Session Table Name: PALERMOThis Action lab is part workshop, part discussion, and part demonstration. Please bring laptops/tablets (not phones) to access sample materials, discuss and offer feedback! As OECD Edu2030 takes shape, we seek partners who can evolve the open content and become part of a secondary education consortium to share best practices and benefit from others' improvements. Materials will be shared at the session.
We need to change our relationship with both time and content in order to deliver truly 21st-century learning architecture. Nearly 20 years ago we began to question, dismantle, and then re-engineer multiple systems that better align with the modern flow of information, the neuroscience of learning, and the need for a global citizenry of lifelong learners. This Action Lab shares examples from 12 years of implementation of our
Integrated Science Program across a wide array of demographics inside public, private and international secondary schools (ages 13-20) in the USA, Malaysia, Japan, Brazil and Mexico. We firmly believe that OER for secondary education
must not be driven by digitized versions of 20th century textbook formats.
You will see in the materials and activities the ways we have expanded the definition of "open" educational resources:
- Open content organization by breaking down disciplinary silos to create a interdisciplinary STE(A)M program that replaces formal science class
- Openly connect the personal, local and global by using real-world issues & problems to drive content organization, including the incorporation of all 17 Sustainable Development Goals, while still meeting government and institutional course requirements
- Transform passive, closed textbook content to active, open "texts that teach"
- Open the roles of publisher, teachers & students, making them more collaborative and directly ensconced in the Information Age through a Sustainable OER model. We evolve ~15% of content annually and invite students to write & render ~30% of their ‘digital science textbook’
- Open learning architecture by using a multi-year progression rather than single-year courses. Students build layers of ‘conceptual threads’ across multiple contexts explicitly and in a personalized manner. This mimics brain activity during adolescence, a developmental period of high neural connectivity
- Open student assessment structures by linking individual performance tasks to common competencies, and by replacing a holistic task "grade" with several individual competency ratings. By connecting assessment over multiple tasks, units and years, students build personalized learning profiles over time (and also remove midterms and final exams in the process!)
- Discard proprietary platforms in favor of those used commonly in schools (Google Classroom, Microsoft Education), which maintain long-term, truly inclusive, open access to evolving productivity integrations, creativity add-ons and assistive technology tools. Schools can pilot emerging technologies without dismantling the structures of the learning progressions.
- Open students to a wide array of genres in authentic STEM, far beyond the digital textbook. We build on disciplinary literacy research to apprentice students.
