Empowered Learner - October 2018 Issue

october 2O18

A PU B L I C AT I O N O F T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L SO C I E T Y FO R T EC H N O LO GY I N E D U C AT I O N

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NOT CHECKING OUT YET

LIBRARIANS ARE KEY TO EDUCATION’S DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

STANDARDS SPOTLIGHT EMBED DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP IN ALL SUBJECT AREAS

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GOING OPEN OPEN LICENSING IS CHANGING THE WAY TEACHERS FIND, USE INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS

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BOLD EDUCATORS ACTIVATE CHANGE Jump-start your innovation mindset at the ISTE Conference & Expo, where educators discover leading-edge practices and principles to inspire all learners!

Be bold with us.

SAVE THE DATE! June 23-26, 2019 Philadelphia

16,000+ EDUCATORS

550

ED COMPANIES

1,200+ SESSIONS

150+

HANDS-ON OPPORTUNITIES

isteconference.org #ISTE19

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Learn Without Limits

Today’s Students Tomorrow’s Entrepreneurs

The Cisco Connected Educator Program Discover the Cisco Connected Educator Program, a professional learning network that connects and recognizes educators using technology to help students learn without limits.

Earn badges when you demonstrate your expertise: Virtual Field Trip Teacher, Collaboration Teacher, Connected Teacher, Virtual Field Trip Provider, Content Creator, Administrator, and Action Researcher.

Produced by Cisco Corporate Social Responsibility, this new animated web series for kids explores entrepreneurship, life skills and how to use technology for social good.

The mission of GPS: The Series is to inspire students to become global problems solvers — global citizens ready to thrive in an increasingly connected and digital future by thinking as entrepreneurs, innovating as technologists and acting as social change agents.

Join a team of teens from around the world — who each possess a unique problem solving skill — as they band together to use technology to solve real-world problems!

In the first season, they work on access to clean water in Malawi. In the second, they figure out how kids can continue learning when schools are closed after a hurricane hits the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Two seasons with robust teachers guides are available at no cost in English, Spanish, French and Hindi.

Begin your journey and connect to immersive learning experiences — like virtual field trips — by visiting CILC.org/badges today.

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gpstheseries.com

CONTENTS

October 2018 Volume two Issue two A quarterly magazine

4 about us

5 iste in action

ISTE introduces new ways to blaze your learning path

6 member voices

Christopher Bugaj All educators should be prepared to incorporate assistive tech

8 interview

Mitchel Resnick Scratch creator, professor is an expert on helping student creativity grow, flourish

15 global focus

Successful edtech initiatives have these traits in common

26 cover

Going open Open licensing is changing the way teachers find, use instructional materials

16 feature

Not checking out yet Librarians are key to education's digital transformation

24 what works

Kids saving the world from digital villainy

33 standards spotlight

Embed digital citizenship in all subject areas

38 member profile

Leon Tynes He’s working to tip the scale on diversity

41 take action

Advocacy with a capital WHY

44 community voices

What are your favorite Spanish language resources for teaching STEM/STEAM topics?

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executive editor Julie Phillips Randles director of editorial content Diana Fingal contributors Kristin Harrington Nicole Krueger Jennifer Snelling art director Sharon Adlis iste ceo Richard Culatta chief learning officer Joseph South iste president Mila Thomas Fuller, Ed.D. Assistant Director of Online Learning University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Education iste president-elect Bill Bass Innovation Coordinator for Instructional Technology, Information and Library Media Parkway School District empowered learner advisory panel Trina Davis, associate professor, Texas A&M University, College of Education, College Station, Texas Patricia Brown, instructional technology specialist, Ladue School District, St. Louis, Missouri Ben Smith, educational technology program specialist, Lincoln Intermediate Unit 12, York, Pennsylvania Michael Graffin, STEM and robotics teacher, Iona Presentation College, Perth, Australia Adam Phyall, director of technology and media services, Newton County School System, Covington, Georgia

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is a nonprofit organization that works with the global education community to accelerate the use of technology to solve tough problems and inspire innovation. Our worldwide network believes in the potential technology holds to transform teaching and learning.

ISTE sets a bold vision for education transformation through the ISTE Standards, a framework for students, educators, administrators, coaches and computer science educators to rethink education and create innovative learning environments. ISTE hosts the annual ISTE Conference & Expo, one of the world’s most influential edtech events.

The organization’s professional learning offerings include online courses, professional networks, year-round academies, peer-reviewed journals and other publications.

ISTE is also the leading publisher of books focused on technology in education. For more information or to become an ISTE member, visit iste.org. Subscribe to ISTE’s YouTube channel and connect with ISTE on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Our vision. ISTE’s vision is that all educators are empowered to harness technology to accelerate innovation in teaching and learning, and inspire learners to reach their greatest potential.

Our mission. ISTE inspires educators worldwide to use technology to innovate teaching and learning, accelerate good practice and solve tough problems in education by providing community, knowledge and the ISTE Standards, a framework for rethinking education and empowering learners.

Subscriptions. ISTE members receive Empowered Learner each quarter as a membership benefit. Members can purchase additional subscriptions for $49 per year. Nonmembers can subscribe to Empowered Learner for $100 a year. To subscribe, please visit iste.org/EmpoweredLearner or contact our customer service department by emailing iste@iste.org or calling 800.336.5191.

About Empowered Learner. Empowered Learner ISSN 2573-1807 (print), Empowered Learner ISSN 2573-2137 (online) is published quarterly by the International Society for Technology in Education, 621 SW Morrison Street, Suite 800, Portland, OR 97205, USA. Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Oregon, and at additional mailing office. Send address changes to the ISTE membership department at 621 SW Morrison Street, Suite 800, Portland, OR 97205, USA. Copyright 2018 ISTE. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced by any means, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of the publisher. Published October 2018.

For information on advertising in future issues of Empowered Learner, please email advertise @iste.org.

Stay connected iste.org

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ISTE IN ACTION

photo by s te v e smith

Casandra Woodall describes the latest initiatives from ISTE.

ISTE introduces new ways to blaze your learning path Casandra Woodall ISTE Senior Director, Business Strategy Just as we aspire for students to be lifelong learners, we also seek to support educators in keeping pace with trends in digital learning and developing their understanding of learning practice. Research tells us that one of the best ways to do so is within a community of educators where ideas are shared, perspectives are broadened and successful approaches are directly translated into practice – all with a goal of meeting the diverse needs of students.

Each year, thousands of educators show up at the ISTE Conference & Expo to achieve this vision of professional learning.

But what happens after the conference?

ISTE members consistently ask for more professional learning opportunities that extend beyond the conference and support their understanding and implementation of the ISTE Standards in their practice.

We’re listening!

At ISTE 2018 in Chicago, we announced two brand new initiatives – ISTE Certification for Educators and ISTE U – that provide community engagement, ongoing learning support and meaningful assessment to meet your professional learning needs.

For years, our community has been inquiring about a credential based on the ISTE Standards. The new ISTE Certification for Educators is designed for those who want to take the next step from integrating technology to becoming a learning catalyst. The certification combines pedagogy-focused professional learning with an evaluation of artifacts. Successful participants earn ISTE recognition and become ISTE Certified Educators.

ISTE Certification is competency-based and vendor-neutral, and focuses content and learning activities on the seven Educator Standards, with a special emphasis on the instructional indicators within the standards.

As excited as we are to share ISTE Certification with our community, we are equally excited about ISTE U. ISTE worked with leading educators and professional learning organizations across the country to create ISTE U, a virtual hub of best-in-class courses that focus on helping teachers and leaders build digital age competencies. The courses tackle critical education concepts like digital citizenship and leading-edge topics like artificial intelligence in education and show educators how

they can integrate these concepts into their day-to-day practice. And all ISTE U courses are available for graduate-level credit, even if you aren’t enrolled in a graduate program!

As topics like computational thinking, open educational resources and personalized learning are gaining traction in many districts, leaders and teachers want to provide effective instruction within these areas to meet the needs of their students.

Our ISTE U initiative provides courses on these and other timely topics, and our list of courses continues to grow.

ISTE Certification and ISTE U are designed to help educators build on their existing learning networks and encourage them to build new communities of practice that further their knowledge and expertise.

Our goal is to provide engaging, impactful experiences that ensure participants can learn from nationally recognized experts, as well as each other, and bring their new knowledge into their own classrooms.

Visit iste.org/certification or iste.org/ ISTEU for more information.

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MEMBER VOICES

photo by s te v e smith

Christopher Bugaj explains why all educators should support inclusive practices.

All educators should be prepared to incorporate assistive tech

By Christopher Bugaj

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By age 3, most children are expressing themselves using complex language structures. They’re using hundreds of words, combining words and using prefixes and suffixes to change meanings. These children are also using language to make requests, comment and even protest.

Language development occurs gradually, somewhat systematically and mostly invisibly. It just sort of happens.

Unless it doesn’t.

By 3, if a student isn’t using verbal speech as their primary form of expression, it’s time to seek intervention. The result of multiple assessments, meetings and discussions may lead to implementing a device to help the student learn to use language.

This approach is called alternative or augmentative communication (AAC).

Not long ago, AAC devices were unsophisticated, consisting of static arrays with limited vocabulary. Today, touchscreen devices with robust language systems and access to thousands of words are becoming the norm.

As we continue the march toward inclusive practices, the day is coming

when you’ll be the educator responsible for designing educational experiences for a student who uses an augmentative communication device. Although there may be support from a special education teacher, speech language pathologist and (hopefully) an accessible design coach, it will still fall to the general educator to design lessons.

Here’s how you can help students succeed: Believe they can. There’s no better way to ensure failure than believing a student can’t learn what you’re trying to teach them.

You must believe that someday with the right tools, training and enough time, the student will eventually use the device to say whatever they want to say whenever they want to say it.

Now might not necessarily mean forever. Research shows that the implementation of a communication device doesn’t impede the development of verbal speech.

If a student is going to eventually use verbal speech as their primary form of expression, the device acts like a catalyst, increasing the verbal speech acquisition rate. For some students, there may be a day when they no

longer need the device, but if they do need it forever, the sooner they have it and the more they use it, the better chance for learning language.

Use the device as much as possible.

Students using communication devices to learn language need to be placed in an environment where people use the device to communicate as much as possible. The technical name for the strategy is called aided language stimulation (ALgS), but a simple way to think of it is to model on the device.

This can take different forms, including: • Instructional modeling where the communication partner explicitly attempts to teach a word to a student by pointing to and using that word. For example, looking at a toy elephant, the educator might use the device to say, “Big. It is big.” And then verbally say, “You say it. Show me ‘big.’” while pointing at the word on the device.

• Naturalistic modeling where the communication partner attempts to have a natural conversation. The educator might use the device to say “It’s big! I like it! Do you?” To which the student might respond by saying, “Big” or “Yes.” • Descriptive modeling where the communication partner narrates what they are doing with no expectation of a response.

For example, the educator might say, “It’s big. It’s Gray. It’s hungry. I’ll feed it. He likes it.”

instructional tool for teaching language, vocabulary, spelling and reading to everyone!

For instance, every student in the class might get a laminated version of the home screen of a student’s system to use for modeling and to learn sight words. Some educators also display large versions of the home screen on interactive whiteboard to integrate into whole- or small-group reading activities.

Ask to be coached. Successful implementation of an AAC system is akin to learning a second language. It takes time, dedication and practice. Seek out opportunities to learn more about AAC implementation. Self-directed and selfinitiated learning is a start, but to accelerate the process of learning to implement an AAC device, ask to be coached using a systematic plan.

The essence of learning language is to make and maintain deep relationships with others. Helping another achieve that ability can be even more gratifying than teaching someone how to read, write or do math.

When you help a student who uses an AAC device learn language, you’re giving a gift that lasts a lifetime. christopher buga j is a founding member of the a ssistive technology te am for loudoun count y public school s in a shburn, virginia, and an iste book author. he hosts the awardwinning podcast a.t.tipscast; has presented over 200 sessions at loc al , national and international events; and ha s designed and taught online courses on assistive technology.

see things differently

Implement a version of the system for everyone. The vocabulary on most

AAC systems consists of frequently used words, known as core vocabulary. AAC devices provide people an opportunity to learn these words in an organized and visual way.

The more people, including other students, provide modeling by using the student’s communication system, the better.

Peers interacting with the student using the same system not only helps the student who needs the device, but reinforces the spelling, meaning and structure of the words for everyone. Some educators use the home screen from a communication device as an

World leading education, exhibitions & conferences www.gesseducation.com

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INTERVIEW Mitchel Resnick shares why he thinks coding is a fundamental communication tool.

Mitchel Resnick Scratch creator, professor is an expert on helping student creativity grow, flourish

By Julie Phillips Randles

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Mitchel Resnick’s portfolio is packed with impressive titles and honors – a bachelor’s in physics from Princeton University, a master’s and Ph.D. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he works today. There’s even a stint as a science-technology journalist at Business Week, too.

But students and educators around the globe likely know him for his position as director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. Oh, he has other titles there, too, such as the LEGO Papert Professor of learning research. Yet it was his sense of play that led to developing popular classroom software like LEGO Mindstorms and WeDo robotics kits, and the Computer Clubhouse, an award-winning network of 100 after-school learning centers for youth from under-served communities.

Still doesn’t ring a bell? Then let’s cut to the heart of why students love him: Resnick is the man behind Scratch software that millions of children have used to create interactive stories, games, music and art.

Whether you’re a parent or a teacher, “the core issues for cultivating creativity are the same,” he wrote in his book, Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play. “The key challenge is not how to ‘teach creativity’ to children, but rather how to create a fertile environment in which their creativity will take root, grow and flourish.”

And it’s not a topic where adults can hang back and hope for the best, as Resnick points out in his TED Talk. In fact, he’s skeptical about thinking of our youth as digital natives. Just as being fluent in a language means you can journal, tell a joke or write a letter to a friend, the same holds true with technology. Today’s students use technology to play games or chat on their phones, but that’s a far cry from creating technology or expressing themselves using technology.

photos by s t e v e smi t h

Mitchel Resnick says children are willing, even eager, to work very hard, over extended periods of time, when they’re working on things they really care about.

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INTERVIEW

“ They weren’t just machines to get a job done – they could … change the way people thought about themselves and thought about the world.

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That’s why Resnick has worked to provide all students of all ages and backgrounds with opportunities to learn to code – a skill he says is a fundamental communication tool in the digital age.

A turning point in Resnick’s career came when he heard educational computing pioneer Seymour Papert give a keynote address at the 1982 West Coast Computer Faire. Papert’s presentation sparked a new vision of what roles computers might play in people’s lives. “They weren’t just machines to get a job done – they could … change the way people thought about themselves and thought about the world. That was very exciting to me,” Resnick noted.

Resnick, winner of the 2011 McGraw Prize in Education, the 2013 EdMedia

Pioneer Award from the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education and a 2018 ISTE Making IT Happen Award, shares his thinking on coding, playfulness and digital creation.

What was the first computer you used?

Do you remember the first program you wrote that you were really proud of?

I first used a computer in 1972 in a 10th grade class called “Computer Concepts.”

We wrote programs on punch cards and ran them on the school district’s minicomputer.

I remember writing a poker-playing program where users decided which cards to keep or discard by flipping switches on the front panel of the minicomputer.

Is learning to code as important as learning to play a musical instrument, for example?

Where should it fall in the priority list of a school?

I see coding as a new type of literacy. As children learn to code, they learn new ways to organize, express and share their ideas.

That’s important for everyone. Just as all children should learn to write, I think all children should learn to code.

In your book Lifelong Kindergarten, you write that kindergarten is the greatest invention in the previous thousand years.

You and others have written much about the importance of play in developing creativity, an essential trait for success in the workforce. Yet most schools in the U.S. and around the globe haven’t changed their structure or model much in the past 200 years. What are small steps any educator can take to bring play into their classrooms?

More important than supporting “play,” we need to support “playfulness.” That is, we need to encourage children to take risks, experiment and test the boundaries. And we need to create environments in which children feel comfortable making mistakes – and trying new paths when things don’t go as they expected. That’s what playfulness is all about.

STEM fields. Drawing on their own creative experiences, these mentors are able to help children develop their creative capacities – and begin to appreciate the joys and satisfactions of creativity and invention.

You co-founded the Clubhouse Network 24 years ago to combat inequities in STEM. Can you describe what makes the Clubhouse model distinct from other after-school programs aimed at disadvantaged youth?

Would you say it’s been successful?

A study by Raj Chetty of Stanford found that children from high-income families are 10 times more likely to become inventors than children from low-income families because, in part, children who grow up in wealthy areas are surrounded by people who work in STEM fields. What are some realistic and affordable ways educators in low-income and rural areas can expose their students to people who work in STEM fields?

In our work in low-income communities, we usually try to identify adult mentors who are engaged in their own creative practices.

Often, these people come from art, music and design backgrounds, not necessarily

When Natalie Rusk and I started the first Computer Clubhouse in 1993, we often said that “access is not enough.” We knew that youth needed more than just access to technology.

We provided opportunities for youth to create projects (such as music videos and robotic inventions), based on their interests and as part of a supportive community where they could collaborate with peers and get advice from adult mentors.

Based on these guiding principles, the Clubhouse network has expanded to 100 sites in 20 countries around the world, serving 20,000 youth each year.

“I see coding as a new type of literacy.

As children learn to code, they learn new ways to organize, express and share their ideas.”

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INTERVIEW

You’ve said that the goal of the MIT Media Lab is to help children learn to think creatively,

“ Developing as a creative thinker requires more than a spark of imagination.

It also requires the ability to reason systematically, collaborate effectively with others and continue to adapt and learn.”

reason systematically, work collaboratively and learn continuously. Why do you think these are the “essential skills for success in the 21st century” and are there others you’d add to this list?

We live in a world that is changing more rapidly than ever before. Today’s children, as they grow up, will face a never-ending stream on unknown, uncertain and unpredictable situations. To thrive in this ever-changing world, they must learn to think and act creatively.

Developing as a creative thinker requires more than a spark of imagination. It also requires the ability to reason systematically, collaborate effectively with others and continue to adapt and learn.

What do you mean when you talk about “hard fun?”

I learned the phrase “hard fun” from my mentor, Seymour Papert. Too often, adults

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think that children want things to be easy.

That’s not the case. We’ve seen over and over that children are willing – eager – to work very hard, over extended periods of time, when they’re working on things that they really care about. That’s hard fun.

You helped develop the block-based programming language Scratch in 2003 and publicly launched it in 2007. Today, there are more than 29 million registered users and it’s been translated into 70 languages. Did you and your colleagues envision it would become this popular with kids? What aspect of Scratch makes it so irresistible?

I think there are three core reasons for Scratch’s success. 1. It’s more accessible.

With Scratch’s graphical programming blocks, children can easily snap together programs and then easily revise them, without worrying about the obscure punctuation of traditional text-based languages. 2. It’s more meaningful. Children can create projects

based on their interests, mixing together different media (music, photos, graphics, sounds) to create interactive stories, games and animations. 3. It’s more social. The Scratch programming language in integrated with an online community so that children can easily share and collaborate on projects – and get feedback and inspiration from one another.

What are some of your favorite Scratch projects created by kids?

A teen from South Africa created a Scratch project called “Colour Divide” in collaboration with a group of teens from several other countries. The project is an animated story of a dystopian world where children are assigned colors based on their magical powers.

The lead creator of the project explained it this way: “Growing up, I’ve definitely seen the scars that apartheid has left on my country and the people. I’m really exploring that through the different characters that are a part of this story.”

Many children say that they come to Scratch to make projects, but stay because of the community. When children share projects in the community, they get feedback, suggestions and encouragement from one another.

At the same time, children get inspiration by trying out other people’s projects or collaborating on projects. When everyone shares, everyone benefits.

and graphics in other people’s projects. He found that more than 25 percent of all Scratch projects are remixes and he documented how remixing helps new ideas and techniques spread through the Scratch community.

By analyzing comments on the site, he saw that children often get upset when others remix their projects. To encourage remixing, he added a row on the Scratch home page featuring the “most remixed” projects so that children would feel pride (not frustration) when their projects get remixed.

You collect data on Scratch use. What

How can teachers overcome the feeling that

insights has it given you? How should we

they will never be able to keep on top of all

be using data to personalize learning and

the new technology that is emerging?

influence instruction?

Don’t worry about keeping on top of all new technologies. Instead, find a few technologies that fit your needs and the needs of your students. Become fluent with those tech-

You included an online community when you created Scratch, something that was uncommon at the time. What was your thinking behind having that additional level of connection?

For his Ph.D. dissertation, Andres MonroyHernandez studied the data on how children create “remixes” by modifying the code

nologies, and help your students become fluent, so that you can use the technologies in many different ways to serve many different purposes.

What is one powerful idea an educator could focus on in their teaching that would make a significant impact on how their students learn?

My friends at the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium like to say: “The Big Idea is Their Idea.” Rather than trying to deliver instruction and information to your students, help them to follow their interests, explore their ideas and develop their voices.

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It’s your turn to be recognized!

Become an ISTE Certified Educator

ISTE Certification for Educators is a new competency-based, vendor- and device-neutral certification based on the ISTE Standards.

This certification recognizes educators — like you — who are using technology to transform learning in meaningful ways.

Earn recognition and deepen your practice!

Learn more at iste.org/certification

Congratulations to

ISTE 2018 Pitch Fest winner

Zoobean Inc.!

Beanstack by Zoobean helps educators and librarians create, manage and measure reading challenges. Using a website customized to each school or library and an easy-to-use mobile app, it’s easier to track independent reading, keep readers motivated and gain actionable insights.

Learn more at beanstack.com.

Edtech startups – sign up for next year's Pitch Fest in Philadelphia!

The Edtech Startup Pavilion and Pitch Fest are sponsored by AT&T.

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GLOBAL FOCUS Ana Virginia Quesada shares why some edtech initiatives succeed while others fail.

Successful edtech initiatives have these traits in common

By Ana Virginia Quesada

Over the last 30 years, I’ve worked on national and international projects focusing on the integration of digital technologies in formal learning environments from the preschool to the university level. Many recollections come to mind when I consider the challenges educators face when they start an edtech initiative, especially given the rapid expansion, variety and scope of digital technologies.

In the mid-’80s and early’90s, the internet and mobile devices were practically nonexistent in school environments, which is why the integration processes involved knowing the devices that appeared on the market and overcoming the fear of using them, often before educational uses had been imagined by others.

I learned computer programming using the Logo language in 1990 when the most sophisticated social technology that educators could use in my country was an ATM. At that time in schools in Costa Rica, tech questions were mostly focused on what educational software to use.

By the mid-’90s with the expansion of the internet, a new challenge was presented to educators: How to take advantage of the network? As never before, education was placed in the arena of potential innovation and with it, there was a need to transform teaching practices. However, the focus was still on technology and not learning.

With the coming of the new millennium, digital technologies were becoming increasingly powerful, small, mobile, personalized and intelligent. We went from desktop computers to laptops, from computers to tablets and phones, from storage disks to

cloud services, from disks with applications to online software, from telephone lines to mobile messaging services.

With all these changes, we went from people who took courses to learn how to use applications to self-taught people who were learning by doing, watching videos and sharing in open networks. Again, the educational boom was based in technological novelty, but teaching and learning were still largely unchanged.

Faced with these increasingly profound and rapid transformations, the fundamental issues that concern those of us who work on edtech initiatives are: how to improve the educational process, how to integrate digital technologies so they are learning tools for active and responsible digital citizenship and how to train educators in that context.

Here are the traits of the successful edtech initiatives I’ve observed:

Expectations are progressive.

Edtech projects should be designed in phases, with clear expectations for the educational institution and educators from the start. The most robust projects include a road map for the entire project so participants understand there’s a process with many steps and that learning and making missteps along the way is OK. Participants should also be able to bring some of their own ideas to the project to ensure buy-in and success.

The project starts with a baseline.

Ideally, all edtech projects would start with a baseline that allows participants to know and measure the achievements, results and impacts of the implementation.

Although these traits don’t constitute a recipe and are not exhaustive, they do represent considerations to be taken into account and put into practice when starting an edtech project or evaluating the performance of an already initiated one.

Devices and technologies are perishable, but learning purposes are not. The most successful edtech projects

are those that pay special attention to learning purposes and not devices. Technology changes frequently, so the focus must be defining the purposes of learning and plot the route to achieve it.

Educators are trained to feel comfortable. The implementation of an

innovation usually falls on the educators, often without their participation in its design or the related decision-making related to it. For best outcomes, educators should be involved in the development of initiatives, receive relevant training and have clear expectations for their work.

ana virginia quesada is a senior consultant for iste focused on l atin america. she had a 28-year c areer with the omar dengo foundation and is a re tired educ ator from the minis try of education of costa rica.

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FEATURE

NOT CHECKING OUT YET Librarians are key to education’s digital transformation

By Jennifer Snelling It’s a syndrome seen at so many schools. As school districts face shrinking budgets, some are tempted to find savings by cutting library staff. After all, the reasoning goes, with so many resources available via laptops, tablets or phones, who needs librarians anymore?

We all do, argues a new breed of librarian.

The no-nonsense librarian with a cardigan and reading glasses, stamping dusty stacks of books and ssshhhing giggling teens is a relic of the past. These days, librarians are more often found showing students how to use a Makey Makey kit, helping someone detect whether an article is trustworthy or facilitating schoolwide teacher training on the new learning management system.

While librarians are still likely to be the ones who lead story time programs, share a book series that ends up a favorite or help find just the right article for a senior research EMPOWERED LEARNER

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NOT CHECKING OUT YET

“ Librarians often serve as technology leads within their school building and they provide invaluable learning on how to find relevant resources, evaluate the credibility and usefulness of information, and be thoughtful digital citizens.”

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paper, many libraries are also makerspaces or flexible student learning spaces where librarians facilitate future-ready skills and bring schools into the digital age.

Librarians 2.0 Digital age librarians are equipped with traditional librarian skills, such as research, curating sources and media literacy, which are more important than ever, as well as the skills to lead their districts in digital transformation.

“The idea of a librarian has evolved greatly to be the one who is talking about digital citizenship, the difference between fake news and real news, good sources of

information, all of those things we are seeing are greatly lacking in today’s society,” says Elissa Malespina, outgoing president of ISTE’s Librarians Network and Future Ready New Jersey’s task force leader. “Librarians are uniquely positioned to be the leaders in teaching all that. Our jobs have evolved, and we have to evolve with it.”

To help librarians and media specialists with this evolution, ISTE, Future Ready Librarians and Follett Learning have created a crosswalk (goo.gl/i8g8T8) connecting the Future Ready Librarians framework to the ISTE Standards for Educators, as well as creating an ISTE librarians webpage (iste. org/learn/librarians) and an ISTE U course to help librarians become future ready.

(Future Ready Librarians is an expansion of the Future Ready initiative aimed at raising awareness among district and school leaders about the valuable role librarians can play in supporting the Future Ready goals of their school and district.)

In the overview of the crosswalk, ISTE acknowledges the vital role librarians play in future-ready schools. “Librarians often serve as technology leads within their school building and they provide invaluable learning on how to find relevant resources, evaluate the credibility and usefulness of information, and be thoughtful digital citizens.”

The school librarian’s job is in some ways the same as it always has been: connecting students and staff to information, whether print or digital, and promoting literacy, whether that’s reading or coding.

The person who can guide students and teachers through information overload and fake news is more valuable than ever. The librarian’s expertise in cutting through the clutter, organizing information, tools and experiences is something that isn’t taught in most teacher training programs, yet these are skills that students, indeed all of us, use every single day. And the curation skills to organize information and make it accessible to a wide variety of people is also vital.

Mark Ray, director of innovation and library services for Vancouver (Washington) Public Schools, says that while media literacy is a hugely valuable part of the job description, the library space is becoming less a place of consumption and more a place of creation.

From librarian to teacher librarian Pennsylvania’s Elizabeth Forward School District is one district that has taken to the concept of library as makerspace. Elizabeth Forward High School had a traditional 1950s library: The furniture couldn’t be moved because it was so heavy, and there

were tons of dictionaries, encyclopedias and other reference books not used since the 1970s.

The district decided there was a better use for that space and worked with Carnegie Mellon University to create the Elizabeth Forward Media Center. The school now has a K-12 makerspace, a Dream Factory that integrates art and computer science, a sound studio built in a closet that formerly stored magazines and a Mobile Fablab that takes technology projects to elementary schools.

A ssi stant Super intendent Todd Keruskin, Ed.D., concedes that while some of the equipment was expensive, most of it was not. “We wanted it to be used in any classroom for project-based learning,” he says. Now there are 50-60 kids in every space and we have created a schoolwide maker culture.”

This maker culture has evolved into an entrepreneur program that continues from elementary through high school. For example, third graders showed an interest in photography so their teacher taught them about perspective, the rule of thirds and other concepts. The class took a field trip to photograph downtown Pittsburgh, then students brought back their photos and turned them into puzzles using a laser cutter.

As students progress through the grades, they create their own businesses, including

The person who can guide students and teachers through information overload and fake news is more valuable than ever.

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Not only do students have the opportunity to become a media intern and assist other students and teachers with the equipment and apps, students can also pilot new technology.

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things like T-shirt printing and making and selling bath products and blankets. Crosscurricular projects like these not only teach a range of academic skills, students also learn to be accountable and to be leaders and entrepreneurs. Sometimes the projects require the equipment, but they all benefit from the maker culture that Elizabeth Forward epitomizes.

That said, as Elizabeth Forward schools added more equipment, teachers became overwhelmed with learning how to use everything. Quickly, says Keruskin, students became the experts. The school created media internships where kids familiar with the equipment help students and teachers.

Not only do students have the opportunity to become a media intern and assist other students and teachers with the equipment and apps, students can also pilot new technology. They’re asked what apps inspire them to learn and which are boring, and they’re tasked with noting glitches and programs that just don’t work well.

“The right media specialist doesn’t get overwhelmed and is comfortable letting kids lead,” he says. “The new media special-

ists will continue to learn new technologies, sit down with teachers and promote their space by showing teachers how to make their lessons come to life with project-based learning.”

Keruskin’s description of the new librarian mirrors Mark Ray’s idea of the ideal teacher librarian.

After all, as schools redefine themselves, school leaders face new needs and challenges. The teacher librarian has expertise in education, works effectively with students, has the system view and takes on leadership roles in the school. Librarians have the training, and the opportunity, to lead beyond the library.

The librarian can play an integral role throughout the school, not just in the library.

We know that librarians have a huge impact on literacy. Librarians are not just specialists that students go to, but assets in their community.

To accommodate traditional as well as more innovative uses, flexibility in design is key. Ideally, there are production and design areas where students and teachers can collaborate around digital media. The spaces

should be dynamic so they can be quickly and easily altered to create group or individual work spaces. Instead of heavy tables and chairs set among stacks of books, take a cue from bookstores or Starbucks and look for moveable furniture that can be easily reconfigured.

Many ISTE librarians have been doing this for a long time, says Casandra Woodall, ISTE’s senior director for business strategy.

“A lot of initiatives start in the library. The maker movement, flexible use of space, providing an area for educators to receive additional professional learning are examples,” she says. “Librarians sit in a unique place and their role is relevant to the work ISTE is doing. We want to honor the dynamic position of the librarians.”

Of course, change is hard and it can be overwhelming if librarians feel they have to do all these things at once and do them perfectly. But there are many resources to help.

Shannon McClintock Miller, the K-12 teacher librarian at Van Meter Community School District in Van Meter, Iowa, says many schools and districts are already taking the Future Ready pledge to collaborate with educators to ensure all students are future ready, so librarians don’t have to be on their

own. Also, the American Association of School Librarians has standards that coordinate well with Future Ready Librarians standards and the ISTE Standards.

Advocate to be future ready Malespina’s story has a familiar feel for many librarians and parents. In 2016, New Jersey’s South Orange-Maplewood board of education proposed cutting three district librarians and all library funding.

Malespina, a parent in the district, attended board meetings to argue against the cuts and started a change.org petition and social media campaign to rally support.

When the cuts went into effect a month later, eliminating two middle school librarians and a high school librarian, Malespina increased her efforts. She decided it was time to raise her voice and speak out, as professional librarian, and as a parent After two years of fighting, all three librarian positions, as well as funding for books and supplies, were restored.

She has some practical advice for other librarians who are feeling that their positions are in danger. She recommends contacting EveryLibrary, a nonprofit organization

“A lot of initiatives start in the library. The maker movement, flexible use of space, providing an area for educators to receive additional professional learning are examples.”

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NOT CHECKING OUT YET

It is vital that librarians share their stories, says Thomas Murray, director of innovation for Future Ready Schools. “We have to be storytellers of the learning opportunities that happen for kids every day in our libraries. Bring the outside in by sharing student work. The more we can get parents and community members into the library on a regular basis, the more their eyes will be open.”

While library newsletters are a good method, social media is generally more effective these days. Take time to learn how your school community communicates with the outside world. Sometimes it’s hard for librarians to toot their own horns, but sharing the amazing work of students can really demonstrate the power of the library.

Few do this better than McClintock Miller, who shares ideas, resources, links and student projects with her nearly 60,000

photo by elissa malespina

The democracy of the library is perhaps its most important aspect. The library serves everyone in the building.

that helps schools with funding, legislation, referendums and fighting cuts. Then, they need to make sure they are communicating effectively about the many amazing things teacher librarians do for a school and district.

“USA Today said by 2026, libraries will be done,” Malespina says. “When that’s the perception in society, we have to fight against it. They continue to cut government funding for libraries, but libraries are one of the few democratic places left. “We don’t judge, right-leaning, left-leaning, we have information for you, and we will fight to protect your right to privacy and for information.”

The democracy of the library is perhaps its most important aspect. The library serves everyone in the building. Schools may have a class on digital citizenship, makerspaces in a wing or room, but the library is historically available to everyone and provides equity of access to these tools and opportunities.

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Twitter followers daily and on her blog, The Library Voice, which is read by 100,000 people a month. On top of that, she and her students share on school accounts – the Van Meter Library Facebook page and @vmlibraryvoice on Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.

“These are places where we can share with our community, students, teachers, parents and even others around the world all of the amazing things that are happening in our library and school community,” she says.

“And the best part is Van Meter students help us with these postings. To see the library and school through their eyes is one of the things that draws our community to these places to see what is happening, and what students are learning, creating and celebrating.”

In fact, she’s so prolific and engaging on social media that she was honored with the Social Media Superstar Leadership Luminary Award by the American Association of School Libraries for 2018.

Becoming partners with administrators is another way to demonstrate the value of librarians to the people who make decisions.

They’re trying to make difficult decisions and run a building or a district. If the librarian can offer solutions by being knowledgeable about the budget, then so much the better.

It’s not a question of money, says Mark Ray. It’s a question of prioritization. In the midst of the recession, Vancouver Public Schools decided librarians were key to getting kids future ready and kept them in place.

“Digital citizenship, making and educational technology. Those are the things future-ready schools need to do. Who is going to do that work?” asks Ray. “Amplify those stories of success, talk to building leaders and articulate what the future could look like. Ask them to give students the opportunity to become future ready.” jennifer snelling is a freel ancer who writes for a variet y of publications and ins titutions, including the universit y of oregon. a s a mother to elementary and middle school-aged children, she’s a frequent cl assroom volunteer and is ac tive in oregon school s.

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WHAT WORKS A glimpse at some edtech success stories.

Kids saving the world from digital villainy Mexican superhero Chapulin Colorado may not have the gravitas of his fellow caped crusaders, but he takes copyright law very seriously.

An expert at blending into the shadows, Batman has a thing or two to say about online privacy.

Armed with X-ray vision, Superman uses his power of discernment to teach kids how to spot fake news.

Villains may not quake in their boots when the Little League of Justice arrives on the scene, but potential cyberbullies will likely think twice about harassing someone online. This group of superpowered third graders at Northridge School Mexico in Mexico City spent the past year not only learning about digital citizenship, but also teaching it — to adults as well as their peers.

“In Mexico, we do not have a culture of digital citizenship,” says teacher Pedro Aparicio, co-founder of #MexEdChat. “We often go to high schools to talk about digital citizenship, and the students are just passive learners. They’re not actually doing anything else to get involved. My aim here was to talk about this important concept at a very early stage.”

During their unit on digital citizenship, some of his students became concerned about the dangers lurking in the digital world — not for themselves, but for their less tech-savvy parents, whom they feared would fall prey to online scams. Equipped with their newfound knowledge, they decided it was up to them to protect the adults in their lives from cybervillains.

So they formed the Little League of Justice and started sharing what they learned with their parents and peers through speeches, classroom demonstrations and video talks.

“They truly believe they’ve got the power to do something positive to change their small worlds — their families, their school and probably to change the way the world looks at them or the way the world looks at Mexico,” Aparicio says.

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photos by pedro aparicio

By Nicole Krueger

Why does it work?

KIDS BECOME DIGITAL AGENTS. By donning their capes and assuming the mantle of digital protectors, Aparicio’s students embody ISTE’s Digital Citizen standard. As proactive digital agents, they’re leveraging digital media to raise awareness among their peers and influence social norms within their school community.

THEY FLEX THEIR EMPATHY MUSCLES. When students view themselves as protectors and champions, they expand their capacity for empathy — and that makes them more likely to speak out on behalf of others. “If they see cyberbullying, they won’t ignore it,” Aparicio says.“I’m sure of it. They will stand up speak for others.”

THEY KNOW HOW TO TALK TO THEIR PEERS. When the Little League of Justice visited the first and second grade classrooms in their school, Aparicio was surprised by how engaged the young audience members were. “They were asking questions. They wanted to behave like their peers,” he says. “They think, ‘Maybe I can also be a superhero.’ ”

While the students learned a lot about digital citizenship, they weren’t the only ones. Aparicio learned from them, too.

“In the past, I thought my duty was to wear a cape and become a hero by helping others,” he says. “But after this experience, I would say my role is to make other people superheroes — not just other teachers, but students as well.”

Teens teach parents about social media It’s a truth that’s universally acknowledged. By the time parents adopt a social media platform, their kids will have already moved on to something else.

That’s a common source of frustration for today’s parents whose impulse is to stand in front of their kids and protect them from whatever comes their way, says Laura Day, lead counselor at Stamford American International School in Singapore. When it comes to social media, they feel like they’re constantly one step behind.

“I think there’s a sense of fear about it because it’s unknown,” she says. “They’ve figured out Facebook and WhatsApp, but that’s not what kids are using anymore. They hear stories about bullying and sexual predators online, and they don’t know what’s going to happen.”

This mounting fear inspired the school to host an informative session on social media. The goal was to give parents some visibility into what their kids do online — and they decided the best way to do that was to ask the teenagers who use it most.

Excited to share their knowledge about one of their favorite activities, middle and high school students teamed up to educate their parents on social media by demonstrating their favorite apps, doling out advice and talking candidly about their online experiences in three parent sessions throughout the school year.

“They were standing up in front of a whole bunch of adults in the room and talking openly and honestly about things,” says Craig Kemp, head of educational technology. “They were even challenging parents. It

was empowering for them to be the leaders. The parents just wanted to learn, so for them it was all about sitting back and listening.”

Why does it work?

KIDS ARE THE CONTENT EXPERTS. Today’s teenagers are more qualified than anyone to talk about when, how, why and on what platforms they connect online.

Asking students to lead the session not only made them feel valued for their knowledge, but it gave parents insight into how their kids think. Some of the students explained to how texting with their friends isn’t all that different from the various ways adults stay connected to each other.

THEY’RE EAGER TO SHARE. Parents hungry to understand how their less-than-communicative teens think might be surprised to discover how much students are willing to share when there’s no risk of backlash. The key to getting them to open up is to provide a space where they can speak freely. During the social media session, parents were only allowed to listen to their own child’s presentation if the student gave permission. This encouraged students to answer questions honestly and discuss their own online mistakes. “Empower kids to talk openly,” Kemp advises.

DIALOGUE DISRUPTS THE FEAR CYCLE. When parents hear only about the negative effects of social media, they’re more apt to lock down technology use in the home. Learning about its positive aspects helped them accept that social media isn’t something they can banish from their children’s lives. “This is what they do. This is where it’s all happening for them, and that’s not going to change,” Day says.

Demystifying social media has also helped ease parents’ fears about how their children will fare online, Kemp says.

“For parents, one of the big takeaways was that our kids are pretty amazing, and maybe we don’t need to worry so much.” nicole krueger is a freel ance writer and journalis t with a pa ssion for finding out what makes learners tick.

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COVER

Going open Open licensing is changing the way teachers find, use instructional materials

By Nicole Krueger On a cold January day, a teacher from Ethiopia braved the snow to visit Mountain Heights Academy in Utah.

He wanted to personally thank the faculty for making their curriculum openly available online. Unable to afford instructional materials for his all-girls school back home, he’d been relying on the Utah school’s content, which was free, rigorous and better than anything else he’d found online.

Director DeLaina Tonks was stunned. Less than two years ago, her charter school had opened its doors with a commitment to use all open education resources, or instructional materials that are freely available for the public to adapt, modify and redistribute. She’d been skeptical of founder David Wiley’s vision: Pay teachers to build their own curriculum, and then share it with the world for free.

No one, she thought, was going to want content from some podunk school in Utah.

“You have your dreams, I’ll run the school,” she told him.

After months of intense instructional design work, the faculty published their first year’s worth of curriculum online and used the materials with their students. Then they promptly forgot about it – until the educator from Ethiopia showed up at their door.

Caught off guard by her visitor from the other side of the world, Tonks checked the analytics on her school’s website.

“I sat and cried with ugly sobs,” she says. “There were hits from just about every country in the world. Everything David said was true.”

Seven years later, open education resources (OER) have progressed from an idealistic vision to a growing global movement.

Schools from around the world are turning to OER when money for textbooks just isn’t there. In the United States, more than 20 states and 110 districts have pledged to support the use of OER in their schools, and some have begun developing and sharing their own textbooks and curricula.

The proliferation of open resources has dramatically shifted the way teachers approach instructional materials. Just 20 years ago, 98 percent of teachers used published textbooks at least once a week.

But that’s no longer the case, says David Steiner, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy.

Today’s teachers curate a blend of instructional materials, supplementing formal published curricula with online and selfcreated materials. Around nine in 10 elementary and high school teachers report using their own materials, or those developed by colleagues, on a weekly basis.

But the OER movement isn’t just about using free resources, which may or may not be copyrighted. The term specifically refers to educational materials that are openly licensed. Like open-source software, OER exist in the public domain so users can remix and redistribute them at will. Initially, most OER consisted of worksheets, lesson plans and learning activities; that scope has increasingly broadened to encompass full textbooks and comprehensive curricula.

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Going open

“ A lot of schools have to rely on self-made materials because the cheapest things they could buy are textbooks that are 25 years old. I do think OER push the envelope in the equity arena.”

The mounting demand for OER is just one small part of a much larger trend toward the open sharing of digital materials. From opensource software to Creative Commons licensing, creators are increasingly choosing to release their endeavors to the public so they can be used and improved upon for the benefit of all. Some even consider it a moral imperative.

From a global perspective, OER can be a lifesaver for impoverished schools, allowing unprecedented access to highquality learning materials such as textbooks, curriculum and lesson plans.

“OER are a game changer in the equity paradigm because they do provide a level of access where previously there were cost barriers to get good, robust content for kids,” Tonks says. “A lot of schools have to rely on self-made materials because the cheapest things they could buy are textbooks that are 25 years old. I do think OER push the envelope in the equity arena.”

The rise of OER

Mining online resources for classroom use has been a common practice ever since teachers got their hands on the internet. They just didn’t have a name for it.

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“Teachers do it every day, whether we know it or not,” says Jeanette Westfall, curriculum director for Liberty Public Schools in Missouri.

OER didn’t reach public consciousness, however, until one school decided to buck prevailing material values and give away its product for free.

When MIT announced in 2001 that it would release nearly all of its course materials to the public, it astonished many people – including the school’s president, who admitted in a press release that he wasn’t expecting his team to come up with such a bold and innovative plan.

The announcement made waves in the education world. By the following year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) had convened the 1st Global OER Forum. The term OER, and the movement surrounding it, was born.

The push to open up K-12 educational materials to the public domain didn’t catch on stateside until 2010, however. The newly minted Common Core State Standards had just arrived on teachers’ doorsteps. Their adoption thrust schools and districts across the nation into a quandary, since most of the instructional materials available at the time were poorly aligned to the rigorous new standards. As teachers scrambled to meet the demands of the Common Core, some states and districts started developing and using open resources.

New York was one of the first. With $700 million in grant money to spend, the state developed its own comprehensive curriculum aligned to the new standards and made them freely available online.

Louisiana later used New York’s materials as a springboard to develop its own course content, and the OER movement began picking up steam, although it still existed primarily in small pockets in schools and districts across the nation.

Then the U.S. Department of Education launched its #GoOpen campaign in 2015, encouraging educators to use OER. Some states, such as Michigan, took up the banner. Districts across the country began reconsidering their traditional textbook adoption process to give OER a seat at the table.

As more states and districts invest in creating their own instructional content, OER advocates are calling for policy changes to support this new landscape of educational materials. Many districts still adhere to outdated policies that insist all teacher-created materials belong to the district, preventing teachers from sharing their work outside their school community. OER advocates are working to change that, which is why the U.S. Department of Education now requires all copyrightable intellectual property created through its discretionary grants to be openly licensed.

Despite the momentum around OER, fewer than 1 percent of U.S. school districts have joined the movement so far, says

Free vs. open Open educational resources are free, but not all free resources are OER. What’s the difference?

Proprietary The resource belongs to an entity (usually the publisher) that holds the copyright and may choose to either sell it or offer it for free.

Free (but not open) Teachers can use the resource at no cost, but someone else holds the copyright. That means the resource can’t be modified or reshared.

Open Materials with a fully open license are freely available for anyone to use however they choose. They can be adapted and reshared without violating any copyrights. Some open licenses have restrictions, such as limiting commercial reuse. Creative Commons has details on the most common open licenses (creativecommons.org).

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Going open

“ We’re trying not to make it about the resource. We’re always in search of the very best resource that fits the learning.”

Kristina Ishmael, who led the #GoOpen initiative as the K-12 open education fellow at the U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology. Now a public interest technology fellow at New America, she continues to work toward helping that number grow.

“I firmly believe in the power of OER,” she says. “Not only is it putting resources that can be localized or customized into the hands of students, but I also see what it’s done for teachers. They have license and control over what materials are being brought into classroom. They’re not just handed a textbook and told, ‘Here you go.’ ” Enhance or replace?

If you visualize OER as a spectrum, Mountain Heights Academy stands at one end as an extreme example of a school that has eschewed publisher-created materials almost entirely, replacing them with openly licensed textbooks and curricula.

The vast majority of schools and districts fall somewhere at the other end of the spectrum, where individual classroom teachers supplement the established curriculum with OER lesson plans or

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Where to find OER Looking for OER? Here are a few resources to help you get started.

activities found online. A growing number of schools and districts have begun venturing toward the middle, using some combination of traditional textbooks and teacher-created OER. “In our state, we have some pockets where we’re trying to use online textbooks or resources to drive the digital 1:1 transformation, but I don’t think it’s ever going to replace publisher content,” says Michigan educator Jennifer Parker, co-founder of the 21things Project, a series of websites for free and open professional learning resources for educators. “It would be major shift in paradigm for teachers to leave textbook behind.”

Even in schools that encourage the use of OER, teachers might still opt for traditionally published content. Sometimes they don’t have the time or expertise to create their own. Sometimes it’s not worth the effort. Materials for a class such as keyboarding, for example, don’t need regular updating or customization, so it doesn’t make sense to pay teachers to reinvent the wheel.

Using OER isn’t about going all in or all out, says Westfall, whose district allows teachers to choose whether to buy a textbook or create their own. It’s about widening access to educational resources so teachers can choose the most effective materials for any given learning objective.

“We’re trying not to make it about the resource,” she says. “We’re always in search of the very best resource that fits the learning.”

Proponents of open resources tout a range of benefits. Teachers get more control over the materials they use. Schools can update their curricula every year rather than waiting a decade or more for the next textbook adoption. Unlike copyrighted materials, OER can be easily adapted to local standards and customized so they’re more engaging and relatable for students.

With OER, “I have the ability to empower teachers to make those decisions at the level closest to the kids,” says Ben Churchill, superintendent of Carlsbad Unified School District in California, where teachers asked him to put the customary textbook adoption process on hold two years ago so they could compile their own instructional materials. “They have the expertise and the passion.”

But there are also pitfalls. Since the concept is still relatively new, open resources can be hard to find. Although repositories such as OER Commons have cropped up to gather OER into one place, many remain scattered across the web. They often lack clear information about who created them or when they were last updated.

Whereas proprietary textbooks are created and thoroughly vetted by experts, OER don’t always come with credentials. Because of this, teachers often don’t trust OER in the same way they trust their textbooks.

As a librarian who serves on the committee that approves curricular materials for the state of Utah, Carrie Rogers-Whitehead isn’t as sold on OER as many of her colleagues.

OER Commons Digital library for creating and finding OER. oercommons.org #GoOpen District Launch Packet A guide for districts just getting started with OER. tech.ed.gov/open/districts/launch Smithsonian Learning Lab Millions of photos, recordings and other resources for creating OER. learninglab.si.edu Open Up Resources Top-rated curricula for both 1:1 and non-digital classrooms. openupresources.org New America Information on OER policy and state-level initiatives. newamerica.org

“It’s kind of a Wild West right now,” she says.

Her biggest concern is inclusion. Although open resources don’t have to be digital, to maximize their potential for remixing and reuse, many of them are. And while their availability is helping to move the needle on equity for many schools, their digital nature means they can also widen the equity gap for students who don’t have internet access at home.

“As a librarian, I would see students all the time who didn’t have access in their home to computers or the internet, so they couldn’t do their homework,” she says. “One of the most concerning things about digital materials is they can exacerbate inequity between students.”

Many of these problems can be addressed during the vetting process. When Utah State Board of Education Curriculum Content Specialist Alan Griffin evaluates open resources, he uses a special rubric to scrutinize materials based on three key areas: • Is the content aligned to state standards?

• Are the materials accessible to all students?

• Do they incorporate pedagogical tools such as teacher guides, lesson plans and assessments?

Saving the world – not money

While OER by definition are freely available for anyone to use, it’s a mistake to assume they don’t come at a cost.

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Creating OER requires a deep investment in teacher time and development, and the transition to a comprehensive open curriculum can take years. Even schools that adopt existing materials still need to put work into vetting and aligning them with their standards.

And many teachers need support and training to use open resources effectively in the classroom.

While OER can save districts millions in textbook purchases, a significant portion of those savings end up getting reinvested in teachers and the infrastructure to support them – at least in the beginning. Liberty Public Schools, for example, uses the money it saves on textbooks to provide professional learning for teachers.

“What we’re doing is taking out the middleman,” Westfall says.

“Our issue isn’t the money. Our issue is: Is this the very best we can give our kids? Is it making our teachers stronger or weaker?”

Advocates argue that OER make teachers stronger because it requires them to flex their instructional muscles. While traditional textbooks have their advantages, plug-and-play curricular materials make it all too easy to go on autopilot. The process of aligning open resources to state and local standards can help wean teachers off the widespread overreliance on textbooks in the classroom.

“Our educational culture is built on the fact that the textbook drives instruction. We have a long way to go to get people to realize the standards need to drive instruction,” Parker says.

For Tonks, the point of transitioning to OER has less to do with cost savings and more to do with saving the world. By freely sharing her school’s materials, she hopes to improve the lives of children across the globe.

Copyrighting educational resources “doesn’t fit into the paradigm of the future, which is based on sharing knowledge,” she says. “If it betters the world and accelerates the learning process for hundreds of thousands of other students, why not do it?” nicole krueger is a freel ance writer and journalist with a passion for finding out what makes learners tick.

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STANDARDS SPOTLIGHT Kristen Mattson explains why schools should adopt an all-in hollistic approach to digital citizenship.

Embed digital citizenship in all subject areas

By Kristen Mattson, Ph.D.

The ISTE Standards for Educators encourage teachers to “create experiences for learners to make positive, socially responsible contributions and exhibit empathetic behavior online that build relationships and community.� As a result of these learning experiences, the ISTE Standards for Students describe young people as digital citizens

who are responsible, ethical and empathetic in their digital communities.

Empathy, social responsibility and relationship-building can be difficult things to teach and are almost impossible to assess.

Schools recognize that there must be an all-hands-on-deck approach when helping students achieve these goals in classrooms,

on the playing field and in the hallways of their school, but such an approach seldom helps students achieve the goals of empathy and ethics in their online communities.

According to a 2011 survey of 5,000 teacher librarians conducted by the American Association of School Librarians, 52 percent of digital citizenship education was

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STANDARDS SPOTLIGHT

The answer is to stop thinking about digital citizenship as a stand-alone technology topic and begin thinking about it as an essential component of a wellrounded humanities curriculum.

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being conducted by the school librarian in isolation from other educators in their organizations. Another 28 percent of respondents said that the technology teacher was the only one responsible for delivering these lessons in the school community.

Additionally, 42 percent said the biggest barrier to teaching digital citizenship in schools is a lack of an integrated curriculum.

We recognize the importance of responsible, ethical and empathetic citizens for a healthy democracy, and in a tumultuous political season that has opened up dialogue about race relations, police relations, gun rights and immigration, it’s clear that much of our civic discourse has moved into digital spaces. However, many digital citizenship programs are simply covering topics related to behavior management in an effort to remain compliant with state and federal regulations.

So how can schools move beyond digital citizenship education that’s awkwardly tacked onto a student’s day for the sake of compliance? How can schools embrace a more holistic all-in approach to help students explore the intersections of

humanity and technology, the role of media and algorithms in our political socialization, and the moral questions humanity will face as new technologies push the boundaries between what’s possible to create and what’s ethical to introduce to the world? How will schools ensure that as a result of their digital citizenship efforts, students emerge as more responsible, ethical and empathetic people than they were before?

The answer is to stop thinking about digital citizenship as a stand-alone technology topic and begin thinking about it as an essential component of a well-rounded humanities curriculum.

In my ISTE book Digital Citizenship in Action: Empowering Students to Engage in Online Communities, I write about “hacking learning standards” to create opportunities to weave digital citizenship education into content-area classes. I’d like to share some ideas for how to do just that to help you see that every adult in a school can have an influence in this important work.

The College, Career and Civic Life Framework (C3) for Social Studies Education says that by the end of fifth grade, students should be able to: “Describe ways in which people benefit from and are challenged by working together, including through government, workplaces, voluntary organizations, and families” (D2.Civ.6.3-5).

A social studies educator can add a layer of digital citizenship to the standard by “hacking in” wording related to online spaces. Take a look at this hacked standard: “Describe ways in which people benefit from and are challenged by working together, including through government, workplaces, voluntary organizations, through digital communities and families.”

By adding the words “though digital communities,” educators aren’t taking anything away from the standards they’re required to teach. Instead, they’re helping students dive a little deeper into what it means to be a community member – both

offline and on. Countless numbers of social studies, English language arts, health and social emotional learning standards can be enhanced in much the same way to help students explore what it means to be human in our increasingly technological society.

Here are a few more ideas.

1. Students in an elementary math classroom collect data from their peers, create a bar graph to display average daily minutes of screen time and discuss how their own use is greater than or less than that of their classmates. (CCSS.MATH. CONTENT.3.MD.B.3 Draw a scaled picture graph and a scaled bar graph to represent a data set with several categories.

Solve one- and two-step “how many more” and “how many less” problems using information presented in scaled bar graphs.)

2. Students in a middle school social studies class brainstorm and explain the specific roles people play in digital communities, such as contributors, consumers, moderators and tech companies (D2.Civ. 2.6-8. Explain specific roles played by citizens, such as voters, jurors, taxpayers, etc.)

3. Students in an English language arts classroom read, compare and contrast social media posts that have gone viral after a major event. (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.5.6 Analyze multiple accounts of the same event or topic, noting important similarities and differences in the point of view they represent.)

4. Students in a health class research and report on the impact of wearables, such as step counters, on the overall health and wellness of the population (National Health Education Standard 2: Students will analyze the influence of family, peers, culture, media, technology and other factors on health behaviors.)

to give students the opportunity to explore varied viewpoints, reflect on their own relationships with technology tools and digital communities, and wrestle with ethical questions that arise in the digital age. Educators can engage students with these questions by offering up conversation starters, space, time and opportunity for reflection.

This short writing exercise, completed in an English or health classroom, allows students to explore the impact of social media on our perspectives of one another both online and off. Give students a copy of the image on the following page that includes metrics on the social media likes each person pictured recently received.

Helping students explore the fine line between our technology and our humanity can be the work of every educator if we’re willing to be creative in the ways we think about curriculum and the ways we think about digital citizenship.

Of course, many digital citizenship topics are not so black and white or neatly covered in a single lesson or activity. We also need EMPOWERED LEARNER

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deri vati v e of original photo by k ai oberhäuser on unspl a sh. deri vati v e cre ated by he ather tobin.

STANDARDS SPOTLIGHT

Of course, many digital citizenship topics are not so black and white or neatly covered in a single lesson or activity.

Have them write a short one- to twoparagraph response to each of the three prompts below: 1. Choose a person in this image. Write a third-person narrative account of their morning leading up to this point.

2. Choose a person in this image, write a first-person account of the thoughts going through their head right now.

3. Choose two people in this image.

Write a first-person account of what person No. 1 is thinking about person No. 2.

Once the students have completed their writing, ask them to reflect: How did the numbers above people’s heads influence the stories you wrote?

How do social media numbers influence the way we feel about ourselves?

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How do they influence the way others see us?

Is it fair to make assumptions about people based on numbers?

Students in a science or engineering course might be introduced to a new type of technology, like Google Pixel Buds, which promise to offer real-time, in-ear translations of up to 40 languages. Essentially, someone who speaks only English could hold a conversation with a Spanish speaker as the Pixel Buds, paired with Google Translate, immediately turn those Spanish words into English ones. On the surface, this sounds like a fantastic feat! A few questions to your students, though, might help them dig a little deeper into the humanity behind a new technology:

How might this new technology impact humanity, both positively and negatively?

Who benefits from this new technology?

Beyond monetary, what is the cost to users?

Who might be harmed, isolated or otherwise marginalized by this new technology?

Helping students explore the fine line between our technology and our humanity can be the work of every educator if we’re willing to be creative in the ways we think about curriculum and the ways we think about digital citizenship.

kristen mat tson, ph.d., is a libr ary media specialist at waubonsie valley high school in auror a, illinois, and an adjunc t professor at the universit y of illinois. she holds an ed.d. from northern illinois universit y, and her research interests include digital citizenship, media liter acy, social justice, discourse analysis and the intersec tions among them.

To take a deeper dive into digital citizenship education, check out the new ISTE U course “Digital Citizenship in Action” at iste.org/ ISTEU.

Level up

your digital teaching practice The all-new ISTE U is a virtual hub of unique courses to help you build and explore digital age competencies.

By working with leading educators and education organizations, we’re bringing you impactful, engaging courses that put pedagogy first and provide incredible learning from the moment you get started!

Rack up graduate-level credit while leveling up on critical topics such as: • Digital citizenship • Artificial intelligence • Computational thinking ISTE U is powered by

• Mobile learning • Personalized learning • Open Educational Resources (OER)

iste.org/ISTEU EMPOWERED LEARNER

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MEMBER PROFILE Leon Tynes shares the story of the internationally acclaimed technology program he developed.

Leon Tynes He’s working to tip the scale on diversity

By Nicole Krueger

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Leon Tynes couldn’t believe what his students were telling him.

Black men, they said, comprise fewer than 2 percent of U.S. educators. And that number is shrinking at an alarming rate.

A black male educator himself, he’s no stranger to the diversity problems that still plague many industries – including his own. But even he was shocked that representation among teachers was so low.

“I don’t know what’s happening in education,” says the technology department head at Engineering and Science University Magnet School in New Haven, Connecticut. “I’ve been holed up in the four corners of my classroom and had no idea what was going on with anything regarding teacher diversity until my students kicked open my door to do a documentary about it.”

His high school students initially planned to make a 10-minute film, but quickly discovered the topic was more complex than they had realized. To fully explore the factors behind the statistic, they needed to dive deeper into history.

The project led them on a journey of discovery.

They interviewed two dozen experts. They analyzed the U.S. Constitution. They learned about Brown v. Board of Education, the watershed 1954 Supreme Court case that desegregated schools

and contributed to a decades-long decline in black male educators.

In the end, they emerged with a 45-minute documentary, “Extinction: The Disappearance of Black Male Educators,” and a far deeper understanding of history than they’d ever gained from a textbook.

For Tynes, ISTE’s 2018 Outstanding Teacher (who almost didn’t become a teacher himself), the student-led project hit close to home. A gifted but indifferent student, he skated through school with middling grades and narrowly avoided slipping through the through the cracks. Instead, he went on to earn two law degrees and a master’s degree in business administration.

Although his mother taught for more than 40 years, he didn’t consider teaching until, working as a legal research clerk for the state of Connecticut, he glimpsed a side of affirmative action that left a bad taste in his mouth. The state had a diversity ratio to fulfill, and they weren’t subtle about it.

“I hated it,” he says. “I hated the way they used African-Americans as a diversity platform. It was really bad. I was in the ‘quota’ program, and it wasn’t something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

After working for years in law and business and seeing few minorities in those spaces, he decided

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photos by a l l en z a k i

photos by hope h a rris

Leon Tynes says he drives his students hard because he knows what they’re capable of.

MEMBER PROFILE

“ I want students to see that yes, if you work hard, these are things you can do — regardless of what demographic you come from.”

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to focus his career on spring-boarding urban students into successful careers.

Growing up in Richmond, California, he knew it could be done. Many of his friends from urban districts had become doctors and lawyers. Some worked in tech during Silicon Valley’s formative years, and they infected him with the technology bug. Every Friday, he would visit a friend’s office and learn about JavaScript, HTML, CSS and XML. Those weekly tutorials laid the groundwork for his position at Engineering and Science University Magnet School, which had no technology department when he joined the team six years ago.

He built his department from scratch, writing the curriculum as he went.

Today, teens in the internationally acclaimed program regularly win accolades at film festivals, innovation challenges and other tech-related competitions. One group won $20,000 and a trip to Los Angeles during the Paradigm Challenge last year.

If Tynes drives them hard, it’s because he knows what they’re capable of – and he refuses to let anyone slide by like he did.

When his students say they plan on getting a job instead of going to college, he tells them it’s not happening. When parents say they want their child to become a doctor or a lawyer, he asks if they know how much 3D modelers make. And when a group of young filmmakers asks if they can make a documentary about the dearth of black male educators, he tells them they’re going to need to interview some experts.

“I want students to see that yes, if you work hard, these are things you can do – regardless of what demographic you come from,” he says. “They can all achieve, really. It just takes focus and belief.

“If they believe they can do it, we can make it happen.” nicole krueger is a freel ance writer and journalist with a pa ssion for finding out what makes learners tick.

TAKE ACTION

photo by s te v e smith

Rod Carnill explains how data helps advocates convince others they need to act.

Advocacy with a capital WHY Rod Carnill Supervisor of Instructional Technology Coaches, Frederick County Public Schools, Virginia Adjunct Professor, Shenandoah University; Advocacy Chair, Virginia Society for Technology in Education

“People at work are thirsting for context, yearning to know that what they do contributes to the larger whole.”

I’m certain that when Daniel Pink wrote this, he wasn’t thinking specifically of advocacy. Yet this quote helps answer the question as to why one would become an advocate? It could be for a cause that has inspired them. It could stem from a deeply held belief. It could be out of frustration. It could simply be because someone asked them to lend their voice.

Ultimately, it points back to thirsting and yearning to contribute to the greater good or larger whole.

Educators want to support students, maintain expectations, promote learning and plead the case for allocating the resources necessary to fulfill the potential of a child’s future, our future, humankind’s future. That’s why educators become advocates.

Often, educators are simply following their hearts, trusting their gut instincts or responding to their intuition. The stories that portray these situations are always compelling. However, educators in the age of accountability need data to support their feelings and instincts, and convince others that they need to act.

Compiling that data may be a daunting task, one they may not have the time or skill set to accomplish. So where can that kind of supporting data be found?

One long-standing and credible data source for educational leaders is the Speak Up Research Project for Digital Learning.

Over 5 million students, teachers, administrators, parents and community members from over 30,000 schools have made Speak Up the largest collection of authentic, unfiltered stakeholder input on education, technology, schools of the future, science and math instruction, professional development and career exploration. It’s

free to all participants and national-level reports inform policymakers at all levels.

Last year, the data collected confirmed some hunches educators had about digital citizenship and reminded us that there’s still work to be done. The 2017 survey findings showed that that nationally, 35 percent of students in grades 6-8 and 44 percent of students in grades 9-12 identified as self-taught when it comes to digital citizenship. Having this data will impact the advocacy efforts of teachers and parents to become more aware, active and influential in helping students mature as digital citizens.

Registering your school and participating in the upcoming Speak Up survey gives your team local and state-level data to enhance your advocacy efforts and bring context to the stories you tell.

Valuable information is also available from EducationSuperHighway, a nonprofit focused on upgrading internet access at every school in the U.S. EducationSuperHighway’s reports and tools provide state and local information on bandwidth, connectivity and digital inequity in the nation’s schools.

Advocates must have stories to share that will help us understand the data that confronts us. The numbers catch people’s attention and, more often than not, raise questions.

When advocates explain why, the stories of impact help the numbers hold meaning, solutions become visible and tasks become more tangible. The responses to the stories begins to quench the thirst of those seeking contexts and become a means to contribute to making good things happen for those who cannot do so on their own.

This is why we advocate.

So gather your facts, compose your stories and speak up for what you know to be good and right and true.

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Thank you, ISTE Corporate Members It takes a community to effect change.

ISTE Corporate Members are valuable allies in our work to transform education.

321 Fast Draw

D2L Corporation

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Adobe Systems Inc.

Dell EMC

OverDrive

AP Lazer

Discovery Education

Red Jumper

AT&T

Edmentum

Schoology

BrainCo

Google Inc.

Sergeant Laboratories

BrainPOP LLC

iboss

SMART Technologies

Califone International Inc.

Lea(R)n/Learn Platform

Technology Box

Canon U.S.A. Inc.

LEGO Education

Texthelp

CDW-G

Lexicon K-12 Solutions

The Source for Learning

Cirkled in Inc.

MDR

Unity Technologies

Cisco Systems

MERGE

VIPKID

codeSpark

Microsoft Corporation

Zoobean Inc.

Computer Explorers

Nearpod Corporate members as of July 18, 2018.

Join our corporate member community! Visit iste.org/CorpMembership 42 EMPOWERED LEARNER

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Keep the conversation going year-round Network and collaborate on the topics that matter to you most!

It’s all at ISTE Connect. iste.org/connect

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COMMUNITY VOICES This question was asked and answered in ISTE Connect (connect.iste.org), home of ISTE’s Professional Learning Networks.

What are your favorite Spanish language resources for teaching STEM/STEAM topics?

Rachelle Dene Poth, a foreign language and STEAM teacher at Riverview Junior Senior High School in Oakmont, Pennsylvania, recommends these links because they provide diverse materials, ranging from lesson plans to STEM modules to books and more, making it easy to find what you want for bringing STEAM into the foreign language classroom. Having materials like these available makes drawing connections between different content areas and the foreign language classes easier, leading to more authentic learning for students:

Teacher’s Discovery goo.gl/vaZLzx

Silvina Sala, a librarian at Belgrano Day School in Buenos Aires, Argentina, recommends these collections:

Colección Ojitos Pajaritos by Universidad Autónoma de México & Editorial Fondo de Cultura Económica goo.gl/o2Fn6S Colección Animales al Natural Big Books by Editorial Fondo de Cultura Económica goo.gl/dsyfW8 Colección ¿Querés Saber? by EUDEBA Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires goo.gl/M58Qgx

Sonrisas Spanish Bookstore goo.gl/LVQWHd MisCositas goo.gl/hxEnve

Javier Leiva-Aguilera, a teacher, consultant, trainer and writer in Vic, Catalonia, recommends this book, which encourages the possibilities of creation while cultivating imagination, career awareness and self-confidence.

It includes coloring pages, cybersafety information, flashcards and word games:

STEM (Ciencias, Tecnología, Ingeniería y Matemáticas) Libro para colorear goo.gl/76AMw8

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Jennifer Liebman, librarian at Freetown Elementary School in Freetown, Massachusetts, recommends this catalog for fiction and nonfiction books in Spanish:

Martha Cecilia Ajiaco Martinez, a teacher in Bogota, Colombia, suggests finding resources in Spanish about technology in education and STEM at this website:

santillanausa goo.gl/LfHQah

Eduteka eduteka.icesi.edu.co

Juan Carlos Lopez, STEM and Computational Thinker Forum leader at Universidad Icesi in Cali, Colombia, recommends these resources:

Lecciones y actividades interactivas Hacking STEM goo.gl/sdm9AK EduCaixa goo.gl/1Y5KKr

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Three-month access to Nearpod Gold Edition and a $100 voucher to spend on award-winning digital lessons.

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