In continuing my quest to blog more – here are two more questions that appeared in my twitter feed today that prompted a post!
MAET student Mr. P tweeted:
Do you have any examples of scope and sequences for elementary tech?
I did some quick searching for you. The first things that came up on google were quite old, so I restricted the search to the past year. (Search results here)
Most of the scope and sequences that popped up were aligned to the ISTE Educational Technology Standards for Students or to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. A really nice feature in the publication section of 21c website are the skill maps for each individual curriculum area.
The National Educational Technology plan can be found by visiting:
http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010
And finally, the state of Michigan Educational Technology Standards and Expectations can be found by visiting
http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,1607,7-140-28753_33232_37328—,00.html
Using these international, national and state standards will be very helpful as you are developing your own scope and sequence. Take the best from the existing frameworks and be innovative and fill in gaps that exist. As you’re in the process of building your scope and sequence, consider crowdsourcing – I see great potential here! Keep us updated on how you’re progressing.
MAET Student Ms. R Facebooked:
Shout out to all of my teacher friends: Does anyone have any good resources to help me teach a careers class? (Leigh, do you know of any good technology sites that might help?)
First off, I love that I was mentioned in the Facebook post! What an honor! When I went to the State of Michigan Department of Education website and looked up the curriculum for “Career and Employability Standards” I was quite surprised to see the standards had not been updated since 1998. Quite a bit has changed since then! Looks like the area is ripe for a committee to rewrite the standards – if you’re interested I can find out who to contact and you can be instrumental in making change happen.
For your class, I think starting with the ISTE/21c skills I suggested to Mr. P above would be a great place to start – they will assist in setting up the flexibility and innovation your students will need to prepare for jobs in fields that don’t exist yet. I think the kids would love the “Quickfire challenge” idea. Take a look at the existing state benchmarks, keep the ISTE/21c skills in mind and let your imagination take over – I would be happy to help in the brainstorming process.
Whenever the word “career” is mentioned, I think of @MSUAAJohn (John Hill) Director of Alumni Career Services at MSU. Additionally, we have the Career Services Network at MSU which has gathered quite a few online career resources. I’m sure John would love to connect with a fellow Spartan (and with potential future Spartans in your classroom) to help bring an outside perspective to your students (live via Skype or even a brief recording.)
I hope this helps get the ball rolling!