Rebecca Segal You share so much with us, we thought it was about time we shared some of our stories with you.

Teachers live at school.  We live at Gradeable.  So where does Gradeable live?

We are based at Boston’s one and only EdTech accelerator, LearnLaunchX.  We moved here in June and will be here through September.  And we LOVE working here!              

Companies working together.  Companies thinking together.

You might ask: why is LearnLaunchX so awesome? And what is an EdTech Accelerator? Well, an Accelerator is a space startups share. We are new and learning, adapting, and evolving as companies. It's nice to share resources, ideas, and support each other. We share the space with six other EdTech startups.  There are also companies based here who rent space.  So we are just surrounded by innovation!

Being in an accelerator is amazing because we get access to so many opportunities that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. LearnLaunchX holds a lot of events and meetings to benefit the startups so that we can further improve what we are doing. We also have great opportunities like going to a Red Sox game with the other startup folks!

The office space is great for working, thinking, and collaborating.  There is a lounge to sit in, walls that are like whiteboards, phone booths in case you need to make a call, and Boston Sports-themed conference rooms!                      

The view after a long day of grading.

We are also based in the heart of Boston, which is THE city for innovation and education. Everyday we are thrilled to be part of this community.  What about you?  Where do you work and are you part of a learning community?

Rebecca Segal

Parent-teacher conferences often happen in the fall and are usually the first form of contact that parents and teachers make. Teachers and parents may see each other at other points during the year - at school plays, choir recitals, or spelling bees - but these times are not optimal settings for discussing a student. The conferences are crucial in allowing parents and teachers to exchange information about the student so that they can be most successful in school.

(Image source: Innovation_School)

Governor Dave Heineman from Nebraska emphasized the importance of parent attendance at parent-teacher conferences in a letter to parents.

“I want to encourage parents to attend their children’s parent-teacher conferences. One of the most important things we can do for our children is to attend these meetings. They provide an opportunity to meet teachers and administrators, to ask questions and to hear about how each child interacts in the classroom is an opportunity to gain valuable feedback about the development of individual students. Most importantly, it sends a powerful message about how much we as parents care about the education of our sons and daughters.”

Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman (Image Source: Miller_Center)

What are some ways teachers can provide feedback to parents? They can show grades, charts, exams, or other data.

What if there were a tool that could help you to better communicate with parents to show how a student is doing? If a teacher uses Gradable, parent-teacher conferences can become far more effective.  Gradeable allows for more specific discussions of a student’s performance; teachers can show parents the student’s exams or analysis of how the student is doing in class. Teachers can communicate more effectively and parents will leave with a better feel for how their child is doing.

When parents and teachers communicate effectively, they set up the student for success. Gradeable can help make that happen.

It's summertime.  The tumult of your classroom has faded and you've gotten in at least one good beach day and an afternoon (or three) curled up with a long neglected book.  September seems far away... but not that far.  

You don't want to think about the kids running around, endless bulletin boards, diving into lesson planning, or most of all the piles of paperwork and grading awaiting you in September.  Or do you?  

What if it could be different next year?  

What if grading was a pleasure, instead of a chore?  What if you didn't have to manually enter all those scores into your gradebook afterwards?  What if you automatically got reports in your inbox or on your phone that helped you decipher what your students understood and didn't understand, without any additional work on your part?  What if exit tickets were easy -- and free?

We think summer is the perfect time to try a new tool.  That's why Gradeable is free for the summer.  Sign up for our beta and try it out.  The secret handshake (also known as the invite code) is "SummerOfFreedomBL".  If you know a summer school teacher, be sure to let them know that Gradeable could be perfect for them too.  

Enjoy your next iced tea, your next tennis game, your next nap on the beach.  Do some summer dreaming.  If nothing else, just daydream about the idea that next year could be different.... just planting a seed.  Enjoy your summer!

High Fives!

Potential. As a teacher, you see it every day: in your students, in your fellow teachers, in your school. There is another place, though, that may not come to mind when you think of potential: your classroom environment.

A new study by Stalford University in Manchester, England found that the classroom environment can affect student learning by as much as a full year’s worth of learning material. Some factors are out of your control, like being dependent on the way the building was constructed, but there are some small changes you can make that have a big impact on your students and your success:

Idea 1: Switch it up! Put up new wall material (lots of colors, new imagery, even just moving things around from one side of the room to the other helps change things up). Students definitely like to be heard. Put up an opinions board to let them know you’re listening! It’s an easy way to change up the content on the walls.

                      (Image: The Trendy Teacher)

Idea 2: Hang things on the wall in picture frames to make your classroom look more classy! (We’ll do a post on making your class a more familiar space next!)

(Image: Pinterest)

Idea 3. Have kids take photos of subject and topic related matter. High school students are definitely using Instagram, and will love the idea of getting their work on the wall!

(Image: Goodwillionaire)

Tap into the potential of the classroom. More ideas next week!

Summer is here. In recent posts we’ve been offering suggestions on reflecting about the year - celebrating your achievements and your students’ achievements.

You’ve accomplished a lot and none of this could have happened without your classroom. So we wanted to take some time to explore the space in which your teaching occurs. Our resident design expert, Mikaila Waters, has a passion for space use and will offer up some ideas for your classrooms over the next few days.

Before we get to those recommendations - what do you think makes a classroom space great? What is one of your favorite elements of your classroom? Where do you feel most productive? Where do you get the majority learning done? What is one thing you want to change about your classroom? Think about what your dream classroom would be...

(inhabitat.com)

What would work best for you? What would work best for your students? Think about shared space. Think about dedicated space. The classroom is your canvas and even if you don’t have the time or resources to make it the perfect classroom, small details can make a big difference. Time to reinvent, reconsider, and get excited!

What excites me about technology and today’s emphasis on mobile applications is that no matter where I am or whatever problem I encounter, it is not difficult for me to leverage technology to better frame the problem or get a head start on coming up with a solution.

Software innovation has been democratized, allowing relatively unsophisticated users of technology to have easy access to the technological solutions of others who have experienced similar problems or pains in their everyday lives.

A few weeks ago I found myself wondering where the nearest dog park was in my neighborhood. Of course, my first thought was to search the App Store to find an app to help me find places for my dog to play. To me, this is the most exciting thing about technology is the concept of “hacking” everyday life: looking for technological solutions to life’s everyday problems. Some of these hacks we use without even knowing about them, which is a testament to how pervasive they can be.

These applications can be as simple as the flashlight application on your iPhone, the check deposit feature of your online banking app or even a complex, multi-faceted, note taking and to-do list application such as Evernote. With more mobile and location-based applications coming out everyday, the list of applications designed to solve everyday problems and enhance people’s lives goes on. However, despite this growing idea, when it comes to education, the most celebrated technological advancements seem to be those that seek to “radically” transform the learning process and educational landscape and often overlook the smaller incremental changes that address the needs of those that have been and continue to be instrumental to learning: teachers themselves.

As a former teacher and tutor who is a technology enthusiast, the EdTech space is particularly exciting to me. I believe that the impact of a great teacher is incredibly powerful. The ability to make impossibly complex material digestible through instruction, analysis, repetition and encouragement is invaluable and irreplaceable in students’ lives.

Unfortunately, given today’s educational landscape with increasing class sizes, poor resources and limited time in the classroom, teachers who have both the resources and drive to maximize their impact are harder and harder to find. This seems like the perfect problem for a technological solution.

Students shouldn’t require a superhero teacher to have a chance at a great education. How can we use technology to help everyday teachers maximize their potential for impact in a students life? This seems like an obvious focus for the Ed Tech movement. However, it feels to me that the movement has taken on a different challenge: scaling education by removing personal instruction, essentially taking the teacher out of the equation. I don’t want to be misunderstood, I am excited by the advancement of MOOCs (massive open online courses) and think they are extremely beneficial and are making education that much more accessible. I am just curious why, given a “hacking” culture where we are creating apps to solve life’s everyday problems, are there not more innovative solutions that seek to solve teachers’ everyday problems?

                           It is with this desire to enhance the lives of teachers that I got involved with Gradeable. Gradeable just made sense to me. Perhaps it was because of their focus on the needs of teachers. But more than that, I think their very refined focus on a specific pain in the lives of teachers and the education sector was the piece that was particularly refreshing. Gradeable isn’t out to radically transform the education sector as a whole, it instead strives to transform the lives of teachers and in turn, the lives of students.

The EdTech movement is exciting and it seems to be clear to everyone that we are on the verge of changing the way the world thinks about consuming information. My hope is that we don’t lose focus of the smaller, incremental changes on the frontlines of education that can be made with the help of technology. Gradeable respects the value of instruction and instead of seeking to remove it from the center of learning, embraces its importance in students’ lives. Gradeable is the education hack that I would have downloaded as a teacher, which is why I am working to get it into the hands of those that need it

The school year is tough. It’s long and it can wear you down in ways you might not even consider. There are many ways to fill a summer and we encourage all kinds of activity. There are teachers who will continue to teach through the summer and other who will choose to get as far away from the classroom as possible (both mentally and physically).

Regardless of what kind of summer you will be having, what are some ways you can reflect and take some time for yourself?

Here are some ideas to get you started...

  Take Photos

Learn a new program

Visits a new place

Meet new people

Learn new things about an old friend

Ask new questions

Reach out to a new colleague

Learn a new technology

Read a new author

Follow a new blog

Write

Share what you have learned with others

Shake up that routine. You will be delighted at what happens! Have a great weekend everyone!

The school year is wrapping up and, as always, there is a lot to think about. Teachers, students, and the classroom have been on our minds all year long. How will you support your students as they enter finals? Do you have summer plans for yourself? How will you reflect on your semester? How will you celebrate you students’ accomplishments and how will you address their challenges? How will you celebrate you and your colleagues accomplishments?

There is a lot that happens during the course of a semester and a year. It is important to take some time to unpack everything that has happened. We are big supporters of reflection; taking time and space to analyze what worked and what didn’t. As you reflect, it can be easy to be critical of what didn’t work, but how will you advocate for what did work? It is just as important to understand what worked in the classroom as what didn’t.

This is also a good time to connect with colleagues beyond the grind of the school week. How can you reach out to them beyond your day-to-day contact? How will you maintain to the ones moving on and how will you reach out to the new ones joining you in the summer and fall?

The summer is an ideal time to gain perspective on the year, on your students, and on you. There are a million ways to spend these weeks and months and we want to do everything we can to prepare you and share your thoughts and impressions on this time we have been waiting for all year.