Creating a 4Cs Culture

We know we are living in a world where routine and repetitive tasks are becoming more automated. Because of this, we must develop the capacity in our students to innovate and work together in an effort to prepare them for jobs, problems, environments, and lifestyles that do not yet exist. How do we do this? We need to encourage students to try something new. We need to create environments where students are free to have ideas, to act on those ideas, and to feel comfortable with those ideas being either fantastically successful or fantastically unsuccessful.

We also know that we cannot create these environments for students before creating them for teachers and staff. Showing them that the first attempt should necessarily be the final attempt. Modeling risk taking, creativity, and collaboration in our schools and classrooms is the important first step to encouraging our students to do the same.

So, how do we know when we have done it well? How do we help students “see” a goal of being creative? How do we encourage them to dig deeper and demand the cycle of feedback and revision? Below is a graphic depicting some of the behaviors of Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. These help us to identify specific student behaviors as the standard to achieve by the end of high school.

(Image Used with permission from Henry County Public Schools)

The snapshot in the previous image is a great “end in mind” but we need more specific indicators for teachers and students to identify their current level of application and next steps. Bismarck Schools is using the EdLeader21 rubrics. The following link is to a portal page for the 4Cs. Please note that the K-2 level is currently being finalize.  The linked information in the resource below is only accessible to BPS staff via their Moodle login.

https://student.moodle.bismarckschools.org/mod/page/view.php?id=149242

Please note that these 4 Cs standards are now available in Powerschool. A special thank you to the teachers who will be using and providing feedback to students and to us using these standards.

I "C" You "C"

As educators, we will be having more and more discussions about the Cs.  Depending on which book you read or who you talk to, there can be any number of Cs.

At the core of the Cs are critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication.  There is broad reaching consensus around the importance the Cs for our students’ futures.  On the surface it is easy to brush off the Cs thinking that, “Of course our students practice these competencies.”   The question is really at what level and with what kind of rigor or intentionality.

Our district is currently looking at 4Cs work from EdLeader21 (http://www.edleader21.com).  EdLeader21 is a professional learning community providing leading work on designing rubrics for the 4Cs.

As an entry point, below are the Cs and the performance areas associated with them. We will link up the full rubrics in the next post.

Critical Thinking

• Information and discovery


• Interpretation and analysis


• Reasoning


• Problem solving/solution finding


• Constructing arguments


• Self-regulation/reflection

Creativity

• Idea generation


• Idea design and refinement


• Openness and courage to explore


• Work creatively with others


• Creative production and innovation


• Self-regulation/reflection

Collaboration

• Leadership and initiative


• Cooperation


• Flexibility


• Responsibility and productivity


• Use of technology tools for synchronous and asynchronous collaboration


• Responsiveness


• Self-regulation/reflection

Communication

• Engaging in conversations and discussions


• Using 21st Century communication tools


• Listening


• Communicating in diverse environments


• Delivering oral presentations


• Self-regulation/reflection

Image C Mosaic CC BY Leo Reynolds

Teaching and Learning @ BPS

Teaching and Learning @ BPS

We are thrilled to connect our Bismarck Public School community to thinking and collaboration resources through the Teaching and Learning Blog site.  This site offers a portal to conversations and thinking that comes in a variety of formats all in one spot.  Read feature blogs on teaching and learning topics, learn about our informal “latte” learning events, review some of the academic research staff have completed, or follow the  #learnbps twitter chat.

The Power of Access

Have you seen the cell phone commercials where the co-workers  are “one up’ing” each other by the speed of the information they are getting to their data phones?  Being in the “know” or up to date is an expectation in the 21^st Century.  Access is critical to “knowing” and the more conveniently available and faster the access the better.

Access is an interesting word with many different levels of significance. At a basic human need level, access to water, food, and transportation shaped where early settlements took hold. On a more complex level, access to information has and continues to shape governance and opportunity.   Access to information through print technologies and now the internet has provided transparency and opportunities to be heard. In the past, power controlled information.  In today’s world, information flows much more freely via websites, YouTube, twittering, blogs, wikis and so on.

Occasionally people deny the significance of the internet for information under the claim that it is not trustworthy; anyone can post anything.  While this is true, with 21^st Century research skills and critical thought one can effectively cross check information and decipher the good from the bad; we need to hone these skills not control the information itself.

At Bismarck Public Schools we have the benefit of “access” to many of the things that matter for success in teaching and learning.  I would like to take a minute to highlight the technology related access we have that gives us power for learning.

• The Highway/The Internet: The highway to information in the 21^st Century is the Internet. With a multi-gig pipeline to the world, access at BPS is truly world class.  A 10 Mb file transfer today (the size of one high resolution photo shot on the typical house-hold digital camera) happens in less than a minute vs 15 years ago when it would take about 45 minutes.


• Jumping on the Highway/Teacher Access: Teachers at BPS have laptops that afford them access that is not confined to a room or a cabled port.  This access allows us to think, discuss, research, and create anywhere/anytime.

• Jumping on the Highway/Student Access: Student access is also changing to where students spend their time – from computer labs to classrooms to home.  To move from access as an event to transparent access, BPS has been working with several grades/subjects.  Pilot participants in 5th, 6th, and 9th grade have a 2 to 1 ratio of netbooks in their classroom providing access to content and the ability to produce and share their own work.  High School English students have one-to-one access to netbooks for research and writing, making this process much more fluid with the tools and information right at hand. One big win for access has been the implementation of Google Apps for Education.  This has bridged the divide for student work, giving them a workspace that is accessible from just about any internet connected device at any location and at any time.  Since the rollout at the beginning of the school year over 4,240 students in grades 4-6 have activated their accounts.


• Navigating/Access to Support: The internet has lots of information but it can’t replace the localized support, encouragement, and connections.  Building capacity to use the tools available and leverage the internet is the goal behind the BIMS (Building Integration Mentors).  BIMs have logged over 1000 hours of support from Q&A to Lattes to classroom support.  Through the support of the BIMs there were 139 Latte opportunities this year and 27 people have been awarded graduate credit for their Latte learning efforts.

I believe we have and provide good “access.” We will continue to strive for technology access that is fluid and flawless.  We look forward to continued collaborative work to leverage this access by getting really good at taking the access to the next level of synthesis, construction, collaboration, production, innovation, and communication.

Engagement is the Outcome of Meaningful Work

Engagement is the Outcome of Meaningful Work
Tanna KincaidOctober 2011

A question I ask my kids and one I am sure many other parents ask and wait anxiously for their child’s enthusiastic response on is, “What did you learn today?”  Our recent professional work has been around getting a laser focus on our instructional targets.  This is part of the solution to helping students talk about that “what” when they go home.  But is having the “what” posted on the board or written in their planner enough to get the enthusiastic response?  Probably not.  For that we need to move from “what” to “how”.   


There are different levels of the “how”.  “How” that is focused on knowledge level recall is a strategy that we do well.  It is necessary but can’t be the end.  The enthusiastic chatter we want from students when they talk about what they learned is not likely to happen as the results of knowledge level worksheets or essay responses that have predefined right answers from the book; even if they are done using technology.  



Moving from knowledge-based student learning to student performances that require the integration and application of knowledge and skill open up significant opportunities for students to showcase independent learning behaviors, creativity, critical thinking, and to use digital tools.  

I have spent most of my career focused on the “how” of instruction through technology use.

• How teachers can use technology to expand access to engaging materials and resources?


• How the classroom walls can be knocked down through communication and collaboration with other learners and experts?


• How students can choose and use a variety of digital tools to create products that illustrate their learning?

I believe that our goal for students to be ready for post-secondary and the workplace can be fully realized only if our students are provided with opportunities to select and use digital tools to make meaning for themselves. Access to tools is necessary however the tools themselves do not provide the student engagement and independent learning.  As Sylvia Martinez states in her recent Generation YES blog post, “Students may be momentarily entertained by technology used to wrap a stale activity, but it won’t last.” “The confusion of “engagement” as a primary goal of lesson design is a mistake. Engagement is not a goal, it’s an outcome of doing interesting, personally meaningful work.”

I am a longtime advocate for the use of technology in education but believe the ultimate value is not the tools but how the tools allow for students to communicate, research, synthesize, think and create product evidence of the “what.”  To do this we need the combination of tools with innovative pedagogy.

One good example of matching technology with innovative learning is our Social Studies pilot in 5th and 6th grade where students are working in pairs on classroom netbooks.  The students access their materials online through the digital text, write and create products online, and submit their products electronically for feedback.  Another pilot investigating tablet devices has ensued with results expected in December. This group will work from the primary perspective of value-added for the purposes of meaningful and relevant work.