Literacy publisher Benchmark Education Company announced that it received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Literacy Courseware Challenge” for its new online ACE© Research Project Organizer (RPO). The grant will fund the development of RPOs around major themes, including environment, government, economics, and technology and society with a culminating focus on argumentative writing.
ACE Research is one of three Adaptive, Collaborative Environments (ACE) Digital Learning Modules that will be available to schools later this fall. This research project organizer brings teaching, learning, and assessment into a Web-based environment for students and educators. Students can work one-to-one or collaborate around monthly cross-curricular content area topics for grades 3 to 8. ACE also allows students to engage in several social collaboration features, including forums, chats, and messaging, which allow them to confer with and receive just-in-time feedback from teachers.
For educators, ACE provides resources that address Big Ideas, Essential Questions, Common Core Standards, Curriculum-related Content and Key Concepts, in addition to a set of professional development and support materials. Immediate access to student work provides teachers ongoing formative-assessment data on student understanding of varied text formats.
