Rhode Island is Future Ready

Future Ready Schools implement personalized and digital learning best practices and tools.

Take the Pledge!

RI superintendents are Future Ready

The RI Superintendents Association discuss the values and benefits of using the Future Ready dashboard and tools at their March 2016 meeting. Tom Murray, from the Alliance for Excellence in Education, joined the group to share the power of the free action oriented tools in accelerating personalization within our RI districts. Mario Andrade and his team from Bristol Warren shared their story and leadership strategies for implementation and empowerment in their district. Visit the Bristol Warren website to find out more about their vision and what is going on. #EmpowerRI

Future Ready Summit

Rhode Island was the proud host of the New England Future Ready Summit in April 2015. Thirty-three district leadership teams came together to discuss their vision for student learning and begin making plans for using technology effectively - ensuring the following Future READY components are evident in all schools, to benefit every student. Twelve Rhode Island teams expanded their resources by networking and sharing ideas, strategies, and challenges in their digital transition.

Personalized Professional Learning for Future Ready Leaders

Strong leadership is essential to systemic, sustainable change in education. Superintendents throughout the country have expressed the desire for evidence-based approaches they can rely upon to lead this change. The Future Ready Leaders project responds to this need by providing a systematic review of research and a personalized playlist for district leaders generated from 50 short, high production quality videos. Also visit the U.S. Department of Education's EdTech page for more tools for district and school leaders.

Power Your Digital Transformation with the Dashboard

A digital learning transformation is a vast undertaking that requires district leaders to mobilize numerous stakeholders and an array of resources under a common vision of student-centered, or “personalized,” learning. As you embark on this journey, the focus must be on the learning, not the latest tech tool on the market. With so many variables involved in the process, how can you be sure that your digital learning transformation is successful?

A key element to consider is leveraging the free FRS Interactive Planning Dashboard (the Dashboard) to support more informed decision-making. The Dashboard is designed as a team building exercise that may occur over a few months time. When complete, it provides a road-map for district leaders focused on transforming instructional pedagogy and mindsets, while creating a sustainable approach to learning powered by strong instructional technology practice. The Dashboard includes free assessment tools that can be aggregated at the district and school level to reveal a more comprehensive picture of “digital readiness” across a variety of indicators aligned to the Future Ready Schools Framework. Using this information, district leaders can then leverage the Dashboard to build a strategic plan for digital learning transformation that is sustainable and customized to meet their unique needs.

Future Ready Dashboard: Rhode Island Program

Personalization is a key priority area in the RIDE 2020 Strategic Plan. The vision for success in 2020 includes a Rhode Island educational system in which every student is enrolled in rigorous learning environments that meet their individual needs and through which students progress based upon their demonstrated mastery of essential, aligned, and agreed-upon rigorous academic and 21st century skills. Starting in early childhood, students should have access to personalized learning experiences that are experiential, blended, flexible, and differentiated; as a result of these experiences, students will be able to control the pace, place, and content of their learning experience while meeting state and local requirements. Rhode Island middle and high school students will have access to a wide range of high quality early college and early career training programs that enable them to earn high-value, portable credit and credentials. Rhode Island schools and districts will have systems and opportunities that expand students’ access to personalized learning, and teachers will have the skills needed to enhance personalization in and outside the classroom.

The goal of statewide planning is to prioritize strategies, focus resources, and create the conditions for success at the state level that support all RI school districts move toward crafting personalized, high quality, rigorous learning environments that successfully utilize technology in combination with effective teaching strategies.

If you have already used the dashboard or are currently using it, we would welcome the opportunity to include your data in the aggregate report. Please give us permission.

FUTURE READY DASHBOARD

Personalized Student Learning Gear graphic

Focus on High-Impact Strategies

Every district needs a starting point. The first step is building your FRS team to progress through the Dashboard. As you progress, you will see that FRS has engaged with successful digital learning practitioners to curate a large number of high impact strategies for effective digital learning implementation. These strategies are designed to align to specific gaps that are revealed as a district team goes through the Dashboard’s leadership assessment and the Gear-by-Gear assessments. These strategies are based on research, best practice, and previous experience. Each set of strategies is customized for a district to use as part of their unique action plan moving forward in an effort to ensure successful implementation.