Partnering with Student Tech Wizards to Provide Professional Development at Schools

A key component of ensuring schools are preparing students for success in the 21st Century is the creation of student support teams. These teams are important not only for helping bring schools into the 21st Century, but they are also important because they tap into school's best resource for 21st Century success--STUDENTS.

In my recent work at a Technology Innovation Manager I have had the good fortune to be able to plan, create and vision ideas for innovation in Manhattan schools with Marc Prensky. Prensky's upcoming book, Partnering with Our Digital Natives taps right into the idea of positioning students as partners in learning. As I do this work and think about ideas for successful 21st Century schools in Manhattan, the timing of the article Creating Tech Wizards from ISTE's Learning and Leading magazine is perfect.

It highlights a school district in Pennsylvania that is creating Tech Wizards at their schools who develop innovative student-centered practices for teaching. Make videos capturing how to do this more innovative teaching that can serve as tutorials, and go back to their schools and provide professional development for teachers at thier school with support from their teacher advisor on how to teach in innovative, kid-friendly ways. You can view complete details of the program as well as samples of student work and videos of presentations, visit the Tech Wizards wiki.

Schools interested in developing teams at their schools can read Starting a Student Support Team in Your School and 5 Innovative Ideas for Student Teams that Support 21st Century Teaching & Learning. Schools that have or plan to launch student support teams may be interested in joining the Student Support Team group on The Innovative Educator network. There you will find Student Support Team Lessons and discussions on topics like What are the services you want to focus on for having Student Support Teams provide at your school?