Laying The Groundwork...

Yesterday's Professional Development session on SEM focused a lot on laying the foundation for what is 21st Century Learning.  What will be required of teachers to effectively reach 21st Century Learners?  How can we teach and prepare students for careers and fields that don't yet exist?  These are all questions we attempted to tackle.  Check out these two videos we referenced:

Dan Brown's Open Letter to Educators
Changing Education Paradigms by Sir Ken Robinson
The videos above will certainly get you to thinking on the direction we're heading!
We then spent a large amount of time discussing how S.E.M. can address the needs of 21st Century Learners.  S.E.M. provides students opportunities to explore learning based on their own interests and talents... What could be more compatible with 21st Century Learning?
While it has taken us a bit of time to get S.E.M. "off the ground," we all agree that now is the time!  This will be an extremely laborious task and process (as we saw at Laurel Mountain Elementary), but we are ready to begin.  Check out our Journey to S.E.M. roadmap below.  It was part of the vision that was shared with the Austin faculty yesterday afternoon.

Thoughts???