Norfolk Public Schools inspires, engages, and empowers learners to actively use technology resources to question, collaborate and extend their learning beyond the classroom walls. Through child-led inquiry, analysis, creating and sharing, students develop the skills necessary to thrive in a connected global environment.

Adding Evidence to Your Digital Portfolio

It’s not too early to start thinking about creating your digital portfolio! BaselineEdge has been rebranded, and moving forward will be known as io education. Take a look at this help guide to remind yourself how to add new evidence through the Evidence Board.

In December of 2017, the Federal Communications Commission voted to dismantle rules regulating the businesses that connect consumers to the internet. This grants Internet Service Providers (ISPs) the power to potentially reshape the every day online experience for millions of Americans. Basically, the Net Neutrality regulations prohibited ISPs from blocking websites or charging a premium for higher-quality service. It is a hot-button issue that can get pretty confusing to understand. Below is a video from Andrew Lippman, a senior research specialist at MIT and the Assistant Director of MIT's Media Lab, who does a fantastic job explaining exactly what Net Neutrality is, why we need it.

In June 2016, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education published the new Digital Literacy & Computer Science Curriculum Framework (DLCS).

Belief: The abilities to effectively use and create technology to solve complex problems are the new and essential literacy skills of the twenty-first century.

Vision: Engage students through the integration of practices Make connections to what students know and the world they live in. Every grade demonstrates a range of cognitive complexity such as remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating.

The DLCS standards are intended to drive instruction that emphasize student mastery of both concepts and application of practices. The standards articulate a coherent progression of learning from Kindergarten through High School to effectively develop the skills needed to use and create technology to solve complex problems.

The DLCS standards include core concepts in four strands: Computing and Society, Digital Tools and Collaboration, Computing Systems, and Computational Thinking.

The standards cultivate the skills used in digital literacy and computer science by applying reasoning, creation, and problem solving in all subject areas.

Over the next few months Tech Bytes will include a series of articles with recommendations to help implement the standards in the classrooms over various content areas.

Some suggestions to increase critical thinking in all subject areas are:

1. Ask students to explain what they are learning in their own words. Ask them why their answers are correct.
2. Model and teach critical thinking: analyze comparisons, create categories and classify items appropriately, identify relevant information, construct and recognize valid deductive arguments, test hypotheses, recognize common reasoning fallacies, distinguish between evidence and interpretations of evidence.
3. Give reasons when asking students to do things a certain way.
4. Encourage questions.
5. Ask students to consider alternate explanations or solutions.