Self-Determined Learning Episodes

Dec. 11, 2023

#26 School is in Session: Get Out of the Classroom

Meet young high school students who share how their natural love of learning remains alive through a personalized learning journey.

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Nov. 3, 2023

Out of the Muck with Consent-based Learning

Ken Danford, author of Learning is Natural; School is Optional and co-founder of North Star, a center for teen learners shares his story and insight on self-directed learning.

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June 17, 2022

Heading for Open Waters: A Reflection on the Purpose of School

Imagine your children waking each day, knowing what they are going to do and how they need to go about doing it. You've prepared them and the environment so well, they hum along in their work driven by curiosity and …

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Sept. 11, 2021

Redefining Success

Scott Schimmel, Founder, and CEO of You School walks us through the process of identifying what success looks like and explains why it is different for everyone. "Where do you go to figure yourself out?"

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Sept. 3, 2021

Learning as a Fountain, Not a Drain

Dr. Yong Zhao, award winner and author of hundreds of articles and thirty books on education, talks about the need for a new paradigm for assessment, technology, and the purpose of education.

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June 25, 2021

All Is Not Lost When There is Play

Play is self-determined learning at its best, Peter Gray author of Free to Learn states, nature does not turn off our desire and capacity to learn when children turn five or six, we turn it off with our coercive system …

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June 4, 2021

Supporting the Self-Determined Learner

Imagine spending time on what you care about using your observation of others as not only motivation but as an actual learning resource. Today is part four of four on making learning personal. Mike Wehmeyer, co-author of the 2020 book …

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