wcaty has outlined a powerful design model for online and blended curriculum. we call it curriculum...

WCATY’s Curriculum with Character

WCATY has outlined a powerful design model for online and blended curriculum.

We call it Curriculum with Character.

Come and design with us. Learn how to play with tools, take risks, build

community, and tell the story of your content.

Through our work, we have developed quite a collection of learning resources, activities, three-week units, and syllabi.

Modes of Engagement

Tooling the Message

Narrative and Play

CharrettesThe Art of Online Curriculum Design

Excellence in Teaching

Library

Building Blocks

Curriculum Guide

The WCATY Online Academy: Where Practice Meets Theory

To Think Like a HistorianHow have things changed? Why do societies fail? How does language influence culture? How does conflict impact politics?

To Think Like an EngineerHow does it work? How are things connected? How do systems impact each other? What is most efficient?

To Think Like a DesignerWhat’s a new solution to this old problem? How does creativity work? How can you market your idea? What if?

To Think Like a ResearcherCan it be proven? Who/what caused it? What does it consist of? How is it similar or different from others?

Defining How You ThinkWho am I? How should power be distributed? How does perception differ from reality? How do I get to where I want to go?

WCATY: Modes of Engagement

Security vs. FreedomSupply vs. DemandContinuity vs. ChangeTime vs. Space

Leader vs. FollowerWant vs. NeedMind vs. BodyPerception vs. Reality

Realism vs. AbstractionElaborate vs. SimpleForm vs. FunctionRisk vs. Responsibility

Induce vs. DeduceInnocence vs. GuiltCorrelation vs. CausalityReason vs. Emotion

Predator vs. PreySimulation vs. RealityEnthalpy vs. EntropyQuantity vs. Quality

Core Conflicts

The Modes of Engagement is the theoretical framework within which we design our courses. The theory maintains that there are five central ways to interpret the world, which contain their own meta-concepts, core conflicts, essential questions, essential content, skills, processes roles and products. By developing these modes of thinking, students build a veritable tool set to make sense of our complex reality and to engage wicked problems.

Learning Goals

WCATY: Narrative and Play

How can you use characters in your classroom?When Kids Role Play: Perspective taking, voice development, research When You Role Play: Develop “bosses” changing who the voice of authority is in the classroom, or encourage discovery learning by developing other “non-player” characters who hold key pieces of information,

How can you use context (setting) in your classroom?Thinking about setting isn’t just an English teacher’s role. Developing clear context is key in helping students apply their learning. Settings can be developed for activities or can create unity through an entire less.

How can we encourage conflict in our classrooms?Conflict, failure, problems, these are all words we have tried to avoid in our classrooms, yet what is intriguing about a story without a conflict? We must learn to encourage risk, failure, iteration, dissonance, and conflict in our planning, so that students have experience tacking complex questions.

What does narrative and play have to do with sequence?Great stories innately create a sequence, a pattern of exploration. They know when you are getting bored, how to bring you back, and how to end with a bang. Similarly great play is created when course mechanics lead students through increasingly more complex problems.

Perspective TakingDiscovery Learning“Eye Witness” ReportsReflection Tools

Situational ThinkingUnifying SpacesSimulates Real World

Risk ManagementAuthentic ExperiencesCompetitionDissonanceDualism & Continuums

Mechanics & RulesInnovation CentersGroup size Activity SequencesInterest Curves

In traditional classrooms narrative and play have been the cornerstone of many educational approaches like game theory and the Scottish Storytelling Approach. Online, narrative and play take on a whole new meaning as teachers learn to situate learning so that students can practice real world thinking skills.

Key ElementsKey Elements

WCATY: Tooling the Message

Reflective LearningLearning is the process of internally examining and exploring.

Coordinated MeaningIn a conversation, people co-create meaning by attaining some coherence and coordination.

Brain-Based The brain is social. It develops better in concert with other brains.

ConstructivismAfter interacting to create more knowledge, students need to present how their understanding is changing.

Ending the battle over tools, WCATY promotes that idea that there is a time and place for all conversations. Once an online platform is selected, the key is matching up the right kind of tool/media with the right kind of desired communication.

Audio Journals

Mind Maps

Simulations

Telephone Conversations

Branching QuizzesBlogs

Skype Discussions Multi-player Games

Wikis & Forums

Radio Talk Shows

Performances

Showcases

WCATY: Charrettes

Integrated Curriculum and Higher Level Thinking

Creating Conflict, Dialectic Discussions

Real World Processes, Meaningful Sequence and Iteration Storytelling, Designing in Narrative, Directions and Visual StorytellingFeedback loops: How do we assess complex projects?

Environment Building Security, Data Flow, and Your LMS Using the Internet as Your Textbook

The Changing Voice of Authority

Using Tools to Differentiate

Using Tools to Build Community

Developing Teacher Buy-In, An Action Research ApproachThe National Stage: Advocating for Awareness

Motivation, Cooperation and Competition

Designing in Mechanics, Timing, Action & ReactionShow Don’t Tell, Modeling, Showcases, and Resource Centers

Choose Your Mode of Interaction

Mix & Match Create Tailored Sessions

Integrating The Model

Tools and Curriculum

Modeling the Interaction

WCATY: The Art of Online Curriculum Design

As the fast-pace of technology continues to transform our society, education must follow suit, innovating and expanding

learning tools.

What will you learn to do?

Manage the Web: Research and Organization

Master Tech Tips: The How and When of Tech Tools

Differentiate: Individualizing Student Learning Experiences

Select The Best Media: Text, Interactive, Audio, & Video

Create a Narrative: Selling the Story of Your Content Area

Mentor Success: Creating Your Own Teaching Voice

Evaluate: Design Feedback Loops & Create Student Learning Profiles

http://www.wcatyweb.com/program/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13&Itemid=28

WCATY: Excellence in Teaching

Register Students

Partner with WCATY

Work for UsHost a Course

WCATY: “Building Blocks”

Coming Soon

“Quick Start” Placemats: Info-graphs which visually communicate processes, quick solutions, conceptual frameworks, and activity ideas.

Online Modules: Three Week Course MOODLE Modules built to provide individual challenge and foster community.

WCATY: Library

Housing hundreds of syllabi, thousands of activities, and tens of thousands online tools and resources has taught us the value of organizing our resources. Our online library is student friendly, using teacher friendly search terms and will soon connect to a mind mapping tool that will help you build media rich syllabi.

WCATY: Curriculum Guides

WCATY is proud to introduce Curriculum with Character, Our Guide to Creating Great Online

Curriculum

A Conceptual Foundation for How to Think about an Integrated Approach to Developing Higher Level Thinking

Skills

Five Examples of Blended Curriculum that Range from Moderate to High Technical

Interaction.

A Myriad of Online Tools and Approaches

What will the guide offer?

WCATY: Ideas that Matter

Environment Building Security, Data Flow, Visual Appeal

and Your LMS

Needs Assessment and Follow-up : This survey will help you to identify site-wide needs from your learning management system, to map how it will fit into your current data flow and security plans, to maintain the backend database, and to explore the backend features available. Cut Down on the Busy Work of Grading: Setting Up the Hierarchy of Assessment: MOODLE allows you track student growth and curricular goals through several functions. This option helps you map your target learning outcomes into the system, while also helping you to think through evaluating what kinds of activities need to be graded and which ones don’t. Building a Broader Community: Explore a variety of site structures and design the internal organization of your own site. Think through where you would like communities to be formed, what size you would like them to be, and what security and roles should be used. The visual look of the space will also be discussed.

Small Group Discussion Focused on One Section

Workshop FormatFocused on Two Sections

Charrettes Focused on Three Sections


Using the Internet as Your TextbookGathering, Balancing, and Organizing the

Web

Kinds of Media and Mediums: Biographies, info-graphics, video satires and so much more. Learn to find the coolest, most interactive, most content rich sources on the web.

Cluster Grouping your Research: Immersive data is all about seeing patterns in your research. Learn to identify theme and correlations in your research which in turn can illuminate the structure and content of your course.

Organizing Searchable Content: Use tools like the glossary and resource centers to create safe, easily searchable “snap shots” of the web.





The Changing Voice of Authority

Plagiarism, Triangulation, Crowd Sourcing

and Policy Making

Discussing What is Quality: Is Wikipedia a valid source? How do we teach kids how use the web and still keep them safe? How can we teach kids to triangulate data?

Plagiarism: What does plagiarism mean in the age of “remixed” media? This session will take a fresh look at copyright and wide school plagiarism policies.

Crowd Sourcing: What voice should/do your students have in your learning environment? How could student polls change your teaching choices? What lessons do we model through crowd sourcing tools?





Using Tools to Differentiate

Designing Branching Curriculum and Branching Quizzes

Differentiation, As a Skill Builder: Learn to deconstruct objects so that you can provide scaffolding to students at a variety of different levels.

Differentiation, As a Concept Builder: Teach students to think in multiple dimensions by using WCATY’s Modes of Engagement to design student-choice activities around a clear theme.

Differentiation, As an Assessment Tool: Connect tools together in order to compare student self assessments to their actual decisions in simulated situations modeled after real world case studies.





Using Tools To Create Community

Innovation Centers, Showcases, and Student Forums

Innovation Centers: This section investigates how to create spaces online and offline for students to play, test and innovate.

Showcases: This section investigates how to use spaces that have large audiences as perfection motivators and teaches you how to build and organize student showcases in an online world.

Student Forums: This section investigates the promise and perils of student run online spaces. It looks at how to encourage professionalism, how to use student work and writing in tools like site-wide blogs to add a truly dynamic flare to your online space.





Integrated Curriculum A Cross Curricular Approach to

Higher-Level Thinking Skills

Themes and Problems that Connect the Subject Areas: This section looks at how to guide a cross-curricular team to build a project-based curriculum.

A Focus on Higher Level Thinking: Learn to target higher-level thinking skills in your activities, build upon those skills, and create assessments for them.

Making Sure the Content Isn’t Left Behind: Learn to remix the essential content of each subject area and to weave those content details back into the broad themes covered by the project.





Creating ConflictDialectic Discussions, Role Playing,

and Dissonance

Dialectic Discussions: Learn to find the duality, the conflict, in your subject area and help your student see the continuum in between the seemingly opposite points. Use the Socratic questioning process to continue challenge higher-level thinking skills.

Role Playing: Teach student perspective taking and researching skills, through role playing . Take it to the next level through understanding a variety of grouping strategies.

Dissonance: Seed you discussions with resources that conflict. Learn to build lessons which guide students through different levels of abstraction so in order to see how something may be true on one scale, but not in another.





Real World Processes Authentic Models, Activity

Sequencing, and Play Testing & Iteration

Explore a Variety of Models and Processes: Investigate the problem solving processes and models that professionals use so that you can simulate the real world skills your students will need.

Learn to Sequence Your Activities in Meaningful Ways: Look at a variety of ways to sequence your activities in order to create building focus units.

Play Testing and Iteration: Find ways to create cycles of design and development through out your units which encourage risk and allow for failure and revision.





StorytellingDesigning in Narrative, Great

Directions and Visual Storytelling

Context and Non-Player Characters, Set the Stage for your Multiple Personalities : Learn to create unity , audience, and change in your unit by incorporating one or many settings. Articulate the key voices and perspectives, create an outside authority figure, and create mystery and discovery in your units by using non-player characters in your online course.

Direction Giving: Evaluate a variety of attempts at direction giving and create your own constant format. Review the role of modeling, clear procedural steps, and detailed assessment expectation. And figure out how to do all of this in as few words as possible.

Visual Storytelling: Explore the basics of web design and l earn how to communicate visually in color, icons, and images.





Feedback LoopsFormative and Summative Assessment and the Role of the Authentic Project

for an Authentic Audience

Continuous Feedback, The Core of Online Teaching: This section investigates the differences between online and face-to-face teaching while exploring a variety of feedback techniques and time management tools.

Summarizing Student Growth: Learn to see your grade book in a whole new light by employing categories, aligning activities, and summarizing formative feedback already given.

Assessing Complex Projects: Look at a variety of approaches to assessing rich media and projects. They visualize what the learning targets you have selected will “look like” to create a rubric for success.





Developing Teacher Buy-In

Using an Action Research Approach to Model how to Create

Growth in Your Students

Choosing a Good Question: Learn to help teachers choose great questions targeted at district initiatives in order to encourage them to explore their own practice .

Learning to Collect the Data: Learn how to collect and analyze data in order to develop your own practice.

Revising your Practice and Continuing to Iterate: Learn to apply what you have learned and continue the process.





The National StageLaws, Attitudes, and Teacher

Voices

The Changing Role of Teachers: Discuss the difference between online and face to face instruction. Investigate what is great about tools and technology and what is essential about human interaction.

The Law and How it Impacts Online Environments: Explore the law behind online, copyright, student privacy, and school rights.

Learning to Advocate: Explore how you too should have a role in defining this new frontier.





Motivation Cooperation, Competition, and

Discovery

Cooperation and Community: Explore the depth of this ageless dualism, the educational theories that have supported both, and ways to incorporate both throughout your online space.

Competition: Risk and Rewards: Failure, risk, and problems, are not things to avoid. They are essential elements of great curriculum. Learn how to create safe places to invent and explore.

Discovery: Should we really make it all available at once? Isn’t there something about finding the information? Investigate the good, bad and ugly of creating discovery inside your online courses.





Designing in Mechanics

Timing the Pace, Action & Reaction

Exploring the Rules: What is the Difference between classroom rules and game mechanics? Learn to build rule sets that complicate problems instead of simplify them and see how they increase the level of challenge in your classroom.

Timing and Pace: Explore concepts like how video games chunk out their units of play, the typical interest curves and what you can do about it, and the balancing act between quality and quantity.

Action and Reaction: Incorporate sequences of events, decision gates, and secondary reactions in your online space to create a truly dynamic environment.





Show, Don’t TellModeling, Showcases, and

Resource Centers

Modeling: Explore the positives and negatives of providing student models and rubrics. Then lean how to create them, organize them, and present them in “just in time” formats online.

Showcases: Learn how to organize student work in classroom and platform wide gallery spaces.

Resource Centers: There are a thousand interesting resources on the web. Explore a variety of techniques used to build resource and exploration centers in online courses.




SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION

Time: 2 hoursTopics Covered: One section of your choiceFormat: Presentation and Small Group DiscussionMaximum Number of Attendees: 30Cost: $200

Workshops

Charrettes Time: Half of a DayTopics Covered: Two sections of your choiceFormat: Workshop, participants leave with a product or designMaximum Number of Attendees: 30Cost: $600Time: Full DayTopics Covered: Three sectionsFormat: Charrette, A group of stake holders are brought together to solve a problem and create a policy or design for the group. During this design session, key materials and resources addressing the three sections are added into the conversation. Maximum Number of Attendees: 30Cost: $1,200

INTEGRATION

BLUE PRINT

PRACTICE

wcaty has outlined a powerful design model for online and blended curriculum. we call it curriculum...

Documents

reflective learning

great play

modes of thinking

complex reality

theory slide

kids role play

complex problems

integrated curriculum