Help wanted: Model 21st century schools?

Which schools are good models that others could (should) visit to see what a new educational paradigm might look like?

This is the #1 question I get asked when I work with K-12 educators. I know a few, but I’m guessing that you know more. So I’m on a quest…

1. Think about who's doing a nice job in your state/country of infusing 21st century skills, digital technologies, problem- or inquiry-based learning, and other innovative practices into their school organization.
2. Go to the United States and/or International page at CASTLE’s Moving Forward wiki and add the name of the school organization and contact person in the appropriate place. If your state/territory/country isn’t listed, please add it.
3. Using the category list at the top of the page, indicate the category of innovation at the end of your entry so that visitors know which schools to visit for what. If you need to add a category, please do so.
4. Hyperlink the name of the school organization to its web site.
5. Repeat Steps 2 through 4 for each school organization that is a model of 21st century learning.

By Monday, April 27, I’m hoping that together we can identify at least 150 model school organizations, including at least 2 in every state and at least 50 overseas. I will be reporting out daily on our progress both here and via Twitter.

Please pass along this quest. The more model 21st century schools we get, the better resources these two pages will be for everyone. Feel free to use the logo as desired. Thank you!

Comments

[Claus]

1.

This is an excellent idea. We've done some similar work at www.publicschoolinsights.org, where we've assembled almost 100 stories about successful and innovative public schools and districts.

A sample of stories focusing on 21st-century skills and digital technologies:
* http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/node/2003
* http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/node/2025
* http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/node/2068

[M.W.]

2.

I wonder why 1:1 is a category to this wiki. Cash and Technology does not equal good education. It's not the nifty new tools you have, but that they bring to the classroom and how the educator uses them.

[Scott McLeod]

3.

@M.W.: Because the world is digital now. Because it's becoming increasingly difficult to find a good-paying job these days that doesn't require regular, ongoing, extensive use of digital technologies. So our schools have to stop pretending that it's still a paper world and go digital too (both students and staff). That's why I put 1:1 as a category...

[Andrew B. Watt]

4.

Thanks for making 1:1 a category in your wiki. I have teachers at my school who have decided that they need to teach SCRIPT to students.

Script is unrecognizable to every OCR program I have ever come across. Script improves awareness of how words are made of letters, and improves the ability to recognize whole words... but the time it takes to learn is time not spent mastering valuable new skills.

I taught myself script at the age of 25, after failing to master it in third grade. Doing so made me a better poet. Yet all of my teaching, all of my writing, all of my freelance work, is now done on computer. I earn the equivalent of an extra month of salary from my freelance writing, and I think that NOT teaching digital technologies, and NOT teaching suitable computer use, is criminal.

CRIMINAL.