Blended Learning | Education Elements | Curriculum Strategy & Adoption
Education Elements is thrilled to unveil our new online course, Getting the Right Product Fit: How to Select a Digital Content Portfolio, to help schools and districts navigate the digital content marketplace and create a digital content portfolio to meet their needs. Early in the blended learning movement we recognized the complexity of the fractured digital content landscape and set out to demystify the selection process and support districts curating digital content portfolios. Over the past three years, we’ve helped hundreds of schools make selections and have formalized our tested approach so everyone can learn from our experiences.
It is easy to get distracted by bright shiny objects. Teachers and leaders often find themselves weighing the pros and cons of different digital content options and getting overwhelmed by the choices. In our years of experience with digital content, we’ve learned that there is no single perfect solution and, in fact, our clients have often been best served by thoughtfully layering several content providers. Therefore, understanding a school’s priorities, the online and offline data that drives instruction, and the range of student needs prior to starting the search for content is critical to success. Getting the Right Product Fit helps teachers and leaders to do this.
To help schools master the difficult process, we’ve broken our digital content selection course is into three different books designed to walk teachers and leaders through a series of discrete steps to facilitate and streamline their selection process.
BOOK ONE: Digital Content Landscape
This book provides district and building leaders with a better understanding of the history and landscape of digital offerings within the ed tech marketplace. This book lays the foundation before you get started on your search by helping you to:
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Understand key categorization and terminology of ed tech products
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Identify where the digital content landscape is strong with many players and price points and where the digital content landscape is more sparse
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Get a sense of the typical roles that digital content can play in your educational environment
Understanding the landscape will help you to make more informed choices.
BOOK TWO: Digital Content Characteristics and Framework
Intended for district/CMO and school-based instructional leads, this book introduces Education Elements’ proprietary Digital Content Framework and Rubric, and provides detailed examples about how to evaluate digital content. Book Two is full of tools including:
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Digital Content Rubric where each section is explained through videos describing the category as well as examples of digital content options that best portray the category.
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Framework to determine key priorities for needs This framework helps create alignment between different groups within a district or school looking to purchase content together.
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Demo guides to help you know what to look for (and give you a tool to use when you have multiple stakeholders all evaluating content)
Armed with knowledge about how to review any digital content offering with the framework and rubric, you can select content to demo and begin thinking about how you might “layer” content that aligns with your school and district priorities. (Read our previous post about layering digital content).
Book Three: Digital Content Preferences Inventory through Implementation
Developed for district and school-level project managers, this book covers a streamlined stakeholder input process and project plan. This book has even more tools including:
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Toolkit of template resources, such as an implementation project plan, an internal education and communications deck
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Google form you can customize and use immediately to include stakeholder voice
Bonus lessons round out your understanding how schools can integrate digital content effectively into their curriculum and schedule through two real world examples.
An AMA (Ask Me Anything) Hour
We know that as much as you read, practice, do and discuss with your team, sometimes you want to talk to an expert. So each license comes with an hour of Education Elements consulting!
You can learn more about Getting the Right Product Fit here.
