Digital Citizenship: Resource Roundup

Check out Edutopia's collection of articles, videos, and other resources on internet safety, cyberbullying, digital responsibility, and media and digital literacy.

http://www.edutopia.org/article/digital-citizenship-resources?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=102815%20enews%20DC%20ngm%20%20remainder&utm_content=&utm_term=fea2hed&spMailingID=12802831&spUserID=NTUzNDkwNzA2MzgS1&spJobID=641924451&spReportId=NjQxOTI0NDUxS0

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: AUGUST 19, 2011 | UPDATED: OCTOBER 21, 2015

Resources by Topic:

• Internet Safety and Cyberbullying
• Digital Responsibility
• Media and Digital Literacy
• Other Resources From Edutopia
• Additional Resources on the Web

Internet Safety and Cyberbullying

• Tool or Weapon? Addressing Cyberhate in the Classroom, by Jinnie Spiegler (2015)
  Classroom strategies to fight cyberhate include not supporting or reinforcing it, reporting it, supporting the targets, speaking out against hate, and engaging in activism. For more resources on preventing cyberbullying and other forms of bullying, see Edutopia's "Resources to Fight Bullying and Harassment at School."
• Social Media at School: Teaching Safety on the Virtual Playground, by Mary Beth Hertz (2015)
  Responsible digital citizens emerge from schools where students are taught about the rules, risks, and trust involved in the safe, respectful use of social media.
• What Your Students Really Need to Know About Digital Citizenship, by Vicki Davis (2014)
  Teach your students about the "9 Key P’s" of digital citizenship as you help them acquire both proactive and experiential knowledge of the online world.
• A Starting Point for Ensuring Student Online Privacy, by Anne O’Brien (2014)
  The online privacy debate has started to gain momentum in the education community and protecting students is an important and necessary conversation to be had by schools and districts.
• The Importance of Internet Safety, by Heather Wolpert-Gawron (2012)
  Wolpert-Gawron discusses the importance of teaching students online safety and netiquette and how to partner with parents in this effort.
• How to Teach Internet Safety to Younger Elementary Students, by Mary Beth Hertz (2012)
  Hertz shares some insights into adapting Stranger Danger lessons for the virtual world. For more about teaching internet safety and digital citizenship at the elementary level, also read her post, "Teaching Digital Citizenship in the Elementary Classroom."

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Digital Responsibility

• The Basics of Open Technology, by Ira Socol (2015)
  From abundant tools and smart budgeting to accessibility and trust, the Albemarle County Public Schools maintain a district-wide tech program that leverages digital literacy for all students.
• Five-Minute Film Festival: Are We Addicted to Technology? by Amy Erin Borovoy (2014)
  Can't put down your device? Obsessing over social media? You may want to dig in to this playlist of videos and resources to help educators, parents, and students reflect on their relationship with technology

• Common Core in Action: Teaching Online Ethics, by Heather Wolpert-Gawron (2014)
  Wolpert-Gawron looks at a key element of digital citizenship -- responsible use of intellectual property -- and slots it into the eighth grade Common Core Standard for gathering, using, and attributing relevant information.
• Five-Minute Film Festival: Copyright and Fair Use for Educators, by Amy Borovoy (2013)
  In K-12 education, it's a challenge to navigate the copyright and fair use waters. What can educators use? How can they use it? VideoAmy has collected some fun, engaging videos to help teachers and students understand the confusing subject.

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Media and Digital Literacy

• Empowering Student Relationships With Media, by Josh Weisgrau (2015)
  Consider this working with this new taxonomy or ladder of engagement when assigning your students media projects: consuming, curating, creating, critiquing, and publishing.
• The Strategic Imperative for Schools: Technology as Connector, by Matt Levinson (2015)
  If schools hope to prepare students for an unknown future, they must make technology easy to use -- through hardware, software, mindset, and practice.
• Amplifying Student Voice Through Digital Literacy, by Andrew Marcinek (2015)
  For students to grow into their digital voices, they must understand the value of personal communication and projecting their own work on the global stage.
• Introducing Social Media to Elementary Students, by Beth Holland (2013)
  Holland, communication coordinator and instructor at EdTech Teacher, gives three age-appropriate examples of introducing social media to children in the lower elementary grades.
• Digital Native vs Digital Citizen? Examining a Dangerous Stereotype, by Mary Beth Hertz (2012)
  Hertz invites us to look at our assumptions that all kids are born tech-savvy and encourages us to think more globally about how we can teach them to thrive as citizens in a digital world.
• Plan a "Digital Family Summit" to Engage Students and Parents, by Joe Mazza (2012)
  Principal Mazza recounts his visit to the Digital Family Summit and talks about how, with digital media, children and their parents can learn and play together.

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Other Resources From Edutopia

• Digital Citizenship Week: 6 Resources for Educators, by Matt Davis (Updated 2015)
  Digital Citizenship Week is the perfect time for students and teachers to talk about online responsibility and safety. Davis has collected some of the best resources to bring digital citizenship into the classroom.
• Social Media in Education: Resource Toolkit, by Ashley Cronin (Updated 2015)
  This collection of blogs, articles, and videos from Edutopia aims to help teachers deploy social-media tools in the classroom to engage students in 21st-century learning.
• Five-Minute Film Festival: Teaching Digital Citizenship, by Amy Erin Borovoy (Updated 2014)
  VideoAmy explores the topic of digital citizenship with this playlist of videos on the importance of online safety, manners, privacy, and responsibility.
• Digital Citizenship: Developing a Culture of Trust and Transparency, by Andrew Marcinek (2014)
  Turning a forbidding acceptable use policy into a friendlier digital empowerment guideline can shift your school culture into a more tech-friendly place.
• The Path to Digital Citizenship, by Andrew Marcinek (2013)
  Marcinek looks at the ethical and practical sides of digital citizenship and suggests a mindful path for teaching the necessary skills in the elementary grades.
• Ideas for Digital-Citizenship PBL Projects, by Andrew Miller (2013)
  Miller suggests using the PBL model to teach students the values of digital citizenship.

How to Teach Internet Safety to Younger Elementary Students

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/internet-safety-younger-elementary-mary-beth-hertz?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=102815%20enews%20DC%20ngm%20%20remainder&utm_content=&utm_term=fea3hed&spMailingID=12802831&spUserID=NTUzNDkwNzA2MzgS1&spJobID=641924451&spReportId=NjQxOTI0NDUxS0

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: JUNE 4, 2012 | UPDATED: OCTOBER 21, 2015

Mary Beth Hertz

HS Art/Tech Teacher in Philadelphia, PA

Photo credit: Amelia Wells via flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Back in October, I wrote a post about Teaching Digital Citizenship in the Elementary Classroom. As it is Internet Safety Month, I want to share a sample lesson for teaching internet safety to students as young as kindergarten. Yes, you read correctly . . . kindergarten.

With children spending time online at younger and younger ages, it is vital that we explicitly teach young children how to protect themselves online. Most young children get the "Stranger Danger" talk at school, so they know about how to handle strangers in their neighborhood and in face-to-face situations.

There are three considerations when addressing Internet safety with these students. First, the transfer of handling strangers in "real life" to those in virtual environments is not automatic. It needs to be taught. Second, while most "Stranger Danger" programs teach that strangers are scary, mean and want to hurt or abduct children, this contradicts the way collaboration occurs between strangers online. Not all strangers are dangerous. Lastly, in "real life," students can walk or run away from a potential threat. In an online environment, the danger is inside a student's home and hard to escape without the necessary skills for handling tough situations.

This is a lesson that I have done with my kindergarten and first grade students to introduce the idea that strangers exist on the Internet and to discuss how we should interact with them.

Protecting Private Information Online

Materials

• Projector
• Computer
• Internet access

Introduction

(If a projector and/or interactive whiteboard is available, these questions can be projected on a screen during the discussion.)

1. Ask, "What is a stranger?" After soliciting various answers, ensure that students understand that a stranger is someone we don't know. Remind students that some strangers may want to hurt students, but not all strangers are bad people. You can give an example of a stranger who opens a door for you or picks up something you may have dropped and returns it to you.
2. Ask, "What kinds of things should we not tell a stranger?" Solicit a variety of answers, ensuring that things like "address," "phone number," "full name" are mentioned.
3. Ask, "What kinds of things are OK to tell a stranger?" This question tends to be harder for students to answer. You may get answers like "Hi" or "How are you?" If students are stumped, have them vote with their thumbs about various things like "your favorite color" or "your favorite ice cream flavor." Explain that certain kinds of information won't put students in harm's way.
4. Ask, "Are there strangers online?" Some students may have played games online before and may offer answers related to those experiences. I've had students as young as kindergarten say that they think there are strangers online because you don't always know who you are talking to online. After a brief discussion of different ways we can connect with strangers online (this can also include game systems), explain that students will be watching a video to learn more about how to handle strangers online.

Video

Have students watch the Internet Safety video at BrainPop, Jr.

Discussion

After the video, ask students to share what they learned from the movie. After soliciting some answers, review vocabulary from the video using the "Word Wall" activity on the site. Then, to wrap up the discussion, complete the "Write About It" activity.

Assessment

• Print out one of the quizzes (easy or hard, depending on your students) to assess what students have learned.
• Have students act out scenarios that show their understanding of the main concepts from the video.
• Have students create an internet safety poster using a drawing program like TuxPaint.
• Have students act out scenarios to practice handling strangers online.

Next Steps

Discuss places online where students may run into strangers, and let them share stories of times that they "met" a stranger online and how they handled the situation.

MARY BETH HERTZ'S PROFILE

Modeling Constructive Online Behavior

OCTOBER 22, 2015

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/modeling-constructive-online-behavior-david-cutler?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=102815%20enews%20DC%20ngm%20%20remainder&utm_content=&utm_term=fea1hed&spMailingID=12802831&spUserID=NTUzNDkwNzA2MzgS1&spJobID=641924451&spReportId=NjQxOTI0NDUxS0

Photo credit: hackNY.org via flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Plenty of students may know how to create digital media, but too few know how to produce engaging, high-quality content, the kind that makes them stand out not only to college admission officers, but also to potential employers. What does that kind of quality involve? We need to teach and encourage students to post original, outstanding content that will distinguish their unique identities in a sea of increasingly indistinguishable resumes -- which are going the way of the typewriter.

To help accomplish this task, I model creating a positive digital footprint by making effective use of social networking and blogging. I owe my students that much -- after all, if they don't take control of their online identities, someone else will.

Facebook

Educators do students a tremendous disservice by demonizing Facebook, which can enhance a student's online presence and real-world prospects. To maintain appropriate boundaries, I do not accept friend requests from students or recent graduates. Still, I'm a firm believer in using class time to show students my profile. I explain how my page makes a strong, lasting statement about who I am and what I value. I always think twice before sharing any content, and I tell students that before I hit "Post," I imagine friends or loved ones looking over my shoulder. What would they think? If I feel a shred of unease, I either ask a trusted friend for her thoughts or refrain from posting. My aim is not to frighten students away from Facebook, but rather to help them see how their profile can lead to positive connections and real-world opportunities.

Twitter

I also show students my Twitter account, which includes links to articles that I've written, content that I've enjoyed, and causes that I support. I explain how Twitter has led to a long list of opportunities, relationships, and exchanges -- both online and in person -- contributing greatly to my personal and professional success. I encourage students to follow people that they genuinely admire and from whom they want to learn, not just celebrities, thereby contributing to a positive digital identity. The same holds true for any content that they share, as well as whom and what they tag. I don't follow current students on my Twitter handle, nor do I accept private messages from them. I do, however, encourage them to observe how I engage with others to expand my network. I hope they follow suit.

LinkedIn

When it comes to creating a dynamic curriculum vitae, all students (especially seniors) should direct admission officers and potential employers to LinkedIn. This social networking site is often described as the "Facebook for professionals," but its potential is just as rich for students, who should use it to highlight their accomplishments and interests. It's also simple to upload multimedia content, and I urge students to share digital versions of their best work to highlight their unique passion and potential. LinkedIn allows other users to vouch for a student's skills, lending credibility to self-reported abilities. With that in mind, I'm often torn about accepting LinkedIn requests from current students -- though I err on the side of caution -- but I have no qualms about showing students my LinkedIn page and how I use it to enhance and grow my network.

Snapchat

Educators have an obligation to investigate and talk with students about social networking sites, some of which promote inappropriate, illicit behavior. Snapchat, for example, offers users the ability to send text, photos, and video, which (supposedly) disappear shortly after opening. Of course, nothing ever really disappears on the internet. With limited technical knowledge, anybody can save or recover Snapchat messages. I disdain this tool, but I don't tell students not to use it. Such an authoritarian approach, however well meaning, rarely proves fruitful. Instead, I ask my students to discuss what assumptions, true or not, could be made about anybody who has an account. Moreover, what types of people might make such assumptions, and how could this impact a student's future? Relative to other social networking sites, I also ask if Snapchat can greatly enhance a positive digital footprint. The answer is usually a resounding "No," and I leave it to students to decide if they wish to register or keep their Snapchat accounts active.

Blogging

More than anything else, I want students to share their passions and interests with the world. Along those lines, it has never been easier to create a blog and help make that sharing a reality. Wix and Weebly offer an array of templates with intuitive drag-and-drop options. I teach WordPress in my online journalism class, which involves slightly more brainpower. The technology is the easy part, though. The real challenge is producing quality content on a regular basis, and making wise use of social networking to promote one's work. I share with students how much work and love went intoSpin Education, my blog. Often, I relied on my editor, also a talented teacher, to inform me of when I was being unfair, overly harsh, or too kind. I want students to learn from my blogging experience, which has opened the door to even greater sharing opportunities.

How should teachers go about modeling effective use of social networking? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.

DAVID CUTLER'S PROFILE

Life's simple recipe: VC, LFA quartet take muffins, coffee and conversation to the streets.

http://blogs.theprovince.com/2015/10/21/lifes-simple-recipe-vc-lfa-quartet-take-muffins-coffee-and-conversation-to-the-streets/

The Principal of Change Stories of learning and leading - By George Couros

You can contact George Couros at georgecouros@gmail.com - http://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/5450

Why I focus on #DigitalLeadership Instead of Cyberbullying

When we constantly talk to kids about cyberbullying, what ideas are we putting into their heads? We have a constant focus on “here is what you can’t do”” as opposed to here is what you can do?

For years, I have been writing about the concept of Digital Leadership, and shared this definition in 2013:

Using the vast reach of technology (especially the use of social media) to improve the lives, well-being, and circumstances of others.

This little video reminds us how small actions can not only improve the lives of others, but they can easily spread.  That influence on others is a powerful trait of leadership, and something we should focus on when talking to our students.  It is not about what we can’t do, but more importantly, what we can. This belief in ourselves and our students can make all of the difference.

How Having an iPhone Changed Me—in the Worst Ways.

on Jul 15, 2015

My name is Sage. I am 15 years old, and first received an iPhone of my own at the age of 13.

After two years of having the iPhone heavily impact my view on myself and my surroundings, I decided to leave it behind, and recently traded my iPhone in for a regular Pantech.

I had been so caught up in Instagram, Snapchat, and random videos on YouTube that I didn’t realize how the little phone in my hand had slowly turned into the huge monkey on my back.

Even after less than a month of being completely off my iPhone, I started to see not only my mental, but serious physical and emotional patterns change.

Yes, the iPhone did make useful and even fun activities accessible in the palm of my hand, but it also changed who I was.

When I got my first iPhone, I was ecstatic. I was just about to graduate the seventh grade, and was ready to take on life as an “adult.” My parents, who had finally warmed up to the idea after my constant begging for years, didn’t realize their mistake until they started to see me change so completely.

It only took me a couple of months with the iPhone to lose touch with nature, gain an attitude, and start to loathe myself. I would spend time admiring others’ lives, wishing I could look like someone else, or be like those “other” girls. I stopped appreciating who I was and became negative and cynical, always comparing my life to others.

Even though social media is meant to make friends, it did quite opposite. Rather than making real interactions and plans with peers, it turned me into more of an introvert, spending more time with friends online than in person. Even if I went out and saw some of my friends, we would all sit next to each other, faces blankly staring at screens. I cannot blame the iPhone for making me download these certain social apps, but as a teen, the pressure from society and fellow peers to be accepted completely shattered any willpower I had.

These apps had become almost like a drug to me, and I was addicted purely to the thought of fitting in, which is basically the whole concept that social media projects.

Of course I have to appreciate what the technology of the iPhone has done for me, but I also had to realize what kind of person it was encouraging me to be. I spent so much time wanting what I didn’t have rather than appreciating the amazing things I did. My mom asked, almost pleaded for me to leave the iPhone behind since basically the beginning, but I had become attached to it, refusing to admit what negativity it had created in my life. Even six months ago, I would’ve never imagined the thought of life without an iPhone.

It took becoming seriously depressed and completely isolating myself from my family and close friends to realize what owning an iPhone had done to me.

After only a few months of being iPhone free, I have done amazing (and real) activities with friends, picked up an instrument, and re-bonded with my fellow family members. I’ve stopped arguing constantly with my mom, who I dearly love, and most of all began to actually explore who I am. Not just writing an Instagram bio for myself, but actually creating memories that will truly shape my identity.

I feel not only more accomplished, but more appreciative of who I am, rather than hating myself because I’m not model skinny or don’t go to huge spectacular parties every weekend. I’ve used the energy I spent moping over what I could look like or what I could be doing, to actually start doing things with my life, like making the damn best muffin recipe I’ve ever tasted.

I stopped wishing, hypothesizing and wanting, and began living, doing and being.

There’s nothing more important than being in the moment, and it’s good to be back in my own moment, rather than spending time wishing I were in others.

 

Author: Sage Nuessle

Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: Michele Ursino/Flickr

Why We Should Prepare Our Students to Work at Google: Part 1 by Dante Luciani

In this day and age it seems to be the answer to everything.

What weekend does Father's Day land on this year? Google it.

What will the street view of your new apartment look like? Google it.

Who is this new teacher that was hired? Google them.

Who seems to know exactly how to run a creative, profitable, and happy company? Google.

Over the last 20 years, there have not been many companies that have been more revolutionary than Google. They have brought the world's information to our fingertips and seem to have a lot of fun in doing so. It would be difficult to accomplish what they have without having astronomical amounts of creativity brewing within their company.

In their new book, How Google Works, business executives Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg give readers a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on at those fun Google offices that we've seen all over the world.

Google is very proud of the environment that they have created for their staff. It is a culture that promotes creativity, wellness, collaboration, and enthusiasm. All qualities that should also be present in a classroom where, as teachers, we strive to get the most out of our students' potential.  

A consistent term that is mentioned many times in the book was, Smart Creative. A smart creative is an adjective to describe a Googler (Google employee). These are the people behind Google Docs, AdSense, Gmail, a self-driving car, and any other cool innovation that comes out of their offices that seems to make our life a lot easier. Schmidt and Rosenberg define a Smart Creative as, "a person who combines deep technical knowledge of his or her trade with intelligence, business savvy, and a host of creative qualities." These individuals are no doubt uncommon and would be a hot commodity for any employer. As educators, would this not be exactly the type of students that we would like to foster?

All of our students possess an individual passion. It is not always obvious to others but it is somewhere in them and its often struggling to get out. A huge influence of mine, Sir Ken Robinson, describes this passion as one's element. In his book The Element, Robinson describes this state as "the place where the things we love and the things we're good at come together." 

If we could help foster their Element, not only will they enjoy their learning more but we could also show our students the avenues that could allow them to monetize their passion to develop a business savvy. The creative qualities will follow. 

When a student feels they have the freedom and opportunity to be creative, innovation becomes possible. It is this innovation that allows companies like Google, Apple, Nike, and other highly successful brands to have such a large impact on their consumers. These companies are on the leading edge of their field and do so because they hire employees who fit the fluid description of a Smart Creative.

Our schools should foster the smart creative that lies inside each of our students. You'll never know what you may uncover!

Enjoy!

Dante

Up next: Part 2: How Can We Prepare Our Students to Work at Google.

Posted Yesterday by D Luciani

Grade levels could be a thing of the past in schools focused on competency

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BY ANIKA ANAND, CHALKBEAT AND ANN SCHIMKE, CHALKBEAT  May 13, 2015 at 2:55 PM EDT

Some educators says grouping students by age is too important for social-emotional development to give up grade levels altogether. Photo by Fuse/Getty Images

Originally posted on Chalkbeat by Anika Anand and Ann Schimke on May 11, 2015

In a suburb just outside of Denver, Principal Sarah Gould stands outside a fifth-grade classroom at Hodgkins Elementary School watching students work. This classroom, she explains, is for students working roughly at grade level. Down the hall, there are two other fifth-grade classrooms. One is labeled “Level 2 and 3,” for students who are working at the second and third-grade levels. The other is for students who are working at a middle-school level.

But some of these students won’t necessarily stay in these classrooms for the whole school year. The students will move to new classrooms when they’ve mastered everything they were asked to learn in their first class. This can happen at any time during the year.

“We have kids move every day. It’s just based on when they’re ready,” Gould said.

Six years ago, Hodgkins Elementary worked the same way most schools and districts do: Students were assigned to a class for a fixed amount of time and were promoted when the time ended, assuming that they had gained the skills they needed for the next class — and sometimes even if they had not.

Now, the school is part of a growing movement toward “competency-based education,” which replaces “seat time” with skills as the main standard for whether students are promoted. Competency-based education goes by many names — mastery-based, proficiency-based and performance-based education — but the idea is the same: Students are measured by what they’ve learned, not the amount of time they’ve spent in the classroom.

Innovations in technology and how teachers can monitor students’ progress, along with changes to regulations about how long students must spend in class, have made it possible for schools and districts to adopt competency-based systems in an effort to use students’ time in school more effectively.

At least 40 states have one or more districts implementing competency education, and that number is growing, according to a 2013 KnowledgeWorks report with the most up to date numbers on the trend.

But competency-based education doesn’t look the same across the country. In fact, advocates say schools and districts fall on a “competency continuum,” based on which aspects of competency education they’ve implemented.

When advocates talk about a “pure” model of competency education, they describe a model that isn’t bound by grade levels or the Carnegie unit, a measure of the amount of time a student has studied a subject in class. At that end of the spectrum, schools like Hodgkins or New York City’s Olympus Academy have essentially gotten rid of standard K-12 grade levels and only move students to the next learning level if they’ve proven they’ve mastered the concepts. (The schools generally must track students by grade level for funding and state testing purposes, even if their classes are not designed for single-age cohorts. Some advocates, including officials in Hodgkins’s district, want state policies changed to allow competency-based learning schools to track students differently.)

“Education systems in the past have been notorious for jumping on bandwagons but nothing substantially changes under the surface. In our model everything has changed under the surface,” said Oliver Grenham, chief education officer of Hodgkins’s district, Adams County School District 50 in Colorado.

But at the same time, advocates acknowledge that the “full system overhaul” is a heavy lift and that schools need to start from a place that makes the most sense for them based on their time, resources, and community support. For some districts, the clearest path has been to create new schools based on the model, as Philadelphia did this year when it opened three high schools that assign students to “workshops” rather than classes.

The schools retain some of the traditional school organization, but are working toward replacing standard grading with a detailed, competency-based matrix that lets students know at all times where they stand and helps them understand their own strengths and weaknesses.

Traditional letter grades don’t give students much information about what they know and can do, said Thomas Gaffey, the technology coordinator at Building 21, one of the three Philadelphia schools. The competency-based evaluation he helped design “makes the learning process transparent,” he said.

More often, schools have nestled a competency-based philosophy within their existing operations, maintaining their grade-level arrangements while adapting how they assess student learning.

“We’re a hybrid, which is what I think appeals to people who look at our model,” said Brian Stack, principal of Sanborn High School in New Hampshire. “It’s not vastly different from what they do with a traditional model, but it’s not so far out on the spectrum that it’s unattainable for them to get to where we are.”

At Sanborn, students are still enrolled in traditional classes and still receive credit for class at the end of the year. But all the courses have defined core competencies and if students don’t gain those competencies, they have to do extra work in order to earn credit for the class, rather than simply accepting the lower grade. The school is also in the process of doing away with numerical grades in favor of a scale that ranges from “limited progress” to “exceeding expectations.”

“We grade kids every day,” Stack said. “The difference is, what are you doing with that grade? Are you using that as feedback to tell students how they’re doing and to inform instruction or are you just using it as a determination to say did they know it or not?”

Stack said as much as he would like for his school to be totally unbound by seat time, its model is still dictated by the school calendar.

“If we can’t move kids when they’re ready, we can at the very least try to personalize instruction to the extent possible when they’re with us,” he said.

Other schools offer their own reasons for maintaining grade levels while rolling out a competency-based approach.

After a competency-learning pilot in math yielded major gains for California’s Summit Preparatory charter schools, the network adopted the approach in most academic subjects — and considered going further.

“We thought eliminating grades was the gold standard ideal,” said Adam Carter, chief academic officer. “We thought, ‘Those stupid grade levels are holding us back.’”

That changed when Summit officials thought through what they would lose by doing away with grade levels and realized that students benefit by belonging to a fixed cohort that advances together. “If students can plug into a project that is rich and full of layers, we don’t need to get rid of grade levels,” he said.

Schools operated by Rocketship, a national charter school network, regroup students four to six times a day based on their academic skills, in a robust example of how educators can use student data to foster competency-based learning.

“But we still have grade levels because of the social-emotional needs of students, especially early elementary,” said CEO Preston Smith. “Five-year-olds need to be with 5-year-olds most of the day so they can develop the life skills they need to be successful.”

Advocates of competency-based learning say the diversity among schools’ approaches should be expected — and appreciated — as more experiments take shape.

“Each school and each district is on its own journey and they’re going to have different entry points,” said Susan Patrick, president of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, which champions online and blended learning models that are often part of competency-based programs. “Most school leaders who are implementing this well … had been working on the building blocks for three to six years.”

Lillian Pace, senior director of national policy for KnowledgeWorks, said, “Naturally, you’re going to see a tremendous amount of diversity in implementation. … That’s healthy. We need to try different approaches. We need to figure out ultimately which methods are the most effective.”

For now, the experience of schools like Hodgkins suggests that competency-based education might help engage students in their learning.

When kindergarten teacher Jenn Dickman recently asked for volunteers to share their “data notebooks” with a visitor, her students rushed en masse to grab the binders.

Jayleen Vasquez was first in line. She flipped quickly through the pages—each a mini-progress report of her skills. At the top were headers such as, “I can read a Level D book with purpose and understanding” or “I can read 50 sight words in 100 seconds or less.”

Underneath were columns shaded in colorful crayon hues showing whether she’d met the goal, and if not, how much farther she had to go.

“I passed these. I got those two right and this one I just forgot one. I did not pass this one,” she said, gesturing to one page. Then she concluded with pride: “I passed all this.”

This story was produced as a collaboration among all news organizations participating in the Expanded Learning Time reporting project. Reporting was contributed by Sue Frey for EdSource California, and Dale Mezzacappa for the Philadelphia Notebook.

Chalkbeat Colorado is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

PBS NewsHour education coverage is part of American Graduate: Let’s Make it Happen, a public media initiative made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.