Teaching Digital Skills for the Age
Clued-Up teaches children skills for the digital age. We use Project Based Learning (PBL) and Design Thinking Methodology that focuses on creativity. Our goal is to create a learning environment that is fun. Our classes are small size. We foster self-expression, critical thinking with an emphasis on cognitive flexibility, problem solving and building technological literacy.
About
Clued-Up was created as as a summer virtual run digital class for my children and their friends, during COVID-19. It's based off of my own learning and experience. I believe in the importance of teaching our children the skills they'll need to thrive in the digital age.
I consider myself a creative technologist and believe our imagination and curiosity drive innovations. Our children are natural story tellers and native adapters to the digital age, combining the two in a virtual format made sense to help develop skills for the future.
Clued-Up classes are creative based and teach digital skills, in a fun environment. Our classes are best suited for ages 9 to 13.
Our approach:
Our Digital Skills Classes use Project-Based-Learning (PBL) and Design Thinking method, to create digital projects.
Key Knowledge, Understanding and Expectations: At the start of the project the teacher focuses on key knowledge areas. Students are encouraged to do research to and engage in discussion to build understanding around key concepts.
Creativity: Students have the creative freedom create and build a product. Our questions are open ended and intended to spark curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking. Students are encouraged to use their imagination to come up with original ideas and/or research around areas of interest.
Critical Thinking/Problem Solving: We review steps and process for task completion. We encourage problem solving and use mind map to organize our ideas and discover clever, ways to connect or create new ones.
Expectations: We decide as a group to narrow down our choices. This way we continue to practice critical thinking and decision making. We re group to go over key concepts and how it can help us build our product. We explore various plot diagram and what it takes to write a well-crafted story.
Project Development: The project evolves through daily active engagement and step by step process. Students work in teams and individually.
Collaboration: Team members learn to build on each other's strengths and negotiate tasks and outputs as they work together.
Consideration: Students engage in frequent opportunities to join with the larger group, to share progress, reflect, ask questions and make the changes as necessary.
Assessment: Frequent assessments around progress, individually or as a group and taking feedback to improve projects.
Final Product: The project requires students to demonstrate what they've learned by creating a product that is presented to parents and families and/or posted online for access at the end of the class.
Feedback: Students review the final product, compare, and contrast specific elements of the work and the degree to which they have aligned or changed from the original plan.
Recent Projects
