Curriculum Building
Elkhart has begun transitioning to digital age teaching and learning through a myriad of ways. First, Elkhart has begun piloting 85 carts of chromebooks in secondary classrooms. Secondly, Elkhart teachers have begun to use Canvas as our learning management system proving them and their students the platform to engage with a digital curriculum. Third, 250 teachers have gone through a four week instructional boot camp to open their eyes to 21st century pedagogy. One of the most important parts in the district’s plan for a digital curriculum is the work that the instructional cycle committees are doing. These subject based groups are working diligently to align standards, research and development curriculum and provide a k-12 scope and sequence that will be the foundation for our students educational journey. Lastly, the district's technology integration team has facilitated dozens of professional development workshops for individual buildings, teachers and administrators on SAMR, Google basics, Canvas, digital media creation, digital literacy, coding and iPad basics.
The district's first pilot with a 1:1 environment has come in the form of 85 chromebook carts distributed across our middles schools and two high schools. The teachers that received these carts participated in a year long professional development course hosted inside Canvas, our learning management system. As students of this course teachers read articles, watched TedX videos, participated in online discussions around digital citizenship and read the book PowerUP. To graduate from this course and receive a chromebook cart teachers had to submit their own course in Canvas that demonstrated an understanding of how they were going to move their curriculum into the 21st Century.
Teachers across the district have started to use Canvas as their central hub for learning. As teachers have seen the impact digital curriculum has had in our 1:1 classrooms, they have been eager to make the transition for themselves. This excitement has led hundreds of more teachers to create Canvas courses for their students even though they don’t have class sets student devices in their classrooms.
Our district goal is to provide students and teachers the 1:1 technology and professional development to change how students and teachers are engaging with curriculum. As the district moves forward with this vision two essential components must happen in perfect sequence. The first is providing the professional development for teachers and the other is providing the devices to students. Our current model for providing these two components places professional development at the center and rewards teachers for the time and effort by providing their classrooms with devices. Teachers participate in professional development in three different phases prior to receiving a full set of devices for their classroom. Phase I provides teachers with a device after agreeing to participate in the training that covers SAMR, Google Apps for Education, Canvas and Digital Citizenship. These professional development opportunities are taught in a blended learning environment by the district's instructional technology team and include six hours of in person training. At the conclusion of Phase I teachers are able to:
- Reflect on lessons that incorporate technology using the SAMR framework
- Use Google Drive to encourage collaboration among students and faculty
- Design lessons that allow students to capitalize on the use of Google Docs, Slides, and Canvas
- Leverage Canvas to organize materials and assignments, give online quizzes, moderate online discussions and collect digital artifacts from students
After completing Phase I teachers are eligible to start the professional development offerings that will lead them to receive 10 devices for their classrooms. This training includes deeper discussions on SAMR, lesson planning with technology, new online instructional tools and apps to use to facilitate transformational learning. In the culminating event in Phase II teachers design two lessons/units that transform learning through the use of devices as an instructional tool. After completing Phase II teachers receive ten devices to implement the lessons they created during this phase. At the conclusion of Phase II teachers are able to:
- Reflect on lessons that incorporate technology using the SAMR framework
- Design lessons where students use a variety of digital creation tools to demonstrate their
- Produce two lessons/units that incorporate technology in meaningful ways
- Constructively collaborate to provide feedback to each other about the lessons they create
Teachers wishing to complete the device cart enter Phase III of the district's 1:1 professional development course. Teachers record their lesson utilizing the devices and upload it to Canvas for teachers within the 1:1 cohort to view. A final day professional development will allow for self reflection and group discussions about how to improve these lessons moving forward. The culminating event for phase III will ask teachers to share their experience with others in the district in one of three ways:
- A Blog Post
- A Building Level Presentation
- A Video Blog
Once this culminating activity has been completed the teacher’s classroom will receive a cart and the additional devices needed to provide a classroom set for their students.
The final and most important part of Elkhart’s vision for 21st century curriculum and instruction is the work the instructional cycle committees are doing. The district has developed a template in Canvas for each grade level or subject to use as they build digital curriculum providing a framework for teachers to curate resources. Once complete these templated courses will allow Elkhart teachers to find digital resources, lesson plan ideas and assessments for all the Indiana standards as they are addressed in our scope and sequence. The most exciting part of this work is its cyclical nature; providing a mechanism for our curriculum to grow and adapt to the ever changing needs of our students and teachers.