Some Important Definitions

Our “FRC Tech-Skill Progressions” Guide Book has several important definitions in it, but the sake of a brief introduction, we wanted to share a few definitions to help explain our thinking. 

• “DQ Global Standards”  – DQ Global Standards are comprised of 32 digital competencies. It focuses on 8 critical areas of digital life– identity, use, safety, security, emotional intelligence, literacy, communication, and rights. These 8 areas can each be developed at three levels: citizenship, creativity, and competitiveness.

• “DQ1-32” – This is the way we refer to the DQ Global Standards. There are 32 different standards which come from a wide variety of different sources (e.g. ISTE).

• “Skill” and "Skill Activity"– We created four activities for each DQ standard that we refer to as “skills”. Each skill is labeled with the DQ standard number as a prefix and the age-based milestone as the suffix. For example, you might see DQ3.MS. “DQ3” refers to the standard and “MS” refers to the middle school milestone. Each skill has four skill activities that show vertical alignment and progression as students age. In this document, you can see our team's collaboration to create our skills and articulate them across four developmental milestones (document is also embedded below).

• “Milestones” – represent skill levels, each associated with a suggested age range and color-coded for distinction. While these milestones are adaptable to all ages, they primarily depend on a student's skill level. This project’s authors also provide specific recommendations for each milestone, as indicated below. Please note that the grade levels are based on the United States and its year-by-year progression. For international users, we also indicate typical age ranges below.

  1. Milestone "Lower Primary" - these skills would typically be finished by Grade 2 (7-8 years old). This milestone is represented by the color Blue.

  2. Milestone "Upper Primary" - these skills would typically be finished by Grade 5 (10-11 years old). This milestone is represented by the color Green.

  3. Milestone "Middle School" - these skills would typically be finished by Grade 8 (13-14 years old). This milestone is represented by the color Yellow.

  4. Milestone "High School" - these skills would typically be finished by Grade 10 (15-16 years old). This milestone is represented by the color Red.

The Formula for Each Skill Statement Follows ABCs

Our contributing members have the freedom to write and rewrite the skills according to their professional expertise and team consensus. When writing a skill, we have a few criteria that we reach through the formula ABC: 

• A is for addressing the standard. This is the statement directly related to the DQ Global Standards.

• B is for the word "by". 

• C is for choice. Think of these as options that teachers can use with their students. These choices are shown on the Skill Activity Pages where we have different ways students can reach the standard. These are the creative ways our contributing members have come up with to help students show their learning. These choices should be specific, measurable/observable, and platform agnostic whenever possible.

FRC Project Tracker & Skill Statements

In this document you will see our project tracker that identifies who is working on what, as well as our skill statements. All four milestones have "version 1" of our statements which are our chosen skill statements as well as a similar page with examples of the milestones generated by Open AI's GPT-4. Skill Coordinators and Supporters can choose to use the work from GPT-4 or they might want to generate their own.