AceraEI offers free STEAM content during distance learning
For schools, teachers, and parents looking for free educational content during this period of distance learning, AceraEI is offering downloadable lessons for students in grades K-8. The content includes activities in life sciences, art, math, engineering, architecture, and… Read More
Category: @CourtneyofAcera, Acera News, AceraBlogPost, Innovation in Education | March 20, 2020 | kerry
Five steps to successful remote learning
By Courtney Dickinson As schools nation-wide quickly transition to remote learning in response to COVID-19, many administrators, teachers, students and parents are experiencing distance learning for the first time. In addition to curriculum and content, schools must also… Read More
Category: @CourtneyofAcera, Acera News, AceraBlogPost, Innovation in Education | March 17, 2020 | kerry
Parents as coaches: Tactics to support your child during remote schooling
By Courtney Dickinson @CourtneyofAcera What are best-in-class teaching tactics you can adopt – as the in-person adult – now that so many schools are converting to remote schooling? It will be tempting for all of us to replicate… Read More
Category: @CourtneyofAcera, Acera News, AceraBlogPost, from the classroom, Innovation in Education | March 14, 2020 | kerry
Acera’s 10-hour flip turn to remote learning
By Courtney Dickinson At 10 pm Wednesday, March 11, Acera School’s board voted unanimously to move to a remote education model, effective immediately. With humility, I share steps and philosophies we employed for remote learning, hoping that this… Read More
Category: @CourtneyofAcera, Acera News, AceraBlogPost, Innovation in Education | March 13, 2020 | kerry
Our 2019 Annual Report
By Courtney Dickinson We are celebrating the ten year mark of our school! I write this sitting in the middle of our Commons. I hear conversation threads emerging from math classes – discussions about existentialism and universal quantifiers,… Read More
Category: @CourtneyofAcera, Acera News, AceraBlogPost, Blog, from the classroom, Innovation in Education | January 28, 2020 | kerry
Measuring what matters at school
By Courtney Dickinson What indicates a school’s success? Is it simply a standardized test score, like MCAS? It isn’t. The decades-long standardized testing movement has failed to close the equity gap in education, which was its entire intent…. Read More
Category: @CourtneyofAcera, AceraBlogPost, Blog, Innovation in Education | November 12, 2019 | kerry
Inside, Outside: Linking in-class content to real world issues and innovations
By Courtney Dickinson @CourtneyofAcera Jake, age 13, sits and experiments with circuitry and Arduino, figuring out how to connect and code in his “Robotic Bling” hands-on elective class. The 10-week course occurs once a week for 2 hours,… Read More
Category: @CourtneyofAcera, Blog, from the classroom, Innovation in Education | November 1, 2019 | kerry
Top five free actions to make schools better, and students happier
By Courtney Dickinson Kids often dread their return to school in the fall, and we – as adults – let them. Societally, we have made it a rite of passage to hate school, and we joke with students… Read More
Category: @CourtneyofAcera, AceraBlogPost, Blog, Innovation in Education, Research | August 13, 2019 | kerry
Courtney Dickinson on what’s possible in education
Courtney Dickinson sits down with Allen Saakyan of Simulation Series to discuss why she founded Acera, her 10 Tools to Transform Schools, and her mission to help build the next generation of scientists, innovators, and leaders.
Category: @CourtneyofAcera, Acera News, AceraBlogPost, Blog, Innovation in Education, Uncategorized | July 23, 2019 | kerry
Creating a sense of purpose at school
By Courtney Dickinson I read an insightful piece in the Boston Globe this week on the link between happiness and having a sense of purpose. Simply put, people with a sense of purpose live longer, happier, and more… Read More
Category: @CourtneyofAcera, AceraBlogPost, Blog, Innovation in Education | May 23, 2019 | kerry
At Acera, we believe a school’s success can be measured far beyond its standardized test scores. How happy are its students? Do they feel a sense of purpose at school? Are they developing a capacity for perspective taking and problem solving? Are teachers using evidence-based approaches to pedagogy? Acera’s Education Innovation team is working to change how we measure education to include students’ core capacities, faculty’s use of evidence-based practices, a positive school culture, and standards and achievement.
Tech Hub enables students to emerge as community-minded technologists able to solve problems to benefit the whole school. More a philosophy than a place, Tech Hub can start as simply a cart in a cafeteria with one student fired up to be a knowledgable, technically skillful community member. Concurrently developing emotional intelligence skills and a wide array of technological abilities, Tech Hub members model and spread an attitude of fearlessness at using STEM tools to solve real problems.
Small children can understand big ideas, and computer science is no exception. Acera’s hands-on “Computers and Me” curriculum introduces early elementary students to computer science concepts, and is one example of many creative ways computational thinking and technical fluency can be developed throughout K-12 education, starting at age 5. Pilot-tested and ready to translate for adoption by public schools, these computer science learning approaches help students become facile and fearless.
What if math classes are organized based on what each student is ready to learn, rather than by age? This f
How can educators unleash the initiative and creativity inherent in all children? 