Enroll in the FREE MOOC-Ed CourseThe Alliance for Excellent Education and Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University invite you to enroll in a first-of-its-kind Massive Online Open Course for Educators (MOOC-Ed). Titled “
Digital Learning Transition,” this free course will examine how the effective use of digital learning can help school districts meet educational challenges, including implementing college- and career-ready standards for all students and preparing teachers to make effective use of technology to enhance teaching and learning.
Beginning Monday, April 8, each of the course’s seven weekly sessions will include core resources and supplemental materials around a specific topic, while also allowing for personalization and flexibility. The course—a component of the Alliance’s “Project 24” initiative and the first of a series of MOOC-Eds planned by the Friday Institute—will help school district leaders develop a set of digital learning goals to address their students’ specific needs. Participating educators will learn how technology and the global information age impact both what students need to know and how and when student learning can take place. They will study the elements necessary for a successful digital learning transition, develop a set of goals for digital learning aligned to desired student outcomes, and create an action plan to meet these goals. Sign up today!
Calling All District and School Leaders: Join Project 24!
As part of its Digital Learning Day celebration, the Alliance announced “Project 24,” a ground-breaking new initiative to help school districts plan for and effectively use technology and digital learning. Already, nearly 1,500 individuals are signed up to take the MOOC-Ed and more than 1,000 individuals from districts large and small, across forty-seven states and the District of Columbia, are utilizing the Project 24 tools and resources. Encourage your district to sign up for Project 24 today!
See what educators are talking about in these digital learning blog posts. The following blog post comes from Michael J. Martirano, superintendent of St. Mary’s County Public Schools in Leonardtown, Maryland. Dr. Martirano discusses globalized era skills for students. Here’s a snippet:
In most states in America, great reform efforts are underway to adopt and implement Common Core State Standards in both English/Language Arts and Mathematics. These national educational standards establish, at the basic level, a set of shared goals and expectations for what students should understand and be able to do in grades K-12 in order to be prepared for success in college and the workforce.
In theory, the common standards are expected to help ensure that students are receiving an equally rigorous, high quality education consistent from school to school and from state to state. This expectation has created a firestorm of work around writing local curriculum and retraining the teaching workforce through targeted and intentional professional development. All and all, this reform is a noble and valiant attempt to increase rigor and better prepare students for the world of work in a globalized era. Read the entire blog post.
Would you like to be a guest blogger? If so, contact Rachel Jones.
Digital Learning Day 2013 was a huge success! Although it is only a one-day celebration, the Alliance believes digital learning should occur every day for every student and encourages your district, schools, teachers, parents, students, colleagues, and friends to try something new and engage in the power of digital learning. Here are some ideas of what you can do:
- Enroll in the FREE MOOC-Ed course that begins April 8, 2013.
- Try a new lesson in English language arts, science, math, or social studies—from Digital DNA to media propaganda.
- Explore the digital learning toolkits with resources and ideas for teachers in specific subject areas.
- Learn more about exemplary model schools highlighted on Digital Learning Day.
- Encourage your district to sign up for Project 24 today so that your district’s planning efforts include digital learning.
“Michigan District Prepares Students for Tech-Driven World” Observer and Eccentric newspapers (Livonia, MI)
Michigan’s Plymouth-Canton Community Schools district is using a recently approved $114.4 million bond, in part, to invest in the school technology necessary to implement online testing requirements being implemented in the 2014–15 school year. Among other things, the district will purchase digital devices for all students and make improvements to district labs for science, technology, engineering and math to prepare students for technology-driven jobs of the twenty-first century. “This is the way of the future, it’s the nature of the global world,” said John Barrett, school board president.
More Youth Use Smartphones as Route to Web Education Week
Keep computers in a common area so you can monitor what your kids are doing. It’s a longstanding directive for online safety—but one that’s quickly becoming moot as more young people have mobile devices, often with Internet access. A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that 78 percent of young people, ages 12 to 17, now have cellphones. Nearly half of those are smartphones, a share that’s increasing steadily—and that’s having a big effect on how, and where, many young people are accessing the Web. The survey, released Wednesday, finds that one in four young people say they are “cell-mostly” internet users, a percentage that increases to about half when the phone is a smartphone. In comparison, just 15 percent of adults said they access the internet mostly by cellphone.
