The DLI Newsletter is going bi-weekly. The next newsletter will be published on January 23.

#1 - Learning targets are embedded explicitly throughout instruction.

21st Century Skills

With the expected full implementation of the NGLS (Next Generation Learning Standards) in 2021, it's important to make sure that our learning targets include student actions and concepts like ciritical thinking, media literacy, leadership and more.

In particular, there needs to be a focus on Literacy or IMT (Information, Media and Technological) Skills of the 21st Century Skills.

". . . although young people don’t need coaxing to take up Internet technologies and their skills quickly improve relative to their elders, without guidance they remain amateur users of information and communications technology (ICT), which raises concerns about a generation of youth who are not fully digitally literate, yet are deeply immersed in cyberspace. Therefore, “it is not… enough to assume that young people automatically have all of the skills, knowledge and understanding that they need to apply to their use of technology. All young people need to be supported to thrive in digital cultures; they need help making sense of a rapidly changing world of technology which gives them access to vast amounts of information, which is infused with commercial agendas and which for many reasons can be difficult to interpret.”

Alexander, B., Adams Becker, S., and Cummins, M. (2016). Digital Literacy: An NMC Horizon Project Strategic Brief. Volume 3.3, October 2016. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

#3 - Students are provided specific feedback leading to mastery of learning target(s).

#4 -Teacher probes for deeper understanding using a variety of questioning techniques and question types.

#6 -Students and adults use positive, supportive and growth-mindset oriented language when talking about themselves, others and school.

Cultivating a Growth-Mindset with Educational Technology

Using Educational Technology to Foster a Growth Mindset in the Classroom

Given the importance of a student’s mindset in response to challenges, and the increasing use of digital technology in the everyday classroom (Gray, Thomas & Lewis, 2010), what features of educational technology can be leveraged to foster the development of a growth mindset?

Choice over learning path and the opportunity to take learning risks

Students with fixed mindsets may focus on the appearance of looking smart and avoiding failure over tackling challenges. Many educational technology tools allow a student to set their own pace, monitor their own progress, and choose their own activities (with no one looking) from a curated list of options at the right difficulty level, which may result in students taking greater risks in their learning and persisting more on challenging activities when they fail. For students who are still afraid to take risks, the data provided through educational technology tools to educators can help identify students who may need extra support from the teacher to work on more challenging tasks. Students can also track how much work they have completed towards their goals and see what challenges lay ahead, as many educational technology tools display a student’s path through the program.

Continuous feedback on ongoing effort

Effective educational technology programs provide continual feedback to students through animations and progress monitoring indices, such as screens at the completion of a task acknowledging the student’s effort or a counter that shows how many activities are completed and remaining in a unit. Allowing students to see how much time they spent on an activity and giving them immediate, real-time reinforcement after persisting through challenging work can support a growth mindset.

Denotation of progress through competencies gained

Meaningful programs track a student’s accumulated knowledge, beyond just providing a grade. Being able to log into a program at anytime to see a visual representation of all that one has learned can have a big impact in building competence, reinforcing that knowledge is gained through effort and that deep learning is something gained over time. The collected data can also be used as a discussion point between the student and the teacher to further support goal setting and progress monitoring.

Personalized material that challenges and engages students

“Meaningful learning tasks need to challenge every student in some way. It is crucial that no student be able to coast to success time after time; this experience can create the fixed-mindset belief that you are smart only if you can succeed without effort (Dweck, 2010, n.p.).” A gradual release of responsibility model (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983) is commonly followed in classrooms where the teacher demonstrates a concept, the class and teacher practice the concept together, and then students try the work on their own. Educational technologies allow for different variations of this model, where students can first challenge themselves and demonstrate what they know (or do not know) about a concept. Ideally, children who have already mastered a concept can move onto more challenging material and students who have not yet mastered the concept can receive additional practice or direct instruction when needed, working through the material at their own pace. Flipping the gradual release of responsibility model, which assumes all students start at the same level, allows students to work at their optimal challenge level. This ensures that no student continually coasts through the material and, of equal importance, that no student continually feels overwhelmed. Frequently, when students are using educational technologies, they do not even think of them as “school work” but rather as a “fun game”. This can go a long way in fostering a love of learning for the sake of learning, which also supports a growth mindset.

Continuous opportunities for individualized practice with mechanisms for teacher support

As noted, an analogy commonly used when discussing growth mindsets is that of the brain being a muscle that needs exercise. If students do not lift heavy weights (i.e., face challenges) their brain cannot grow. Educational technologies not only allow students to face challenges scaffolded to their own skill level, many also provide opportunities to try different approaches or strategies to complete activities and allow students to learn from personalized, timely feedback. Further, many effective educational technologies have a way to alert teachers if a student is continuously struggling. At this junction, teachers can then work directly with students in a targeted fashion to help them consider alternative approaches to the concept where they are struggling and help them get “unstuck.”

Fostering supportive classrooms and school-to-home connections

Finally, teachers and students need to work together to grow everyone’s knowledge and not compete over who is smarter (Dweck, 2010). Engaging educational technologies can be a way for students to talk about where they are, where they have been, and where they are going in the educational technology program. Students can celebrate each other’s successes, offer reassurances when there is a challenging task, or be peer mentors for one another. The data an educational technology tool provides can also be sent home with a student to inform a parent of how hard the student is working and remind the parent to support a growth perspective (e.g., “You worked so hard, look at how much you’ve accomplished in the past week”).

#7 -Literacy development is a central component of the instruction observed.

Secondary Digital Learning Tip of the Week