10 Considerations for a Digital Curriculum...

10 Points To Consider When Transforming Toward Digital Curriculum

1. A digital curriculum requires schools to be equipped with the necessary infrastructure and technology to deliver true digital content.

2. A digital curriculum is much more than a textbook delivered electronically and disseminated through a Xerox job of thousands of copied PDF files.

3. A digital curriculum requires that thought be given to student access not just at school but in student homes and the general community.

4. A digital curriculum requires sustained professional development that allows teachers to learn, collaborate and plan outside of the traditional textbook box.

5. A digital curriculum should contain a wide variety of resources and content allowing the teacher to plan engaging learning activities.

6. A digital curriculum must open up the doors to not just student consumption of content but to student production.

7. A digital curriculum should open up the classroom walls and allow for collaboration between classrooms, communities, and cultures.

8. A digital curriculum must allow for nonlinear learning, differentiated instruction, backward/inverted teaching, as well as instructional components and ongoing assessment that will bring productivity to the classroom.

9. A digital curriculum must allow for incorporation of innovative instruction such as STEM, PBL, and NETS technology standards.

10. A digital curriculum must allow students to be at the center of their education with the teacher actively facilitating and orchestrating real student learning. 

 Read on here.

A fun game: Try replacing “digital curriculum” with other phrases in each point above.  Try

• Montessori Learning Environment
• Engaging Learning Environment
• Any curriculum worth its salt

Bright Girls v. Bright Boys

"Bright Girls were much quicker to doubt their ability, to lose confidence and to become less effective learners as a result....Researchers have uncovered the reason for this difference in how difficulty is interpreted, and it is simply this: More often than not, Bright Girls believe that their abilities are innate and unchangeable, while bright boys believe that they can develop ability through effort and practice."

This all starts from quite a young age and relates to how we praise or correct behavior differently in boys and girls.  Interesting?  Read more or buy this book.

Sleep more. Seriously, do that.

More from Po Bronson...

'A' students average 15 more minutes sleep than 'B' students, who average 15 more minutes sleep than 'C' students, and so on. Every 15 minutes can count. 

The sleepy sixth graders were testing out like the fourth graders,...a loss of even three nights of sleep for a half hour each night was equal to the difference between a fourth grader and a sixth grader on the sort of subcomponent IQ tests.

Listen now (NPR's Fresh Air) 

Do students know the brain is a muscle?

Excerpt from NurtureShock by Po Bronson:

Life Sciences is a health-science magnet school with high aspirations but 700 students whose main attributes are being predominantly minority and low achieving. Blackwell split her kids into two groups for an eight-session workshop. The control group was taught study skills, and the others got study skills and a special module on how intelligence is not innate. These students took turns reading aloud an essay on how the brain grows new neurons when challenged. They saw slides of the brain and acted out skits.  After the module was concluded, Blackwell tracked her students' grades to see if it had any effect. 

It didn't take long. The teachers who hadn't known which students had been assigned to which workshop could pick out the students who had been taught that intelligence can be developed. They improved their study habits and grades. In a single semester, Blackwell reversed the students' longtime trend of decreasing math grades. 

The only difference between the control group and the test group were two lessons, a total of 50 minutes spent teaching not math but a single idea: that the brain is a muscle. Giving it a harder workout makes you smarter. That alone improved their math scores.

Read on.  I want to buy this book now!

Be an expert parent of a teenager...

In terms of preparation for parenting (!) these wonderful young people, I’m not sure there is any!  I’ve found my Montessori 3-6 training most helpful in that regard and truthfully, that’s why I took the training 13 years ago.   There are some very good books on adolescent development that aren’t by Montessori (gasp).  

One of my favorites is Why Do They Act That Way, by David Walsh (it’s not just because we both went the same university; I got a BA, he got a PhD.  Alas).  His organization, The National Institute on Media recently was absorbed by the Search Institute.  The better site for their related resources for parents is ParentFurther.com.  It’s full of rich content. 

Want to cut to the chase?  Here are the identified 40 Developmental Assets for Adolescents AND how to take action around each of them.  It’s concise and based on research!

This post is brought to you by the letter 'i'.

"Where will all those innovators come from? Currently, we are chasing testable competency in academic core skills. It is quite a different thing to try to educate future innovators. We don’t test for that."

Many have argued, just this point: that the great innovators have often come about despite their experience in school rather than because of it.

Take a look at this article about The Five 'i's of Education...Imagination, Inquiry, Invention, Implementation, and Initiative. (Don't they all sound so good!)