Denver High School adopted a 1:1 initiative during the 2012-2013 school year.​

 

Throughout our first year of being 1:1, teachers and admins routinely reflected on ways the inititive effected our classrooms.  Teachers noted change in instruction, students noted changes in resource access and admins noted a change in communication.  The positives of having a 1:1 program were evident in almost all areas.

 

But what about 21st Century Skills?

 

All teachers are responsibile for including some of 21st Century skills into their classroom.  We know that all Iowa Core skills are being taught in our high school classes.  But if you look at those skills, you notice that they are not application specific.  We found ourself having difficulty answering this question in regards to technology:

 

 

When our students graduate from high school, what can they do?

We did a lot of professional development on technology in the years leading up to going 1:1.  This ongoing professional development helped make our teachers more confident in integrating technology into their classes.  However each teacher has a different skill level and does different things in the classroom.  While everyone was integrating technology, there was not a mandated set of technology skills teachers needed to use.

 

High schools are strange places.  Students choose courses and attend those classes. Each student's four year high school career is unique and is often not identical to another's course pathways.  We were finding that students that happened to wind up in technology rich classrooms were learning technology skills that other students were not.  The technology skill acquistion was a grab bag: some got this, some learned that, some learned a lot, some did not get very much exposure to technology skills.

 

How can we make sure that all students are learning basic technology skills?  AND How can we give opportunities to those students interested in technology?

We wanted to answer that question: What do our students know how to do?  For example, we wanted them all to know IMovie.  So, should we mandate that every teacher in the high school teach IMovie?  That would ensure that all students were doing it.  It would also mean that each student was doing it 7 times.  Should we just require it for certain required classes (Government, Language 9, Biology, etc)? What if those teachers are not comfortable teaching the technology skill?

 

Our course catalog also didn't include a lot of opportunities for further technology exploration for those students interested in technology.  How can we provide access to advanced technology skills for these students?

 

In the Spring of 2012, I came across I professional development gamification platform designed by Christopher Like from Bettendorf, IA.  I read about his teacher technology skill challenge, a self-paced way to deliever technology instruction to his teachers.  I found a few things compelling about his design: 1) the set-up of it being a game where you earn points and have a leaderboard and 2) the fact that instruction on technology skills is given through a self paced format in which the user chooses the direction.  I think it is a great way to deliever technology professional development to the teachers.  But could it work with students.

 

The Design

I started making a list of technology skills, from the most basic to some advanced challenging levels for interested techies.  I kept adding things and sketched out what looked like 8 different levels.  Each level had a dozen or more challenges.  Each challenge worth a point.  

 

Because technology is ever-changing, building these challenges was flexible.  I could at any moment delete a challenge when that technology no longer becomes relevant.  I can add a challenge the minute we are exposed to a "new" skill or application.

 

I also wanted to include a lot of digitial citizenship and responsible behavior challenges.