Disclaimer: This blog entry is in support of the workshop held at Broumana High School - Lebanon on April 9, 2016.
Educators and policy makers share a rising concern about equipping learners with 21st century skills that empower them to embrace their future. With 15% of the 21st century already behind us, the call for transforming, upgrading and breathing life into our curricula is more pressing than ever (Jacobs, 2010). Information and communication technology (ICT), properly harnessed, can help bring about the desired change in the current education scape. ISTE's essential conditions to leverage technology for learning can provide a solid theoretical framework that informs the vision and stage setting of such a transformational endeavor. Unpacking each of ISTE's essential conditions is context sensitive and pertains to each school setting and its stakeholders. Designing how these essential conditions operate harmoniously is an intrinsic and vital part of such an educational transformation.
Resources and apps that can help inform the design of the following essential conditions:
Shared Vision
A shared vision transcends a vision for technology use. One dimension of a shared vision could start with graduate attributes and 21st century skills. Such attributes could help define the school mission statement and resulting objectives. They, thus help bring about the curriculum standards that are at the heart of daily teaching and learning.
Graduate attributes and 21st century skills could be gathered from the following resources:
UNESCO
OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education)
IB (International Baccalaureate) Learner's profile
The school mission statement
Curriculum Framework
To help design and map a 21st century curriculum the following resources could prove invaluable:
Partnerships for 21st Century Learning
Curriculum 21 Mapping the Global Classroom to the Future
Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World (Professional Development) 1st Edition
Student-Centered Learning
Learning Management Systems can help drive a learning that is designed to address the needs of the learners. Here below are links to learning management systems:
Also the "Padagogy Wheel" is an excellent resource for leveraging technology through a learning design built around graduate attributes and Blooms cognitive categories and resulting active verbs and related activities, all informed by the SAMR model. The Arabic Padagogy Wheel was released in January 2016.
Assessment and Evaluation
Technology can be leveraged to help drive continuous assessment of teaching and learning. LMS could encompass assessment tools and students' learning tracking. Here below are simple formative assessment tools that can help drive student-centered teaching/learning
Skilled Personnel
To help educators become skilled at selecting and leveraging the right ICT resources to enhance teaching and learning, check out the following resources and certifications:
Microsoft Certified Educator in the MS learning paths, the teaching with technology course can help prepare you for the MCE exam
Ongoing Professional Learning
To help drive ongoing professional learning, the support of fellow educators and professional learning communities is invaluable. Become a connected educators by growing your own Professional/Personal/Personalized Learning Network PLN. Get involved in Twitter educational chats, in Google hangouts on relevant educational topics. Attend webinars on professional topics that interest you. "Our best resource is each other" said an educator on Twitter!
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