More than 950 accredited schools no longer require the ACT or SAT for admission

More than 950 accredited schools no longer require the ACT or SAT for admission

This can’t be great news for the owners of the ACT and the SAT college admissions exams, but the list of colleges and universities that no longer require scores from those tests to be submitted with a student application keeps growing. The list of test-optional schools maintained by the nonprofit National Center for Fair and…

Amazon has created a parent portal that works with Freetime on the Amazon Fire tablet

Amazon has created a parent portal that works with Freetime on the Amazon Fire tablet

Today, the company is giving parents better insight into what their kids are doing on their tablets with the free Parent Dashboard. The dashboard lives at parents.amazon.com and can be accessed from any web browser. Source: Amazon is launching a new dashboard that lets you monitor the content your kid consumes – The Verge Amazon…

Facebook has created an educational guide to help users identify fake news

Facebook has created an educational guide to help users identify fake news

Looks like Facebook is turning that top space in your News Feed into something a little more useful than “It’s spring time!” or “Have a nice day!” In a blog post, the company said it will be adding alert to an “educational tool” when users log onto the service, which will provide tips for spotting…

Resignation letters, formative assessments, research access – top 3 for the week

Resignation letters, formative assessments, research access – top 3 for the week

The view of US education as seen through teacher resignation letters Depressing look at the teaching profession. Formative is a free service for performing formative assessments in your classroom Another option for performing formative assessments in your classroom. Use the Unpaywall Chrome or Firefox extension to access research papers for free Access freely available research…

Big takeaways from doing away with traditional grading

Big takeaways from doing away with traditional grading

After years of teaching using the principles of standards-based learning and grading, I encountered two findings that radically changed my perspective on assessment, grading, and reporting. Source: Teachers Going Gradeless – Arthur Chiaravalli – Medium Joe Bower’s blog, for the love of learning, has a ton of additional resources on getting rid of grades. Sadly, Joe…

How three teachers turned classroom inspiration into action through the Certified Innovator Program

How three teachers turned classroom inspiration into action through the Certified Innovator Program

We recently spoke with three inspirational educators about their experience in the Innovator Program and the ideas they brought to life: Charlie Shryock, who created eThanks, an online gratitude site for teachers; Matt Wigdahl who designed a makerspace project called SolverSpace; and Carrie Anne Philbin who created Geek Gurl Diaries to inspire girls to pursue…

Tech companies are starting to look beyond the four-year degree

Tech companies are starting to look beyond the four-year degree

The technology industry is now trying to figure out a way to attack its cultural and demographic homogeneity issues. One simple initiative is to begin to recruit talent from people outside of its preferred networks. One way is to extend their recruiting efforts to people who don’t have four-year degrees. Source: Why More Tech Companies Are…