Key Strategies of the Digital-Age Learning Plan

The plan contains five interdependent strategies to advance 21st Century learning in Indiana communities:

1. Strategic Planning for 21st Century learning. A series of 21st Century awareness and strategy sessions will be offered for school corporation superintendents and their leadership teams and strategic partners. That series will be a mandatory precursor for eligibility for the Threshold Grant program (see #2 below). The series will be an opportunity for state and local level discussions among educators, students, business and industry representatives, families, and community groups on 21st Century learning. Through these events, a common vision, knowledge base, vocabulary, and set of resources will be established in communities across the state related to 21st Century skills and Digital-Age learning.
   
   
2. Threshold Grants: Student-centered Learning. The Threshold Grants provide opportunities for all school corporations to engage students in rigorous, meaningful, 21st Century learning. Each threshold grant will focus on curricular projects that will actively engage students in the use of technology for learning. The threshold grants will fund a systemic approach to re-engineering each classroom by building each teacher’s readiness to use technology effectively in the context of the classroom projects. The grant, which requires some local matches in funding, includes:
   
   
   • technology tools for principals and teachers, usually in the form of laptop computers to be used for anytime, anywhere learning;
   • professional development, not only for technology integration, but also for building teacher proficiencies for redesigning curriculum around 21st Century learning,
   • personalized and individualized coaching for each teacher that directly relates back to the local school plan and the classroom projects for students
   • increased access to classroom technology and digital content.
   
   
   
3. Transformational Grants: Engaging Students in 21st Century Learning. Many school corporations in Indiana are ready now to implement innovative technologies and 21st Century learning. The 3-year Transformational grants will be awarded competitively, and will enable pioneering districts to get started immediately. The intent of these grants is two-fold: to advance new 21st Century innovations with K-12 students, and to scale promising technology-based innovations to larger numbers of schools and/or school corporations. All public schools would be eligible to apply provided they demonstrate high degrees of readiness to use technology effectively. These grants will include a mandated research component that will document evidence of impact. Those projects that get promising, research-based results will serve as exemplars for other school corporations. The state will establish the ‘best of the best” as demonstration sites and will disseminate information about lessons learned and research models.
   
   
4. State Leadership and Support Structures. While much of the transformational work will be done at the local levels, the state has an important role to play in providing the policy structure, infrastructure, guidelines, and economies of scale that provide efficiency and effectiveness statewide. The Indiana Department of Education will lead initiatives on projects including the following: online testing, data systems, infrastructure/networks, virtual learning, learning portal, professional development, evidence-based technology solutions, measurement tools, strategic planning and assessments for 21st Century learning, and strategies for high-quality evaluation and research.
   
   
5. A Shared Responsibility. The vision and goals set by this ETC for Digital-Age Learning can only be accomplished through leadership by local school corporations in partnership with the state legislature, the Governor’s Office, the Indiana Department of Education, other school corporations, the Educational Service Centers, higher education institutions, and the students, their families, and the communities in which they live.