in schools filled with magical teacher-student partnership classrooms. In these classrooms, students own their data, and they set individual and group goals based on the projects they are working on. Looking around these classrooms, you see what we call messy learning or organized chaos. Think of the vibe of a busy coffeehouse, everyone chatting or working independently, depending on each person’s goals. Digital devices are everywhere, but so are collaboration and all types of communication as everyone gathers for different goals.
Like in a coffeehouse, when you walk into a magical classroom, you feel the energy as all students are laser focused on their personal learning targets and as they collaborate with each other. The teacher has set high expectations for each student, and he or she continuously monitors data using a variety of technology interfaces. Parents and other professionals are part of the communication loop with access to goal-focused data, using a variety of technologies. We call these magical classrooms NOW classrooms. We selected that term because our students deserve to thrive in rich learner-centered classrooms now, not in a few months or years. We believe schools are ready to create this type of NOW classroom, typified by technology-supported teaching and learning, and the evidence we’ve seen bears this belief out. Our goal with this book and this series is to help you create them.
While every student in NOW classrooms has individual goals, expectations, and deadlines, the students also engage in extensive collaborative problem solving around rich, real-world problems. Group members and the teacher monitor these projects by using digital tools and face-to-face meetings. For every group project, teachers expect students to connect to an authentic audience beyond the classroom walls to engage subject-area experts and present their findings to others. These presentations might take place in face-to-face settings, but often, the authentic audience comes into the classroom using different technology tools, and the teacher partners with each student to help him or her make connections to outside experts and an authentic audience.
In NOW classrooms, students own their learning. Every student can explain his or her individual learning progression and team progress to any administrator or classroom visitor. Students support what they say with the data they have at their fingertips, using digital devices and different technology interfaces. Students continue to work on their individual and group goals outside of school, where digital tools make collaboration and communication possible. The students know the teacher expects them to demonstrate what they know and can do as a result of what they have learned, and to deliver creative presentations. They might use digital tools to support and deliver their work, but the teacher encourages them to use voice and choice to creatively express themselves.
The teacher is the master conductor in these classrooms, constantly connecting the dots to support and stretch student learning. The role of the teacher in these classrooms has completely shifted from that of classroom content expert to master critical thinker. The students are the active learners and problem solvers, developing these critical skills they will need for their future careers outside of school in offices that potentially look and feel more like the coffeehouse than a building comprising isolated workspaces.
This book provides collections of lessons that support teachers as they encourage students to collaborate in these ways and develop super skills, focus on goals, and make connections beyond the classroom, all of which help you make your classroom magical.
Developing Super Skills Now!
Super skills include the four Cs of communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2011). These are not just soft skills but essential skills students need to be successful, lifelong learners in the 21st century. Preparing students for the future is the fundamental reason for formal education, and our students need the four Cs more than they ever have. Every student deserves to become ready for the future as he or she learns how to learn in an ever-changing landscape. With this in mind, we have based the lessons in this book on a foundation of students applying these skills.
We need to develop these super skills in students because in many classrooms, students have not experienced student voice and choice, meaning they have not been allowed to decide how they present the information they learn. By giving students the opportunity for voice and choice in the content, process, and product of their learning, students will develop communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity skills that are specific to their learning styles. NOW classrooms look very different from traditional classrooms because students own their learning path and goals in NOW classrooms. Students become independent directors of their own lifelong learning as they cultivate and apply these skills, ensuring their success outside the classroom.
Focusing on Goals, Not Technology
We know the future is all about change for our students, and we wrote this book for that reason. Collectively as authors, we have seen the good, bad, and ugly when schools roll out technology. When schools issue new technology rollouts without professional development, it leaves teachers to figure out how to transform lessons using the new devices. In these schools, some teachers and students experience success with technology, while little changes in other classrooms across the hall.
We take a different approach to technology in the classroom. We focus on the goals for teaching and learning, and then we look at whether and how we can use technology. Most technology rollouts in schools take the opposite approach by focusing on websites and apps rather than the learning goals. Teachers use the technology tools, but they do not make a connection to a learning outcome or the four Cs. In this model, using technology becomes an event rather than part of the fabric of learning.
You may ask, “What does true technology engagement look like?” This book answers that question by demonstrating the opposite of technology misuse. It features students using technology to create, collaborate, explore, investigate, and share their creations beyond classroom walls. This book structures higher-level thinking and problem solving into every lesson. It includes meaningful lessons with purposeful technology uses that directly tie into International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) 2016 Standards for Students. ISTE (2016) education technology experts developed the following seven standards for students.
1. Empowered learner: Students leverage technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating competency in their learning goals, informed by the learning sciences.
2. Digital citizen: Students recognize the rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of living, learning, and working in an interconnected digital world, and they act and model in ways that are safe, legal, and ethical.
3. Knowledge constructor: Students critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts, and make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others.
4. Innovative designer: Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful, or imaginative solutions.
5. Computational thinker: Students develop and employ strategies for understanding and solving problems in ways that leverage the power of technological methods to develop and test solutions.
6. Creative communicator: Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to their goals.
7. Global collaborator: Students use digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally.
Each chapter in this book provides lessons and instructional practices that support one or more of these standards.
