Collaborating and Sharing the 7C's of 21st Century Learning ... the Ever Evolving Project!

The project that I am exploring with Genna Rodriguez as you may know (or don't) is a framework for  technology integration within the Regina Catholic School Division.  One significant aspect of the project is creating a scope and sequence for each of the Essential Skills of 21st Century Learning (7C's) in addition to creating a website that will demonstrate what the 7C's "look in action". On the website, we will also include the skills and knowledge identified in the essential learning, as well as digital tools and resources to support the learning in the classroom. Last week Genna and I composed our first Scope and Sequence for Collaboration. Although I know that Genna posted the same information, so this might be somewhat redundant, I am going to post anyways to help track our learning journey.

The following are our Essential Questions and what students and teachers need to know about Collaboration. 

Essential Questions Are students able to work together to reach a goal, drawing from the talents and expertise within the group? Do students demonstrate fluid proficiency in working collaboratively both offline & online?

Knowledge Understand how to collaborate and work in multiple ways from face to face to online. Student reflect on their own strengths and what they have to offer in a collaborative environment. Ability to critically assess and reflect on their roles, responsibilities and collaborative process face to face and online. Understand the creative process through collaboration.

These are the skills that students will develop from Kindergarten to grade 12. We decided to go with a slightly different grade groupings, than the Digital Citizenship Continuum. Honestly, it was to make the task of creating a Scope and Sequence for K - 12 for 6 other Essential Skills (being that Digital Citizenship is already completed), a little less taxing. However, feedback regarding this decision is appreciated!

Elementary K-3 Knowledge & Skills	Middle Years 4-8 Knowledge & Skills	High School 9-12 Knowledge & Skills
-Students will be able to work together and generate ideas.  -Students need to be able to understand the importance and difference of roles and responsibilities within a team. Students may be assigned different roles and responsibilities within a teacher created online platform ie: blog. -Students demonstrate respect for one another and that sometimes everyone contributes in different ways towards a goal. -Students reflect on their individual contributions towards the group's goal. -Students brainstorm and generate ideas, encouraging all group members to have input. Ideas can be captured digitally or in traditional forms. (ie: Padlet, O365, Pixie app). Set up a plan for action in reaching goal guided by teacher. -Students understand different ways that groups may work together and how different cultures work together.	-Students will be able to generate ideas while working together face to face and transfer to a teacher defined on-line space. (O365 Group or doc or a teacher created class blog).  -Students need to be able to understand the importance and difference of roles and responsibilities within a team. Students need to demonstrate different roles and responsibilities and effectively participate in an online teacher created collaborative space  ie: blog or O365 Group. -Students demonstrate ethical behaviour and digital etiquette when engaging in the online space with guidance from their teacher. -Students engage in a teacher guided self-reflection on  individual contributions towards the group's goal and the differences between face to face and online. Students start examining ways to improve collaboration in a variety of spaces. -Students will explore how to generate ideas collaboratively, ensuring all group members have input in a digital platform to exchange and build upon ideas.  Students will create a plan for action in sequential steps.  -Students understand different ways that groups may work together and how digital inequity may play a role in how different cultures and groups work together.	-Students will be able to generate ideas while working together face to face and on a student defined on-line platform that suits the needs of the project. -Students demonstrate and understand different  roles and responsibilities within a team. Students understand their capacity to fulfill the roles and responsibilities in a student created collaborative space.  ie: blog or O365 Group. -Students demonstrate ethical behaviour and digital etiquette when engaging in the online space as well as manage conflict independently. -Students reflect on their individual and collective contributions towards the group's goal  and differences between face to face and online. Basically how well they work together as a team. Identify areas for improvement in moving forward in future projects. -Students will explore how to generate ideas collaboratively, ensuring all group members have input in a digital platform to exchange and build upon ideas.  As a group, students will independently create a detailed plan for action in sequential steps and report individual progress towards the collaborative goal in a digital platform.  (ie: O365 Groups, OneNote Notebook, Blog, microblogging/social media, texting group). -Students understand different ways that groups may work together and how digital inequity may play a role in ease of digital access and how to accommodate and support those who encounter barriers to access.

* Note the areas that are highlighted in yellow we need to further explore. Feel free to pass along any suggestions! 

We also found that the course readings were fantastic resources for our project as the focus was on developing digital and media literacies for students as life long learners, and readying them for the changes in our future workplaces. As part of the introduction to our webpage, I think it would be beneficial to include the NCTE Framework in why educators need to examine these new and emerging literacies. What I love about this resource is the connection to how literacy is evolving and including more than traditional understandings of  reading, writing, listening, speaking and representing. We will most definitely be incorporating some of the questions from this resource into our project. What I really really appreciate about the NCTE Framework is that there is a potential for us to adapt and adopt some of the questions into our scope and sequence. 

The NCTE definition of 21st century literacies  demonstrates this evolution of literacy and what that looks like in the classroom. The following will be adapted in our introduction page.

Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the 21st century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities, and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Active, successful participants in this 21st century global society must be able to:

• Develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology;
• Build intentional cross-cultural connections and relationships with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought;
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes;
• Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information;
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts;
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments.

In addition to creating the scope and sequence, we have been facilitating professional development sessions to go with our project. As teachers who work in Educational Technology, we are fortunate that this is within the scope of what we do in helping teachers integrate digital tools into curriculum and pedagogy. So this week we had a group of 15 teachers take part in a Teaching with Technology session. The purpose of the professional development was to provide time for teachers to learn about effective technology integration in the classroom and what truly makes a difference on learning. It should be noted that our division has been hosting these sessions for a couple years, so this is a continuation of what has been previously developed. To ensure that this professional development connects with the Essential Skills of 21st Learning (7C's) we changed our resources to reflect this philosophy. The following is an overview of the goals for the session: 

1. Explore the Project Overview, the Essential Skills of 21st Century Learning, as well as, the Nine Effective Teaching Strategies identified that make a difference in student learning,
2. Explore how to create an  environment for learning, and the role of digital tools in leveraging these opportunities.
3. Explore strategies for helping students develop understanding - instructional strategies and the digital tools which will help further understanding and skills.
4. Strategies for helping students extend and apply knowledge.
5. Finally, give the teacher opportunities to identify an area they would like to improve in their classroom (from the Nine Effective Teaching strategies), identify the Essential Skills to be explored,  as well as, the Digital Citizenship understandings that should be explored within the context of the project. 
6. In creating a community for teachers to share their project goals and how they will need support, we created an Office 365 Group. This provides a community where teachers can share ideas and questions. (Sound familiar?? )
7. In about one month, the teachers will self evaluate their project's progress and how the technology they are integrating is meeting their needs using a Digital Tool Assessment Checklist that we created (see image from our presentation). This rubric was based on the SECTIONS Model created by the University of British Columbia for Assessing Technology Integration. We had to adapt the rubric, as it did not reflect the needs of teachers in a K - 12 setting or the infrastructure in our school division.

We recognize the fact that our jobs are a little different than most teaching assignments, therefore our project focus is on improving digital fluencies for teachers and students in our school division. We are quite fortunate to be able to work with teachers who are willing and see the benefit to attending PD like the Teaching with Technology session. It is those teachers and their students who drive us to find ways to make technology integration more meaningful.