Trevor+Day+School



=__Team Members__= =__Team Project__=
 * Steve Schechter - Team Leader, Director of Information Technology
 * Stan Golanka - PLP Fellow, Educational Technologist
 * Karen Johnson - Grade 3 Teacher
 * Eric Soloff - Grade 2 Teacher
 * Nina Rosenblatt - High School History Teacher
 * Hari Moonga - High School Chemistry Teacher
 * Sarah Venkatesh - Upper School Video Arts Teacher

Please comment on our project! Click the "Discussion" tab above, and leave your comment. All feedback is appreciated.

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A video overview from the third month of our project (updated 4/15):
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Background
Trevor Day is an N-12 school that has had a laptop program for 15 years. Our teachers are encouraged and supported in their use of technology to enhance skills and curriculum; and, while technology use varies from teacher to teacher, many of us, including many PLP members, have already used wikis, blogs, student-created youTube videos, and other web 2.0 tools in our teaching. We saw our challenge, therefore, in terms of looking more deeply at the way that Powerful Learning Practices could be used to deepen our present use of technology in relation to our curriculum goals and school values. Thus, as we assessed our current practices within the structure of the enGauge 21st Century skills, we began to consider how the enGauge skills could be used to reinforce and strengthen our curricular aims to move towards Education for Sustainability (EfS), as developed and supported by the Cloud Institute. The happy coincidence of these two initiatives presented an ideal opportunity and an obvious problem to address in our PLP project: how do we extend our school’s mission, based on experiential learning and the fostering community values to create 21st century educators and learners?

=__Project Description__=

**Opportunities**
"The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."- Alvin Toffler

"In this digital age, intellectual capital drives progress, so political, social, and economic advances in the 21st century will be possible only if the intellectual potential of America's youth is well developed. To accomplish this, we must meet the changing learning needs of all students."-The Metiri Group

• We live in an increasingly complex, globalized, and multimedia saturated world driven by innovative ideas, knowledge, and technologies. Literacy has new meaning in this rapidly changing environment. Reading, writing, comprehension of basic mathematical concepts and mastery of core academic subjects are essential, but no longer sufficient. Information and communications technologies have transformed the world, making digital and media literacy imperative for navigating the challenges of the 21st century. How will we foster a new vision of teaching and learning - one in which knowledge and skills are applied to real world issues - to help students take advantage of the opportunities of the future?

"Sustainability is a dynamic condition which requires a basic understanding of the interconnections and interdependency among ecological, economic and social systems. Sustainability means providing a rich quality of life for all, and accomplishing this within the means of nature." - Jaimie P. Cloud, Cloud Institute

• Education for Sustainability (EfS) is a dynamic system of core content, competencies and habits of mind coupled with a pedagogical system that is learner centered and inquiry based. How will we help students learn to analyze, synthesize and transfer knowledge across multiple fields, collaborate with others and learn from their perspectives, and arrive at new understandings and behaviors that support a sustainable future?

• How can we create a learning environment that promotes the development of 21st Century Skills in support of Education for Sustainability?

**Year One**

 * Create a compelling Professional Development platform within our Moodle learning management system that allows the PLP team members to:
 * View select course lessons and activities through the lens of 21st Century Skills and Education for Sustainability
 * Perform a strengths assessment of our lessons and activities and determine if they support 21st Century Skills and Education for Sustainability
 * Review and comment on lessons and activities posted within this platform by Trevor PLP peers
 * Revise lessons and activities as necessary and/or create new lessons which meet the 21st Century Skills and Education for Sustainability criteria

**Year Two**

 * Employ Professional Development platform to model course lessons and activities for full Trevor faculty:
 * PLP team will do a strengths assessment of Moodle based courses created by Trevor faculty members and identify lessons and activities that support 21st Century Skills and Education for Sustainability
 * In an effort to create faculty buy-in, select lessons which meet our criteria will be used to demonstrate to faculty that, in many respects, they have already aligned coursework with EfS standards and 21st century skills
 * Modify and scale the professional development model so it can be easily used by faculty to evaluate lessons within the framework of the EfS standards and 21st century skills and assist teachers in creating new coursework that meets the criteria.
 * PLP team will assess the impact of the professional development platform by evaluating the progress of the faculty as they further align curriculum with EfS standards and help students develop 21st century skills.

**eLearning/Web 2.0 Tools**

 * The Professional Development platform within Moodle revolves around a grid (see image below) designed to graphically display lessons across two dimensions. The lesson titles and images are positioned vertically by grade level - from lower to upper. The lessons are organized horizontally under the nine EfS Standards and the associated enGauge 21st Century Skills are referenced by letters below the images that link to definitions of the skills. Visually organizing the EfS Standards and associated enGauge 21st Century Skills made it easier for team members to identify and classify their lessons in accordance with the standards and skills. Various Moodle and Web 2.0 tools are utilized within the lessons selected by team members for display in the grid. Clicking on an image within the grid will transport the viewer to the actual lesson content which resides within our Moodle application.


 * At the end of the school year the lessons selected for the grid will be archived. In year two, the grid will be repopulated with applicable lessons created by the faculty at large. In this way, the grid will be a sustainable professional development tool and provide a graphical history of our progress over the years to come.


 * Although the grid will be highly valuable for modeling and training purposes, assessment and classification of all coursework for the entire faculty within the grid would not be manageable. We will utilize our curriculum mapping software – Curriculum Connector – for this purpose. Although it would be a textual rather than graphic display of content and standards, it is well suited for scalability of our project.

Resources

 * [[file:EfS Standards and Performance Indicators.pdf]]
 * [[file:Metiri-NCREL21stSkills.pdf]]

Project
Screen Print of The Grid...click it to visit the "real" one (Trevor Day School Login Required): The Grid (Trevor Day School login required)

Comments
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Our website: Trevor