Beyond the Textbook - Discovery Learning and Texas ASCD @ Region 11 Education Service Center, Ft. Worth, TX Jan. 21, 2011 - Dr. Carol Wetzel

21st Century Skills - Promoting Creativity and Innovation in the Classroom - Dr. Carol Wetzel
with Carol Ann McGuire

Fierce Conversations: 
The Fierce Blog
Fierce Conversations - Book Notes
1.  What is the challenge?  Creating 21st Century Learning Ecosystems
What is 21st Century Learning (Partnership of 21st Century Learning videos)?  Observable, Measurable Indicators:
Upgraded curriculum and instructional best practices, P21, Global Cultures Learning/Collaborations
2.  What's at stake? Our students, our kids
3.  The ideal outcome? Carol Ann McGuire 
Shanghai TV University   -
China educates 23% of population, but planning for 100%.  They one education system, not individual systems like the US. 


It's not about money, it's about innovation of what we already have (technology, teaching practices, creativity, collaboration, problem solving). Incorporating more Fine Arts into our curriculum.   

4.  Relevant background information - What are we doing in the United States that is a model of 21st Century Learning Ecosystem?
ThinkQuest:   
SARS - An Open Scar thinkquest
Challenge-based/problem-based/project-based Learning:  Students collaborating with one another and students around the world, teams creating a website for their peers.  Using technology, inquiry-based learning, making the world a global village. 
How can we do this? Implementing Problem-based learning, using the Thinkquest model of collaborations of students in different campus classrooms and district schools, 

New Tech High -


5.  What have we done up to this point - 


6.  What can we do to meet the challenge - sharing the vision, modeling "the way," take a top-down approach to PL with all stakeholders, educate parents with 21st Century nights (stations manned by students demonstrating how they are learning 21st century skills), teacher PL, model lesson demonstrations for teachers (they are not pulled out of classrooms for PL), classroom management of digital teaching modeling, videotaping of teaching (teachers view one another as they teach digitally) and put these on the Cisco Video Portal.