strategic plan and Bea McGarvey is coming to the Inter-Lakes School District this summer so this article might be of interest!

From Edsurge.com

How a District Ended Student Dropouts with Personalized Learning

Kentucky Supt. Roger Cook shares what sets Taylor County School District apart

From the EdTech web site

Teaching the New Tech Way

Project-based learning and a culture of collaboration fuel student success at a technology-centric high school in Pinckney, Mich.

How to Make New Tech Work

Integrating an always-available Internet can mean changing how teachers teach. Here are some essential steps.

• Retrain your brain. Teachers need to become facilitators for knowledge, not primary sources, says Steve Keskes, director of Pinckney New Tech High School in Pinckney, Mich. That may require developing a broader awareness of the information resources that are available to their students, he adds.
• Use class time more creatively. Teachers can extend the school day by using digital tools to record video lectures or audio podcasts for students to watch at home. This, in turn, frees up precious class time for group discussion and collaboration, says Tom McCurdy, Pinckney Community Schools' assistant superintendent for instruction, assessment and technology.
• Be patient. It may take a while for all teachers to get up to speed on these efforts — and that's fine, says Michael Partridge, the district's instructional technology specialist. "We've just completed our second year of the one-to-one initiative, and I still have teachers telling me that they aren't really using this technology," he says. "I tell them, that's OK. When they're ready to use it, the technology will be there."

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School is a prison — and damaging our kids      Longer school years aren't the answer. The problem is school itself. Compulsory teach-and-test simply doesn't work

A provocative title indeed but I think the author makes some valid points.  What do you think?  Click on the title above to read the blog.

Check out this great blog post about young people and social media.  As adults we seem to impose your own world view upon young people.  It would seem that they see the world differently.  Go figure!!!  Many things we believe about teens and social media just may not be true!

5 Myths About Young People and Social Media

This year we started 1:1 computing in grades 4 through 8.  Next year we will expand to grades 4 through 12.  This article might give you some good ideas.

5 ways Chromebooks can enhance instruction