STUDENT LEARNING ENGAGEMENT WITH TECHNOLOGY Today, we are connected in more ways than we thought possible. Technology connects people, workplaces, and ideas creating a connected global community. Part of becoming a global citizen is not only using new digital tools, but also sharing ideas and perspectives responsibly. It involves recognizing and respecting how technology can connect perspectives, by encouraging collaboration and communication.

Technology provides powerful academic opportunities that can challenge traditional perspectives of teaching and learning. We are just beginning to see how new and emerging technologies have the potential to leverage learning allowing students and teachers to inquire more deeply, do broad-based research, connect more intensely, share extensively and create more powerfully.

How can Digital Technologies Deepen Student Learning?

The development of the Essential Skills for 21st Century Learning or the "7C's" was to provide a framework for how we are integrating technology into learning. It's not about what is considered "innovative" or what will "revolutionize learning" but what will leverage or amplify the instruction. In order to effectively and purposefully integrate technology, we need to focus first on learning. The purpose of the 7C's was to examine how digital technologies can connect to learning in one of the following ways:

Improve student engagement; Encourage active learning; Allow for reaching the diverse needs of all learners; Allow for more student feedback and assessment for learning; Provide opportunities to gather evidence or assessment of learning; Allow for student ownership of learning, independence and responsibility; Provide opportunities for students to leverage collaborative skills through technology; Explore ways in which students can engage in inquiry learning within the context of learning communities.

Through the implementation of student-centered strategies, technology has the potential to accelerate and deepen learning. (Fullen, p. 47) and provide the framework so that students take charge of not only their own learning, but care about contributing and sharing with the learning community.

ASSESSMENT SERIES FOR PARENTS PARENTS

As students begin to construct new knowledge, moving from information to application, they will apply the following new literacies:

Innovation and Learning The fostering of life-long learning will continue to be focused in education given the rapid of change we are experiencing in the modern era. As a result, it will be important to teach students not what to think , but how to think. The use of innovative teaching methods will be one way to help advance student learning by having students learn in different and more compelling ways. In our schools, many classroom teachers are involved in what is known as a project learning offered as Genius Hour or Maker Space. These strategies allow students to become the creators of their own learning where they not only find out the answers to questions or learn new skills, but experience learning in action. In many ways they are the creators of their own learning.

Viewing: Technology, the new pedagogy and flipped teaching – Dr. Michael Fullan The Growth Mindset – Dr. Carol Dweck #Our Voice - Dr. George Curous 21st Century Tools for Students

- RCSD Website The Myths of Technology Series - Dr. George Curous

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

~ Benjamin Franklin