Creating Student-Centered Innovation Zones to Promote Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Purpose & objective

Participants will learn how the ISTE inspired Innovation Zones can support a school transformation. They will be able to develop the project plan maintaining the Zones’ long-term and making them sustainable and inclusive. Participants will also learn how to target every social group represented in their community including students and educators, talented students and students with special needs and English Learners. Participants will learn how the the ISTE Standards for Educators and Education Leaders can guide them in providing equitable access through the Innovation Zones so that teachers could enhance and extend their lessons by incorporating Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to meet the diverse needs of their students. Participants will learn how all teachers and students could demonstrate teaching and learning through multiple means of representation, multiple means of expression and multiple means of engagement.

Participants will experience the ISTE inspired Innovation Zones that will demonstrate how teachers can help facilitate and accelerate a shared vision where all students became creators and producers and not only consumers of technology. Participants will learn how they can support students by giving them significant voice and choice in setting learning goals and helping them to become self-aware of their own learning preferences. They also influenced change and decision-making because they help teachers align their instructional practices to the three kinds of knowledge in the TPACK Framework. As teachers utilize an Innovation Zone they needed to plan for the topic they are teaching, how they are going to teach it and what technology they are going to use. The Innovation Zones support teachers to connect content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and technological knowledge.

Outline

OVERVIEW (20 Min): Presenters, ITFs and/or ITI Director provide an overview/background of the student-centered pedagogy and explain how educators can individualize learning by differentiating instruction utilizing 4 Innovation Zones. Participants will learn how the ISTE Standards can be introduced in the classroom and then reinforced and developed as students progress through the Innovation Zones. Presenters will provide Practitioner school examples such as at Hope Street Elementary School where by the end of the school year all teachers will have rotated through the school’s innovation zones providing students the opportunity to engage in learning that is aligned to the ISTE Standards.

BREAKOUT SESSIONS:
ITFs/Teacher hands-on demonstrations. Participants rotate to each 45 Minute session.

SESSION 1: Innovation Zone #1 - Computer Science/Coding and Robotics
SESSION 2: Innovation Zone #2 - Media Arts/Literacy

DEBRIEF/REFLECTION: All participants debrief and share their experiences of how the Innovation Zones could help schools facilitate implementation of the content standards in alignment to the ISTE student standards.

Supporting research

Innovation Zones: Policy Flexibility to Reimagine and Modernize K-12 Education Post-COVID-19 - https://aurora-institute.org/resource/innovation-zones-policy-flexibility-to-reimagine-and-modernize-k-12-education-post-covid-19/

The LEGO Foundation: Learning through play at school
https://www.legofoundation.com/en/learn-how/knowledge-base/learning-through-play-at-school/

California Board of Education: Digital Learning Integration & Standards Guidance
https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/dl/dlintergstdsguidance.asp

California Digital Learning Integration & Standards Guidance Webinar 2: Designing Instruction Implementing Research-Based Digital Learning Practices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMiGODEqnOE