Designing the Contemporary Curriculum K-12:

Modern Content, Digital Literacy, Media-Savvy and Media-Making 

Essential Question: How do we prepare our learners for the future?

How can we design relevant and timely curriculum?

What do we cut? What do we keep? What do we create?

Date:  November 28, 2017- Tuesday 

Time: 8:30  AM to 3:00 PM

Who should attend:  Teaching teams, curriculum and instruction leaders, department chairs, principals, district curriculum leadership, professional developers.

Focus: We will dive into the revision and upgrading curriculum writing process in order to design engaging learning experiences.   Heidi will guide us in how to replace dated content with contemporary and timely issues, topics, problems, themes, and case studies.  In particular we will consider reliable sources for updating our lessons and activities.   Participating teams will examine digital literacy strategies on how to raise the ability of students to select quality apps and sources and how teachers can integrate them into units of study.   A major focus will be on media literacy, media criticism, and media making so that our students can create dynamic forms to demonstrate their learning whether a documentary, a podcast, or an infographic.   Teachers are encouraged to bring in curriculum documents, units, maps, or plans so that we can upgrade them directly in the session.  Some of our specific areas of focus will be:

• Determining pedagogy to guide curriculum decision making:antiquated vs classical vs contemporary
• Upgrading curriculum maps at each level
• Modernizing content to be timely and relevant
• Engaging learners in the new literacies:
  • digitally literate,
  • media criticism
  • media savvy
  • global competence
• Creating a school clearinghouse of vetted tools, apps, and websites rich with possibilities for learners
• Upgrading by taking existing curriculum and strategically replacing the dated with the modern (participants can bring in their units and courses)
• Modernizing assessments to match the needs for future career, college and life readiness in our classroom planning
• Juggling the demands of current testing practices

Deliverables:

Drafts of revised and upgraded curriculum units

Drafts of revised scope and sequence

Drafting differentiated PD plans to bring digital and media literacy work  our schools and colleagues