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Welcome to the Digital Learning Plan (DLP) monthly newsletter. This newsletter will explore the Wyoming Department of Education’s (WDE) DLP, its goals, and suggested strategies to ensure equitable access to opportunities and success in postsecondary, career, and civic life.
Getting Started
The Five Step Planning Process is designed to help educators with creating sound, research-based action plans to implement personalized, student-centered learning. Embarking on this work takes leadership, time, patience, courage, collaboration, trust, and some trial and error to get it right. With that in mind, this planning tool guides district teams through collecting and analyzing data on their readiness across each gear in the Future Ready Framework, identifying specific strategies and next steps for implementation, and producing a comprehensive action plan for implementing their specific initiative.
Congratulations on completing the first step of creating your district’s Future Ready School (FRS) action plan. Now that your district has a team, you are ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work. Step two walks each team through assessing the district’s readiness for implementing personalized student-centered learning.
If you missed the first step, you can read the September newsletter to catch up.
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Measure District Readiness
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Task 1:
Distribute a copy of the self-assessment, so each member can think through the items and select responses that resonate with their understanding of the district.
Task 2: Take the District Leadership Self-Assessment as a Team (Estimated time: 1.5-2 Hours)
In this task, your team will take the assessment. Schedule a meeting with your FRS planning team. It is recommended to have a facilitator for this meeting that is not part of the FRS planning team. This will ensure the team stays on track and can focus on the questions instead of navigating the system. Use one computer connected to a projector so the team can read and discuss each question before the answer is submitted. The full assessment process takes between an hour-and-a-half to two hours, depending on the length of the discussion. The facilitator should encourage all participants to voice their opinions, especially if they disagree. An imperative part of the planning process is to create an environment where a culture of respect and trust is the norm. This assessment is not intended to be completed by a single person; responses should be representative of many voices.The facilitator will walk through each question and input the answer once consensus has been reached. Upon completion, the facilitator will be the only one to submit the assessment.
Pro Tip: It is recommended to provide donuts, cookies, cupcakes, dinner or other snack items and caffeine to entice great discussion.
Watch this video tutorial provided by Future Ready.
Task 3: Analyze and Discuss the District's Readiness Report (Estimated time: 1 to 1.5 Hours)
The results usually populate within 20 minutes of submitting the assessment. But it is probably best to schedule a separate meeting to review the report as a group. FRS project managers are encouraged to export the report to a PDF format and distribute it to the district leadership team.
While analyzing the results, district teams should work collaboratively through the following guiding questions:
- Do the overall readiness scores reflect where you thought you were as a district?
- Which results were most surprising? Which results confirmed your thinking?
- What is our district doing well and what needs improvement based on this readiness level?
- What other stakeholders should join the conversation for each of the gear areas?
- For which FRS gear does the district have the most leverage to make improvements?
In this meeting, it is also recommended to appoint a FRS Planning Team Member to oversee a gear. This team member will help facilitate the stakeholder assessments in Step 3.
- Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment.
- Personalized Professional Learning.
- Budget and Resources.
- Community Partnerships.
- Data and Privacy.
- Use of Space and Time.
- Robust Infrastructure.
- Collaborative Leadership.
Make sure to keep the Future Ready Gears handy for review as you look at the results and review the guiding questions.
Join Us
The Future Ready pre-Conference is set from 1-4 p.m. at the 2019 Wyoming Innovations in Learning Conference on November 5.
This pre-conference session is focused on helping teachers, school leaders, and district leaders learn more about becoming Future Ready and what is could mean for your school or district. Bring your self or bring a team to work through the toolkit! (Laptop required).
Click here to learn more.
Stay Tuned
Next month’s Digital Learning Plan Newsletter will focus on Step 3 of the Future Ready Action plan - Gather Input from Stakeholders.
For more information on the DLP, or the Future Ready Frameworks, contact Alisa Cook at 307-777-3679 or alisa.cook1@wyo.gov.
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