Edina Digital Age Learning

Last Friday, March 13, was the 2015 Digital Learning Day , an effort to promote innovation and technology integration. With our eLearning2 Digital Age Learning initiative , it felt like just another day of learning! To me, every day is "Digital Learning Day!" I asked staff to Tweet out pictures of their students accessing content, collaborating and creating using both the #DLDay and #eLearning2 hashtags. The result was a great mix of activities from all grade levels, K-12.  [ View the story "Digital Learning Day 2015 in Edina" on Storify ] In addition, Jackie Roehl and Rachel Hatten had their Pre-AP English 10 students create a "Twitter Tableaux" around themes in the book, Slaughterhouse Five . Here were their instructions for students:      Twitter Tableaux A tableau (tableaux is the plural form) is a group of motionless models representing a scene from a story. As a group discuss your chapter to determine the three scenes that...

Dallas Dance, Superintendent of Baltimore County Schools shared how his district is developing Globally Competitive Students at COSN15 . Baltimore County has a 87.6% graduation rate. It's mostly urban and diverse.  2nd Highest Grad rate umong large school districts More than half of the schools are among the best in the nation  17 Blue Ribbon Schools Multiple Wards 91% of families say the school is effective or highly effective Good is not Good enough! 12% of students not graduating, 18% of African American Males not graduating ALL MEANS ALL is their Motto!  Brainpower does not discriminate How they began... Reaching out to the community stakeholders Previous Admin-Blueprint for Progress Stagnant in academic approach BluePrint 2.0 Developing their purpose Prepare students to be globally competitive and globally prepared Define what the diploma means when they leave the school system Access to an equitable digital learning environment...

Dr. Alison Powell, Vice-President for State and District Services of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) spoke at the CoSN 15 conference on A Blended Learning Roadmap: 6 Essential Elements. iNACOL focuses on blended, online, and competency-based learning. They "ensure that every student has access to a world-class education, regardless of geography, income or background."  What comes to mind when you hear the term, "blended learning?" In the room there were many who hadn't implemented it at all. She shared some pictures and asked the participants whether they were examples of blended. Some looked like lecture, class discussion, group projects, small group instruction. iNACOL's Definition: A formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through online learning, with some element of student control over time, place, path or pace. Christensen Institute defines four models: 1. Rotation Station R...

Dr. Chris Dede from Harvard University and Julie Evans from Project Tomorrow shared information from a paper they wrote for Qualcomm on 8 Essentials for Mobile Learning Success . Part 1: Quick Overview of 4 Essentials Purposeful Planning for Mobile Device Usage 1976 the "Little Professor Calculator" was introduced. Today's mobile devices have much more power and capabilities obviously 3 Contexts for Learning 1. Classrooms      -Presentation and Discussion 2. Richly Contextualized Real World Learning      -Internships, apprenticeships      -Anyplace, Anytime 3. Learning Communities      -Interpretation and Transfer      -Tweeting, or in a game interacting with others Face to Face, Virtual and Blended conceptualizations of learning environments. Mobile devices allow us to inter-relate these concepts Community-Social Media Sharing Thinking Co-Creating Dede showed that the "Conversation ...

Mark Edwards , Superintendent from Mooresville, North Carolina spoke about Digital Conversion and how his district has transformed learning at COSN15 . They have done this and maintained a #1 ranking in academic results in the state. His book, Thank You For Your Leadership, details more. Here are my notes: Why Digital Conversion? Moral imperative No textbook in 6 years Equity-All students need access Implications Precision-Detailed Intervention Teachers and students have more information about their own learning Competency is evolutional Teachers that were star teachers 5 years ago, if they haven't grown are not as relevant. Creativity and relevance drive productivity Students are making things to demonstrate learning Mashing up Connectivity and collaboration "hum" Teachers are "Learning Conductors!"  Personalization Students understand it is about them Second Order Leadership Abundant-Custodians and bus drivers can be great le...

Michael Fullan on Rethinking Pedagogy Michael Fullan , was the kickoff speaker at the 2015 Consortium for School Networking Conference in Atlanta. His talk was on, " The Stratosphere Agenda: Rethinking Pedagogy for Deeper Learning. " Fullan believes that we need a new pedagogy to leverage the opportunities digital technologies present. Here are some of my notes from the session.  2015 will be a breakout year, and we are in a three year window where the transformational change is moving and won't go back. It is an "unplanned digital revolution!" In 2011, he wrote an article on the "wrong drivers" of policy: Right Drivers                 Wrong Drivers Internal                        External Accountability Collaboration                 Individualism Pedagogy                 ...

In December of 2012, Edina Public Schools launched a partnership with Best Buy for the services of a Webstore for our families, along with Geek Squad support for student devices in our schools. This allowed our families to purchase a device for student use at a significant discount, and helped jumpstart our Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiative. We rolled things out after the first semester that year, and had 373 families participate in the optional program.  Last year, we rolled the program to both 6th and 9th grade families, still keeping access to a device optional. 62% of the families participated in the Webstore, and we continued our march toward 1:1 computing. See my post from last year on results of our surveys. Based on those survey results, this year, we made a few changes that have yielded big results.  We declared that all students are required to have a device for their learning We set a minimum standard that the device run the Chrome Browser and have ...