bausland

About Brian Ausland

Vice President, Director of Education

California’s Blended PD/Curriculum Project Works To Explain Growing Popularity In Other States

California has been experimenting with an online model that blends professional development with collaborative curriculum design to help promote improved instruction and use of digital open educational resources. And in an era when current data shows billions of dollars annually spent on professional development has yielded little measurable improvement, California has instead been wrestling with the accelerated success of their program statewide. What [...]

By | 2017-05-25T22:28:37+00:00 December 12th, 2016|
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Recognition For Research: Navigation North Keeps Development Connected To The Classroom

Navigation North is proud to receive recognition for the research-based work we have conducted with our colleagues at the Smithsonian in developing and shaping the Smithsonian Learning Lab. Digital Promise convened experts at Teachers College, Columbia University to review and selected one exemplary company and two honorable mentions in each category. EdSurge reported on the findings, identifying Smithsonian Learning Lab for its work [...]

By | 2017-05-25T22:28:37+00:00 November 18th, 2016|
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Where Exquisite Summer Content Begins to Bloom

The seeds all looked more or less the same as did the work to plant them. Now there are tomatoes, wildflowers, peppers, sunflowers, and corn well on its way. A convergence of exquisite and diverse flora from a common environment of soil and water, experience and effort. We have been involved in some interesting conversations around what's working for schools and districts and what's [...]

By | 2017-05-25T22:28:38+00:00 June 28th, 2016|
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The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same

The phrase was coined by French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Aside from writing a number of novels and serving as the editor of Le Figaro, he was a former teacher, known for his keenly satirical tone and bitter wit, and loved educational reform and going fishing. Go figure. I was recently sent a folder of instructional documents that [...]

By | 2017-05-25T22:28:38+00:00 May 20th, 2016|
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Transforming Rich OER Into Instructional Music Will Take More Than a Kazoo

OER sometimes looks like millions of random musical notes at its most granular level. They can be organized in many different ways by different practitioners to create entirely different songs...and at times, some projects choose to do a bit of assembly and organize the notes into certain kinds of songs or sheets of pre-constructed music to lend more structure and focus. I find this [...]

By | 2017-05-25T22:28:38+00:00 April 13th, 2016|
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We Snuck A Teacher Into SXSW.Edu This Year

We were only two hours in, yet Sarah and I had already hustled through the exhibitor floor, meandered in the Playground, created LED-light up clouds in a Makers Space session, and caught half a panel discussion on Competency-Based assessment. Now on the hunt for coffee, my 4th grade teacher companion, sporting a Canvas LMS tattoo sleeve, and Kahoot stickers proclaimed, "Wow, this is so different than any other conference." [...]

By | 2017-05-25T22:28:38+00:00 March 11th, 2016|
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Sorry for Making Trouble at Your STEM Conference

The education conference is a thing. We've all attended them, learned things, felt connected at times, got excited, got bored, decided to skip out a bit early, maybe even met some other good teachers here and there. But wether attending and/or presenting, inevitably most of us have ended up back at school or work fairly untethered from the experience with [...]

By | 2017-05-25T22:28:38+00:00 December 5th, 2015|
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