Over the last couple of months, I had the opportunity to sit down with Lisa Duty (formerly of KnowledgeWorks, now a partner at The Learning Accelerator). TLA’s model is to provide funding to organizations they believe can really push the envelope. Then, the organization is required to offer their services either free or very deeply discounted.
Here is the link to the Learning Accelerator’s Investment Summary. If an organization is on this investment list – and has services aligned to your needs, they will be high quality AND free or inexpensive. 🙂
Lisa connected me with Jeff Tsang, founder of Mastery Design Collaborative. Jeff shared some additional resources that might be especially useful to your schools because they provide tracking data in competency based systems.
The first 3 are more Student Info Systems. The 4th is training, supports and assessment system for performance based assessment.
- Empower
- Slate
- Agilix Buzz
- Envision Learning Partners – Performance Based Assessment System
Mastery Design Collaborative itself is also a great resource if you are looking for supports to guide leadership team in planning how to begin or deepen a personalized learning initiative in a school or district. MDC received a huge grant from The Learning Accelerator (Lisa Duty’s shop) to create their services and then offer it at deep discount. They can do a 3-6 month strategic planning for about $50K and in depth planning with a cohort of 6 schools/districts for $150K which is pretty reasonable given the market.
Feel free to share these resources within your networks. Craig and I and the rest of the EEP team are very interested to learn your thoughts on these products/services. If you use them, please let us know if they are as good as we hear.
