A Walk Through Park Ridge

Each year, on February 28th, the Alliance for Excellent Education sponsors a 'Digital Learning Day.' The idea is to celebrate and share the good work that teachers are doing, using technology to enhance, extend, and transform education. I figured it was a good prompt for creating a blog that does just that for Park Ridge.

Park Ridge Public School District has had a 1:1 program for over five years, meaning that we provide all students, 4-12, with laptops (Apple MacBooks here). As we wrote in the High School's Future Ready Plan, "since at least 2012, PRHS has had a consistent idea... of providing up-to-date technical tools to our learners, and doing that in an environment of innovation and shared responsibility." The inspiration for this blog is to spotlight and describe the ways in which technology and creative teaching help to produce students who are skilled in the big "C's" of 21st Century Learning; I hope to highlight the creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration that is a part of Park Ridge learning for students K through 12. I hope that this blog will also serve as an inspiration for other educators looking for examples of instruction.

I'll explain more about our goals as the blog develops, but let's get to the important part! I took the opportunity of Digital Learning Day to walk through all three buildings in Park Ridge, and take some photos of the ways teachers were using technology. So here's a view of one day in Park Ridge. Examples range from teachers helping us go paperless by using online study guides, to collaboration between students, to truly transformative learning with students as creators. I saw all this in one day of walking around Park Ridge!

Have a look at the gallery below:

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  Students in Creative Writing use online, shared resources for writing tips and grammar.

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  In Spanish 7, students collaborate by checking homework with a partner.

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  Preparing for a Science exam using an online study guide.

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  A Student in German IV Honors records herself speaking German, for an assessment that models the A.P. Exam.

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  Third-grade students use internet resources, in addition to print material, to research animals.

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  Students in Art (5th grade) use images and guides online to help guide their drawing of sea animals for a special project.

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  Students in A.P. European History use their laptops to take notes.

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  Students in Computers 8 complete a warm-up delivered through Schoology.

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  Programming in Python in Computer Science class.

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  An interactive PearDeck presentation beginning in Biology - students had just completed predictions using Flipgrid, and would respond back to themselves!

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  Students write essays in American Lit - teacher comments and peer-editing are much easier on Google Docs!

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  Students in the Media Center design something useful using Little Bits (electronic building blocks).

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  In Science, grade 6, students predict and then create a news segment on the outcome of a condensation experiment.

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  Surveying a class to find out what controversial topic will be the point of debate, in grade 5.

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  Fourth-graders learn about health principles, using an online game.

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  Third-grade students design a PowerPoint to present to their peers about weather.