21st Century Topics & Articles

Table of Contents
Preparing Kids for a Connected World Social & Emotional Intelligence Engaging Students Critical Thinking Skills - Questioning Techniques Challenge Based Learning - Teacher Guide Framing Projects with a Challenge | Crafting a Challenge Teachers as Learning Designers: Design Thinking The Culture of Overachievement | Overscheduled Kids The Value of Struggle & Rigor STEM to STEAM Model Classroom | Digital Toolkit Technology Integration

Preparing Kids for a Connected World

Article: How Can Teachers Prepare Kids for a Connected World?
Source: MIndShift KQED Description: Educators are always striving to find ways to make curriculum relevant in students everyday lives. More and more teachers are using social media around lessons, allowing students to use their cell phones to do research and participate in class, and developing theircurriculum around projects to ground learning around an activity. These strategies are all part of a larger goal to help students connect to social and cultural spaces. And its part of what defines participatory learning, coined by University of Southern California Annenberg Professor Henry Jenkins, who published his first article on the topic Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture, in 2006.

Article: Fun Failure: How to Make Learning Irresistible

Source: MIndShift KQED Description: Failure is a positive act of creativity, Katie Salen said. Scientists, artists, engineers, and even entrepreneurs know this as adults. But in schools, the notion of failure is complicated. Salen, executive director of the Institute of Play and founder of Quest to Learn, the first public school based on the principles of game design in the U.S., explained how failure can be a motivating agent for learning in her presentation at SXSW. Any practice athletic, artistic, even social involves repeatedly failing till one gets the experience or activity right. We need to keep the challenge constant so players are able to fail and try again, she said. Its hard and it leads to something rewarding. Game designer Jane McGonigal makes a similar point. She dedicates an entire chapter in her bookReality Is Broken to fun failure and why it makes us happy. When were playing a well-designed game, failure doesnt disappoint us. It makes us

happy in a very particular way; excited, interested, and most of all optimistic, Salen said. Fun failure even makes us more resilient, which keeps us emotionally safe.

Article: Why Learning Should Be Messy

Source: MIndShift KQED Description: An excerpt of One Size Does Not Fit All: A Students Assessment of School, by 17-year-old Nikhil Goyal, a senior at Syosset High School in Woodbury, New York. Can creativity be taught? Absolutely. The real question is: How do we teach it? In school, instead of crossing subjects and classes, we teach them in a very rigid manner. Very rarely do you witness math and science teachers or English and history teachers collaborating with each other. Sticking in your silo, shell, and expertise is comfortable. Well, its time to crack that shell. Its time to abolish silos and subjects. Joichi Ito, director of the M.I.T. Media Lab, told me that rather than interdisciplinary education, which merges two or more disciplines, we need anti-disciplinary education, a term coined by Sandy Pentland, head of the labs Human Dynamics group. Todays problems from global poverty to climate change to the obesity epidemic are more interconnected and intertwined than ever before and they cant possibly be solved in the academic or research silos of the twentieth century, writes Frank Moss, the former head of the M.I.T. Media Lab. Schools cannot just simply add a creativity hour and call it a day. Principal at High Tech High, an innovative, project-based learning school in San Diego, California, Larry Rosenstock, points out, If you were to hike the Appalachian trail, which would take you months and months, and you reflect upon it, you do not divide the experience into the historic, scientific, mathematical, and English aspects of it. You would look at it holistically.

Article: Got a Problem? Students Can Find the Solution

Source: MIndShift KQED Description: Schools are the perfect breeding ground for fostering students questions, a place to spark students interests and ideas for designing innovative solutions to real problems. Everyday, educators have opportunities to help kids develop the tools, skills and habits to come up with meaningful, lasting solutions to problems. Take, for example, an incident that occurred in a first-grade teachers classroom at Marin Country Day School in Northern California, which provided an opportunity to understand design thinking. More about Design Thinking? See (video) 60 Minutes interview with David Kelly, founder of IDEO.

Social & Emotional Intelligence

Article: Empathy: The Key to Social and Emotional Learning
Source: MIndShift KQED Description: Educators are aware that social problems like poverty, unsafe neighborhoods, violence, and family trauma can affect how students learn when they come to school. Though teaching subjects like math and literacy are the biggest part of their job, in many cases theyre

also called on to attend to their students emotional health as well, incorporating social and emotional skills. Related: How Parents and Schools Can Help Build Kids Emotional Strength Radio Podcast (55 min KQED Forum): Teaching Social and Emotional Learning

Engaging Students Critical Thinking Skills - Questioning Techniques

Article: Why the Question is More Important Than the Answer Teaching students to ask thier own questions
Source: MIndShift KQED Description: In a traditional classroom, the teacher is the center of attention, the owner of knowledge and information. Teachers often ask questions of their students to gauge comprehension, but its a passive model that relies on students to absorb information they need to reproduce on tests. What would happen if the roles were flipped and students asked the questions? BUT, How do you teach students to ask their own questions?

Resource: The Right Question Institute Educator Resource

Source: The Right Question Institute Description: The Right Question Institute (RQI) is a non-profit educational organization offering what many people consider to be the simplest, most powerful strategy available for helping people in low and moderate-income communities learn to advocate for themselves, participate in decisions that affect them and partner with service-providers and public officials. RQIs innovative methods are delivered through educational, health care, social service, communitybased organizations and public agencies all over the country and beyond.

Article: Got a Problem? Students Can Find the Solution

Source: MIndShift KQED Description: Schools are the perfect breeding ground for fostering students questions, a place to spark students interests and ideas for designing innovative solutions to real problems. Everyday, educators have opportunities to help kids develop the tools, skills and habits to come up with meaningful, lasting solutions to problems.

Example Lesson: Recycling as a Focus for Project Based Learning Source: NYTimes Learning Network Description: This is the third post in a series in which the education writer Suzie Boss suggests ways to use The New York Times Fixes blog and other resources as inspiration for designing real-world projects for schools. This Lesson challenges students to lead the way in recycling at their school, home and community.

Challenge Based Learning - Teacher Guide

File: Challenge Based Learning - Classroom Guide
Source: www.ChallengeBasedLearning.org Description: CBL is an engaging multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning that encourages learners to leverage the technology they use in their daily lives to solve real-world problems. Challenge Based Learning website is collaborative and hands-on, asking students to work with peers, teachers, and experts in their communities and around the world to ask good questions, develop deep subject area knowledge, identify and solve challenges, take action, and share their experience.

Article: Whats the best Way to Practice Project Based Learning?

Source: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/ Description: Project Based Learning can mean different things to different people, and can be practiced in a variety of ways. For educators who want to dive in, the good news is that a rich trove of resources are available. In order to create your own definition and practice, here are some parameters to consider.

Article: How to Turn Your Classroom into an Idea Factory | Generating Ideas
Source: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/ Description: How can we prepare todays students to become tomorrows innovators? If were serious about preparing students to become innovators, educators have some hard work ahead. Getting students ready to tackle tomorrows challenges means helping them develop a new set of skills and fresh ways of thinking that they wont acquire through textbook-driven instruction. Students need opportunities to practice these skills on right-sized projects, with supports in place to scaffold learning. They need to persist and learn from setbacks. Thats how theyll develop the confidence to tackle difficult problems.

Framing Projects with a Challenge | Crafting a Challenge

Article: Big Idea | Essential Questions | Crafting the Challenge
Source: Contributed by Brian Burnett, based on Challange Based Learning Classroom Guide Description: Framing "The Challenge" for your students can be a challenge in itself. This guide provides a 3-Step process to help you and your students to work together to learn about compelling issues, propose solutions to real problems, and take action.

Teachers as Learning Designers: Design Thinking

Article: Teacher as Learning Designer

by Andrew Miller

Source: Huffington Post Description: We should start to see ourselves as designers. The term "teaching" holds cultural images and schema that many us quickly tap into. I encourage anyone to google "teaching" or "teacher" and see the majority of images that pop up. You will most like see an individual at the front of the room, pointing to something on a board while talking to students. We know it isn't like that all the time, and we also know this doesn't work for our students. Many teachers have been pushed into a role where they are not being utilized for their expertise and skills. Through highly standardized curricula and pacing guides, teachers are told exactly how to teach, rather than being empowered to differentiate instruction and create engaging learning environments to meet the needs of their students. How do we not only clarify what teachers can and should do in the classroom and re-frame this conversation on the role and expertise of a teacher?

File: Design Thinking Toolkit | Bootleg Bootcamp

Source: The d.school (institute of Design at Stanford) Description: Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result. This toolkit supports a design thinking practice and is a guide to help you employ these methods and tools in project based learning.

Video: Design Thinking | 60 Minutes Interview with David Kelly, founder of IDEO
Source: 60 Minutes Description: Design Thinking at work: How design breakthrough inventions. Global firm IDEO incorporates human behavior into product design -- an innovative approach being taught at Stanford. Charlie Rose profiles the company's founder, David Kelley.

File: Design Thinking for Educators (Toolkit Ver 2.0)

Source: www.DesignThinkingForEducators.com/ Description: Design Thinking is a mindset. Design Thinking is the confidence that everyone can be part of creating a more desirable future, and a process to take action when faced with a difficult challenge. That kind of optimism is well needed in education. The Design Thinking Toolkit for Educators contains the process and methods of design, adapted specifically for the context of K-12 education. It offers new ways to be intentional and collaborative when

designing, and empowers educators to create impactful solutions. Produced by IDEO in partnership with Riverdale Country School. IDEO uses similar processes, methods and tools for years in tackling some dauntingly complex challenges.

The Culture of Overachievement | Overscheduled Kids

Podcast: Overachieving Kids
Source: WAMU - The Kiojo MNamdi Show (American University, Washington DC) Description: It's something of a cliche that kids today are overscheduled, grade-obsessed and under enormous pressure to land at the right school. Anxiety and depression are soaring among kids, including high achievers who believe they're only as good as their last success. We ask two experts how parents can rethink priorities and raise happy, well-adjusted kids. Expert Guests: Judith Warner: Columnist for Time.com; author, Weve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the age of Medication, and Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety Madeline Levine: Psychologist; Author, "The Price of Privilege" and "Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success"

The Value of Struggle

Podcast: Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning
Source: NPR - Morning Edition Description: Americans tend to see struggle as a sign of low ability. Asian cultures see it as an opportunity. Jim Stigler, a professor of psychology at UCLA, studies teaching and learning around the world, looking how differently East and West approach the experience of intellectual struggle.

Book: HOW CHILDREN SUCCEED - Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character
by Paul Tough

Source: NYTimes Book Review Description: According to Paulk Tough, for one to succeed, character trumps cognitive skills. In his new book, How Children Succeed, Tough sets out to replace this assumption with what might be called the character hypothesis: the notion that noncognitive skills, like persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence, are more crucial than sheer brainpower to achieving success.

STEM to STEAM
Article: Use Arts Integration to Enhance Common Core
Source: www.Edutopia.org Description: Integration requires collaboration, research, intentional alignment and practical application on behalf of the teachers who take on this challenge. From the students, integration demands creativity, problem-solving, perseverance, collaboration and the ability to work through the rigorous demands of multiple ideas and concepts woven together to create a final product. Integration is not simply combining two or more contents together. It is an approach to teaching which includes intentional identification of naturally aligned standards, taught authentically alongside meaningful assessments which take both content areas to a whole new level. Put together, these components set the foundation for how we will be able to facilitate the Common Core State Standards.

Article: STEAM Education Gains Momentum in Schools

Source: eSchoolNews.com Description: Design is increasingly becoming a key differentiator for technology startups and products, the website states, and art and design provide real solutions for our everyday lives, distinguish American products in a global marketplace, and create opportunity for economic growth. Integrating the arts into STEM education encourages students to develop critical thinking skills and innovative approaches to problem-solving, advocates saywhile enhancing creative thinking and student engagement."

More Information: STEM to STEAM

Source: http://stemtosteam.org/ Description: The STEM to STEAM initiative, championed by RISD President John Maeda, is supported by teachers, researchers, policy makers, students, and businesspeople from RISD and beyond. Innovation remains tightly coupled with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math the STEM subjects. Art + Design are poised to transform our economy in the 21st century just as Science and Technology did in the last century. We need to add Art + Design to the equation.

Model Classroom | Digital Toolkit

Google Doc: Ultimate Educator Toolkit
Source: Model Classroom team and the community of educators around the country Description: The Ultimate Educator Toolkit is an organic list of digital tools, Educational Games, and Educational Resources. Tools and games can be sorted by purpose, tool name, or description. All feedback, additions, modifications, alerts are welcome here. All these come from you and the community of educators around the country. It's a public document that can be shared with students and colleagues.

Technology Integration
Article: Using Digital Media to Enhance Educational Transfer
Source: http://SMARTblogs.com/Education Description: one of the best ways to promote transfer is to balance students cognitive load while they consume or create multimedia. In todays digitally enhanced world, we often ask students to create or consume something rooted in multimedia. This allows our students to experience many different versions of the same idea. However, how often do we consider which specific multimedia designs actually balance cognitive load and promote long lasting learning and transfer?

Resource: Technology Integration Matrix tool (TIM)

Source: Arizona K-12 Center The Arizona K12 Center serves as a vital hub connecting Arizona's educators with the most current best practices in professional development. With the practitioner standing at the intersection of theory and practice, the Arizona K12 Center develops and facilitates leading professional development solutions for our classrooms today.
Related Edudemic Article: http://edudemic.com/2012/12/correctly-integrating-technology/

Description: The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, collaborative, constructive, authentic, and goal directed (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. Together, the five levels of technology integration and the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments create a matrix of 25 cells.
Florida Center for Instructional Technology version of TIM: http://fcit.usf.edu/matrix/matrix.php

SlideShare: Transformative Technology Integration in Classrooms

Source: SETDA - State Educational Technology Directors Association (http://www.setda.org/ Presentation by Dr. Joan E. Hughes on November 8, 2010 for SETDA - State Educational Technology Directors Association (http://www.setda.org/). This was a 10 minute talk to get a working group started on the topic "Helping Educators Transform Their Practice."