Getting Smart
By Erik Day
One mini-plenary that stuck out to me featured Lydia Dobyns, President & CEO of New Tech Network; Elliot Washor, Co-Founder of Big Picture Learning; a student from one of each of their schools; and Loretta Goodwin, Deputy Director of the American Youth Policy Forum as moderator. The students in the room, who had taken part in rigorous work-based/experiential programs and who are now preparing for college, did much of the talking, and it was refreshing to hear student success stories first-hand.
I also learned of some new resources from JFF including their Work-Based Learning Framework, and their new report, Promising Trends and Challenges in Work-Based Learning: A Market Scan of Organizations and Tools.
This is something I’ve seen a lot of recently (Northeastern University’s NExT initiative jumps to mind), and seeing it clearly present as an undertone throughout the conference reaffirmed to me that momentum for experiential learning is growing.