This post was co-wrote with Jennifer Stewart-Mitchell.
Well, here we are, at the end of the semester. Jenn and I have put in more hours than we can count into this project, but the learning journey and opportunity to ignite dialogue about true technology integration (which always has student learning at the center), has been a real rewarding experience.
Initially we thought we would just create a framework for 21st Century Learning, as explained in our original posts. This meant identifying the essential skills students would need, based on the ISTE Standards and the work of Michael Fullan, then coming up with the definitions, skills and tools that would guide students in their learning in today's world. Then the Ministry released the Digital Citizenship Continuum. THIS CHANGED EVERYTHING. This made what we had planned seem so undeveloped. So we decided that we would try to match the efforts of the awesome team who had composed the Digital Citizenship Continuum. After a Skype meeting with Alec and Katia, they said that this sounded like a huge undertaking. Wow, were they right! Forty-seven articles, videos and blog posts later, we realized just how huge this was. But we were committed to get it done!
Initially we thought we would just create a framework for 21st Century Learning, as explained in our original posts. This meant identifying the essential skills students would need, based on the ISTE Standards and the work of Michael Fullan, then coming up with the definitions, skills and tools that would guide students in their learning in today's world. Then the Ministry released the Digital Citizenship Continuum. THIS CHANGED EVERYTHING. This made what we had planned seem so undeveloped. So we decided that we would try to match the efforts of the awesome team who had composed the Digital Citizenship Continuum. After a Skype meeting with Alec and Katia, they said that this sounded like a huge undertaking. Wow, were they right! Forty-seven articles, videos and blog posts later, we realized just how huge this was. But we were committed to get it done!
Overall we are quite happy with how it turned out. It was challenging trying to narrow down the essential questions and knowledge that students need, but we decided that it was better to offer these considerations for teachers. The Scope and Sequence is quite easy to navigate (or at least we hope so!) for the grade groupings as we hoped to scaffold learning, so that teachers could see the progression of skills being taught. Teachers are able to view the Scope and Sequence for each of the C's as well as the definition.
Under the "Overview" you can review the rationale, an informational video which explains how the C's (Essential Skills of 21st Century Learning) fit together. One of the key aspects of our project was not only developing the framework for the Essential Skills of 21st Century Learning, but to start implementing the concepts into our professional development offerings. As part of our rationale, we had decided that Digital Citizenship would be identified as just Citizenship, as there needs to be connection between the online and offline world. One aspect of our jobs is to train teachers on how to integrate the Digital Citizenship Continuum. In addition to teachers exploring the Continuum, they developed lessons using the new framework we had designed. Going forward we hope that teachers will use the framework template or at least consider the 7C's when planning.
You will find our project on our division website. We hope you find our project useful and we welcome any feedback you have. We will continue to develop our project throughout the year, but we are very proud of what we have accomplished at this point in time!
Informational Video:
Overviews:
Continuums:
|
|