The Learning Counsel’s National Gathering and Annual Awards event, held at the Disney World campus in Orlando, was a platform for innovative action and collaboration for the future of teaching and learning. This, the 3rd year of the event, brought together educators from leading schools and districts from across the U.S.

The two-day event began with a broad review of national education statistics and research concerning the transition to digital curriculum and technology from the CEO and Publisher at the Learning Counsel, LeiLani Cauthen.

Schools are running “smack into the issue of digital curriculum coverage models,” and “face-planting into the issue of classroom implementation.” She said. “In every city the Learning Counsel has visited superintendents and other school staff are worried about how to get digital curriculum courseware and other tools ‘out of the shadows’ and into core curriculum use. With this Gathering, we hope that it helped guide leaders and gave them a place to collaborate with other executives, discuss their best practices and share solutions.

Photo Gallery from the 2016 National Gathering

On the second day of the Gathering, Dr. Dallas Dance gave a spotlight talk on the innovative strategy for change at Baltimore County Public Schools. “As we redefine teaching and learning and provide students with choice, teachers must shift the way they deliver content to students,” he stated. Baltimore Public Schools has evolved a strategy that takes much of what we are hearing today as the most successful shifts in pedagogy and they are sharing these best practices district-wide in ways that make the tools to shift not only available, but possible, for every member of the BCPS team—administrators, teachers, parents and students.

The Learning Counsel is making a portion of his talk from the Gathering available here to share it with all of education. This video is part I of his talk. Part II will be shared next week, sharing BCPS’s single-sign-on solution.