Enabling Change
NGLC receives two new grants to ring in 2025
NGLC Team
Next Generation Learning Challenges
in USA
Topics
Next generation learning is all about everyone in the system—from students through teachers to policymakers—taking charge of their own learning, development, and work. That doesn’t happen by forcing change through mandates and compliance. It happens by creating the environment and the equity of opportunity for everyone in the system to do their best possible work.
Two new grants to NGLC will usher our work to transform learning with school communities across the U.S. in 2025.
Collective Shift
Aiming for the Moon with Customized AI Tools
Remake Learning (Inter)National Moonshot Grants
$50,000
NGLC, together with our seven organizational partners in Collective Shift—Building 21, Incubate Learning, inkwire, Learner-Centered Collaborative, National Equity Project, Playlab, and reDesign—received a National Moonshot Grant provided by Remake Learning. This award was provided amid a competitive field of proposals to catalyze our education system toward a future where learning is more engaging, relevant, and equitable for young people.
The project, Collective Shift: Human-Centered AI for Learner-Centered Education, will harness the power of generative AI to help school communities build learning and operating models that reflect and demonstrate the human-centered attributes of their graduate portraits. A central tenet of the partnership’s design principles is equity. That requires centering our humanity in the development of the AI tools and in how they are used.
Three prototypes are already available for public use:
Ask Gabby: Designed by partner Incubate Learning, this coach helps you move into lifelong learning mindsets, skills, and practices.
Professional Learning Design Copilot: This AI copilot helps you design professional learning for a rapidly changing world.
Grad Portrait Rubric and Progression Builder: This AI copilot helps communities create a set of competency-based progressions and rubrics that can be used to evaluate student evidence.
Collective Shift is also supported by generous contributions from LearnerStudio and through a multi-program grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. Learn more about Collective Shift and the AI copilots at www.collective-shift.org.
Learning Excursion participants tour Winooski Middle & High School in Vermont in spring 2024. Credit: Brian Ambrose for NGLC.
Inspiring High School Redesign
Barr Foundation
$760,000
The Barr Foundation awarded NGLC a grant (through our fiscal sponsor Tides Center) to continue into 2025 our popular and successful Innovative Schools Learning Excursions for New England high school teams. Over the years, NGLC has supported over 750 individuals who care about improving the high school experience through these programs offered in partnership with the Barr Foundation. Our current model brings together educators, students, and key partners in teams to tap into the diverse perspectives of the different roles as they observe learning, school culture, and the conditions that support innovative learning in the schools they visit.
Following our most recent Learning Excursion to Kentucky this fall, every participating high school team has already taken action steps to engage their community!
- Two schools replicated an aspect of the Learning Excursion experience in full-day PD sessions, co-facilitated by students and educators.
- Three schools have examined the physical spaces in (and outside) of their schools to repurpose them for displaying student work, creating student collaboration spaces, encouraging student-centered learning, and generally improving the physical environment.
- Many teachers and students who participated in the Learning Excursion told us they have re-arranged their classrooms, asked other students what they want their schools and learning to be, and added “surprise and delight” activities to bring joy into learning.
- All teams have plans in place to get to the more complex, long-term shifts they want for their schools: creating a North Star to guide their learning transformation; redesigning their master schedule; initiating partnerships for dual enrollment, internships, and real-world learning opportunities; and supporting both teachers and students to design engaging, meaningful, and fun learning experiences across the curriculum and across the school day and year.
Learning Excursions help communities move from interest to action and we are excited to provide additional opportunities to ignite that same energy and sense of purpose in 2025. We will be opening the application for a spring Learning Excursion to Sunnyside School District in Tucson, Arizona, in January. A fall 2025 Learning Excursion is also in the works. Join our mailing list to receive the announcements.
Not in New England? Interested in rethinking elementary or middle school? Contact us for customized opportunities.
Photo at top by NGLC: During NGLC's Learning Excursion to Kentucky in Fall 2024, students from three New England high schools and from the host school, STEAM Academy in Lexington, prepare for a design challenge.
NGLC Team
Next Generation Learning Challenges
A dedicated team moving the mission of NGLC forward, helping to bring next gen learning to today’s students.
