21st Century Education Initiative - "You Should Care..."

Kids decide what they want to learn.

Incorporating technology to enhance student learning and creating teams of stakeholders to drive innovation in all school endeavors are two of a handful of best practices that educators from across the nation shared during a recent webinar on how to develop engaging learning environments.

How can schools accurately measure and categorize a student’s 21st-century skills?

Brains, Guts, Eyes, Ear, Muscles and Bones…Oh My!

Twenty-one high schools in four states are working this fall to restructure their academic programs into "lower division" and "upper division" courses that are aimed at readying all students for community college by the end of their sophomore year.

A concerted effort to reach the children who had fallen behind in core subjects, and who often came from the population of children living in poverty – at 40 percent, high even by Montana standards.

It’s the latest way that technology is changing teachers’ jobs — in this case it’s literally turning their workday upside-down. But teachers say flipped, or upside-down, classes offer greater control of material and more face time with students.

"If the United States is serious about the commitment of making transformational change in the K-12 educational system, we will have to take seriously the images you see today because it shows you what happens before children get to school," said Dr. Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the University of Washington Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences. "The first 2,000 days are critical."

The Hugheses showed a room full of educators at the annual Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics conference in Helena how video games are changing the way children — and even some adults — are learning about the world around them.

"Right now, schools are losing millions of dollars per year because students don’t come to the classroom."