A group of innovative district leaders from around the country gathered in Phoenix, Arizona, for the Tech & Learning Leadership Summit. They explored important issues in education and shared these ideas for ensuring that students remain at the center of our work:
1 Align learning to student preferences.
How are you designing opportunities that reflect how students learn best? At the Phoenix Coding Academy, a tool called Indigo provides individual student profiles, which enable educators to customize their school work. The profiles also help students see the types of careers that might best match their strengths.
2 Relationships are key.
The relationship between teacher and student is always critical. Technology can free teachers from certain tasks so they have more time to focus on supporting students. Models like Big Picture Learning ensure that teachers have small class loads so they can build relationships.
3 Build learning networks.
Teachers need to be guiding and empowering digital learners who are the center of their own learning networks, which are aligned with their passions, interests, and abilities. This means supporting students in safely connecting to a network of people who can help them reach their learning goals. You can read more about how to do this in books like The Educator’s Guide to Creating Connections and Supporting Student Personal Learning Networks.
4 Give students opportunities to hold leadership roles.
For example, allow students to lead digital citizenship initiatives, or create a student tech support team at your school where students are given leadership roles.
5 Involve students in all aspects of their education.
Students need to have a platform for input. This means they should be a part of ongoing conversations about curriculum design, classroom environment, facilities, purchasing, and so on.
Read More at www.techlearning.com
