Technology and Data Fluency Project

Deepening teacher practice and critically examining how technology supports learning

Fluency explores how technology/data can serve as tools to enhance the voices of teachers and students. Being “fluent” means gathering information, reconciling it with personal experience, and influencing public discourse. These are critical skills for actively participating in decoding and shaping our current context, and perhaps most significantly, constructing a connected and empathic future.

bookmark_border

Bookmark

Shortlisted

Overview

HundrED shortlisted this innovation

HundrED has shortlisted this innovation to one of its innovation collections. The information on this page has been checked by HundrED.

Web presence

2016

Established

-

Children

1

Countries

Updated

January 2019

What most excites me about participating in the Fluency Project is the opportunity to access and co-create learning tools and methodologies that will help my students both create data-driven interpretations of our world, and communicate their findings, feelings, and thoughts.

About the innovation

What is Technology and Data Fluency Project

Fluency is a process of deep inquiry, case-making, and advocacy. Guided by shared values, Fluency explores how technology and data can serve as tools to enhance the voices of teachers and students.

Co-powering teachers and students to be “fluent” means they can gather information, reconcile it with their personal experience, and influence public discourse. These are critical skills for both students and educators to actively participate in decoding and shaping their current context, and perhaps most significantly, constructing a connected and empathic future.

Using a cohort model, the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University collaborates alongside PreK - 12 educators and schools of education to design frameworks and experiences that focus on educator practice. Supporting educators in their own identities as teachers, learners, and designers, allows educators to critique and enhance their instructional design. Technology is an unavoidable component of students' lives, and Fluency provides educators with strategies for integrating technology in meaningful ways that support student learning and building student agency.

Implementation steps

Establish community

Convene a cohort that represents a cross-section of the learning environment, including teachers, administration, and staff members. Build a community that agrees to disregard traditional hierarchies of power/decision making, prioritizes critically examining their practice, and remains transparent in their learning process.

Derive shared values

Create consensus around values that will function as the cohort's anchor and compass. These values should respect and reflect the context of the cohort.

Create an asset-based framework

Acknowledge the strengths already present in the individuals and community. An approach of recognizing and building upon strengths allows for greater growth.

Reflective practices on pedagogy and purpose

Examine how students and teachers interact. Reflect on current practices for delivering content, and how meaning is created from content. Reflect on current instructional decision-making practice as a baseline for future growth.

Deepen knowledge of students

Knowledge of students is different than knowledge of what students know. Knowledge of students grows relationships, personalizes learning, and develops student voice and agency.

Connect with systems of learning and systems of the world

Learning does not exist in isolation, and must recognize the impact systems have on learning and that learning can have on systems. Exploring the interconnectedness of systems means co-constructing authentic learning experiences for both teachers and students.

Make small changes for big purpose

Beginning with knowledge of self, of students, and of systems, identify small changes that can be made in current practice. In establishing strategies for observing the effects of these changes, consider measurements using "non-traditional data."

Reflect

As small changes are made, dedicate time to explicit reflection both privately and in the cohort community. Through this reflection process, there is a return to values as the anchor of the work and the compass that can be used to guide the next small change.