There will be 3 concurrent tracks for students to learn interactively and explore their passions, interests, gain increased awareness about their abilities, culminating in the development of group projects in those areas.
All learning interactions, group activities and projects will take place within an exclusive password-protected online hub, which will serve as both repository for individualized portfolios and shared work, as well as a platform for communication and collaboration.
Students will work asynchronously, interact with each other collaborating in these working interactions independently, and have a live Zoom videoconference every week as part of the process of creating community and learning together.
Track 1 – Curriculum – Students will learn, through a series of interactive focused lessons, with engaging Internet-based material, and practical exercises, higher order thinking skills and advanced topics, including:
- Creativity
- Critical thinking
- Advanced IT applications
- Multimedia creation and decoding
- Statistics and data processing
- Ethical implications of technology
- IP, copyright issues and Internet research
- Digital citizenship
- Collaboration
- Principles of design and design thinking
Track 2 – Interactivities
Every week, students will engage in collaborative interactive exercises which will seek to provide them with an opportunity to deepen their knowledge on the topics from track one as well as express themselves and get to know each other, forming a true sense of community.
Some of these interactions include:
- Exploring and developing a shared vision of the future.
- Survey on conceptions of learning.
- Validating Internet sites.
- Fact checking media.
- A gallery of AI and advanced IT applications.
- Games and simulations.
- Design exercises.
Track 3 – Individualized Realized curriculum
Each student will explore their passions, learning style and abilities, through the Individualized Realized curriculum, consisting of a step-by-step protocol that provides students with opportunities to systematically explore their learning styles, abilities, and topics that they are passionate about.
The process involves:
- Identifying passions via “lists”;
- Practicing Critical Thinking structures, unpacking concepts and practices
- Co-working mindset
- Connecting to values – personality tools plus UN Global Goals, etc.
- Imagining possibilities by connecting passion, values, Critical Thinking, higher order skills and academics.
- Developing executive function skills – time management, project management, backwards design & design thinking practice using Project Thinking template
- Feedback protocols for iterative thinking plus connection to essential (content based) and/or transferable (authentic, real-world) skills
Project creation
Individual projects or project thinking is taking place in weeks 1-3 as a means to honor the passions, skills, and learning needs of each member of the cohort. The group interactions during this time will point to like-minded potential collaborations as well.
During the second half of the project, students will be grouped in teams, sorted out by topics of common interest, to develop personal shared projects applying their skills and knowledge in a creative hands-on context.
This design thinking process includes interactions with external mentors, peer review, prototype creation, development of norms and procedures, and other elements that pertain to communities of innovation.