AISD'S Digital Montessori Vision for
Multigenerational Engagement
A draft proposed conceptual framework for Annette Island
School District, Metlakatla, Alaska.
By Frank Odasz
Tsimshian values have traditionally encouraged
creative adaptation to changing times and conditions, socially,
environmentally, politically, and culturally. The history of Metlakatla is testimony to this.
AISD
has embraced the importance of teaching Tsimshian
language and culture, most recently via a new Digital Montessori Preschool
initiative, while also dealing with State mandated extensive time-consuming
requirements regarding evolving standards and teacher evaluations. Innovative
synergies are proliferating leveraging new digital learning and expression
tools with creative methods for cultural celebration, expression, and
preservation.
The
five Montessori principles were borrowed from thousands of years of native
culture,
including the worldview as global citizens, as
perhaps one of the most important core principles. Historically, families lived
and worked together, learning together how best to adapt to survive, sharing
and supporting one another across generations. New digital connectivity and
devices, offer the opportunity to return to families being able to live, work,
and learn together.
It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes retaining youth to
sustain a village. It is now essential to the future of many Alaska Native
villages to educate youth on how they can make the living they want, living
wherever they want. Many villages have already suffered a major outmigration of
their young families, even as new broadband access offers the potential to learn-to-earn,
online, as more and more Alaskans are discovering.
What is new to traditional Montessori, is the K-100
intergenerational opportunity and teaching digital entrepreneurship in a social
enterprises and sustainable native lifestyles context. “Entrepreneurship needs
to be taught in primary grades so children grow up with entrepreneurship as a
lifelong option.” This can be done in 3-5 years.
"The
Similarities Between Montessori And Digital Learning."
http://www.teachthought.com/technology/similarities-between-montessori-and-digital-learning/
1.
Individual
Learning Progressions & Competency-Based Learning
2.
Elimination of
Age and Grade Restrictions
3.
Formative
Assessments & Short Feedback Loops
4.
Non-traditional
Teacher Roles
5.
A Global Citizen
Perspective
Modern
psychology has determined the basic personality is formed by the age of four,
making teaching native moral values during preschool years a priority. Learning
to “create and share” is fundamental to sustaining a village, particularly
using new digital tools. Examples;
Digitizing Alaska http://lone-eagles.com/digitizing-alaska.pdf
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/the-touch-screen-generation/309250/
Young children—even
toddlers—are spending more and more time with digital technology. What will it
mean for their development?
Quite
different from the capitalistic push for money, is the native tradition of
helping others as a priority. The two come together with what is essentially
the native invention of social entrepreneurship, where doing well by doing good
is the priority, instead of exploiting others for money as is all too common in
our dominant society.
Teaching
youth social entrepreneurship, starting in primary grades, so they grow up with
entrepreneurship as a lifelong option, needs to be a part of both AISD’s curriculum as well as Tsimshian
cultural sustainability.
New
opportunities to raise mutual understanding between traditional elders, and the
first digital generation, are under development, starting with both individual
and community self-assessments as to whether we’re individually, and/or
collectively, living by Native values, or not.
Preschoolers and Elders CAN learn together and mentor and
encourage
one another in meaningful ways. Home-based Ipad
learning for preschoolers, can dovetail with digital
entrepreneurship training for low-income parents, and many other forms of
family empowerment through ready access to essential information at any time.
The
opportunity exists to define new ways of measuring the sociocultural
contributions of citizens, and rewarding positive contributions with social
recognition, while flagging those negative behaviors that tear at the very
fabric of Tsimshian community and culture.
Tsimshian ethics and moral values are challenged
by modern access to inappropriate information on the Internet, now possible via
mobile phone and tablets, in the hands of most youth. Cyberbullying
via social media has caused youth suicides and is but one example of the risks
of modern access to unlimited information from global sources.
Youth
suicides are all too common, as Tsimshian traditions
are challenged by a world of
accelerating change. New meaningful roles for youth,
our first digital generation, are essential to define and encourage as part of Tsimshian culture’s ongoing creative adaptation to changing
times.
See new student roles in
this infographic;
How Digital Learning
Contributes to Deeper Learning
http://cdno4.gettingsmart.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/GS-DLinfographic_12-10-2012-REVISED.pdf
Through these NEW ROLES
students can connect to their future through authentic and meaningful learning.
Relating Montessori to Digital Entrepreneurship and Creativity;
Is Montessori the secret behind google
and amazon?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/08/02/is-montessori-the-origin-of-google-amazon/
This is the methodology of AISD’s Innovations Incubator’s modules.
http://aisdk12.org/innovationincubator/open-invitation/
Proposed Event Opportunities are
being designed to bring together AISD, the community of Metlakatla,
and all generations to discover their traditional values, and mutual
opportunities, aided by powerful new tools that offer a Global voice as a
historic first.
Learn More: Digital Montessori Resources:
http://lone-eagles.com/digital-montessori-resources.htm
Excerpt from Published Article, Dec. 2014, Broadband Communities, www.bbcmag.com -
The Challenge for Mass Innovation
http://lone-eagles.com/mass-innovation.pdf …
The
Alaska Native tradition of creative adaptation is alive and well in the village
of Metlakatla, on Annette Island, Alaska, as Tsimshian youth, even in elementary grades, are learning to
innovate with robotics, drones, 2D/3D printers, e-publishing and digital
entrepreneurship.
Although
the Metlakatla community is growing, most of the 65
southwestern Alaska villages with ARRA-funded microwave broadband (GCI’s TERRA Project) continue to suffer from youth
outmigration because no one has yet stepped up to provide the vision and
solutions for their creative adaptation.
However,
in Metlakatla, the NTIA/Connect Alaska/SBI Innovation
Incubator project is preparing the youth to launch a global MOOC (massive open
online course). They are learning to teach the world how Alaska Native values
of generosity and trusted mutual support have come full circle, aided by
powerful new tools for sharing, and are now being continually reinvented by
digital Natives of all ages. The Annette Island School District has quietly become
a model for all Native and rural school districts.
Social
media marketing outperforms other forms of e-marketing,
and scalable entrepreneurship innovations demonstrate that the “sharing
economy” – now up to $100 billion per year – is something to take seriously.
Airbnb.com allows anyone with a spare couch to instantly open a bed and
breakfast in any of 190 countries. Uber.com and Lyft.com allow anyone with a
vehicle to become a taxi driver, all mediated with secure transactions from smartphones.
And
then there is the emerging “Caring Economy” cited by Google’s CEO. Twenty-eight
percent of new jobs are expected to be in the health care industry, and new
health monitoring apps for the booming senior population offer opportunities to
reduce the trillions of dollars in overspending on health care.
