Click Home

Click Home

Digital Literacy and Digital Inclusion Best Practices

Growing an Entrepreneurial Culture in Montana in 3-5 years

Share this at http://lone-eagles.com/montanan-innovations.htm

Proposed by Frank Odasz
     Lone Eagle Consulting
       Email: frank@lone-eagles.com
PH: 406 683 6270

Montana’s educational “digital best practices” strategies to prepare students to be globally competitive in the 21st century through education ideally will include such topics as global awareness, civic literacy, health and wellness awareness, and financial, economic, business, and entrepreneurial literacy. The emerging opportunity is a digital literacy and digital inclusion program showcasing E-learning-for-all “best practices” and essential online resources to help Montanans deal effectively with the current dire challenges. The first step, with your support, would be the proposed new online course "21^st Century Workforce Basics for Montanans," described below, followed by establishing a uniquely Montanan virtual center of excellence.

Growing an entrepreneurial culture among Montanan youth with emphasis on stemming youth outmigration and creating more stable and sustainable local rural economies becoming more feasible due to Montana’s growing rural broadband connectivity in the U.S. However, to mitigate the impacts of workers being removed from communities for major pipeline projects, which minimizes potential growth of sustainable local entrepreneurship, ecommerce and telework businesses and jobs, a youth E-entrepreneurship program is proposed. A unique partnership with the Montana University System, Montana Association of School Boards, and state and local economic development agencies is proposed to establish an online clearinghouse of broadband training and entrepreneurship best practices disseminating essential online resources and E-learning-for-all opportunities regarding:

The Montana Center for Sustainable Rural Families

JOBS: 21st Century Workforce Jobs Facilitation

ENERGY:   Green Clean Sustainable Lifestyles Education on Solutions

HEALTH: Community Wellness Broadband Applications

E-LEARNING FOR ALL: Montanan Mentors: A Virtual Support Network

GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP: Thinking Globally, Acting Locally

CULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY: Digital Storytelling and Culture Expression

     (An expanded outline is at http://lone-eagles.com/montana-center.htm )

The Montana Center for Sustainable Rural Families offers an elegant grassroots peer-mentoring platform that maintains an efficient clearinghouse of the best skills transfer instructional videos, screencasts, and friendly mentors, which allow Montanans to quickly gain the skills to deal effectively with their urgent dire needs and to engage meaningfully in the global information society and economy.

It is proposed that the above Montanan partnership will begin by inviting all Montanans, and particularly students, to identify best practices and resources for the six categories above to be peer evaluated and to begin populating this web site with their perceived best practices and best resources, By Montanans, For Montanans, using new social media efficiencies and building a collaborative community of communities. A literature review with additional examples of the booming use of social media by governments at all levels is at http://lone-eagles.com/social-media-trends.htm

The Kick-Off event for this project will be the launch of an online course intended for all Montanans, using the latest non-threatening Internet video instructional techniques, supplemented with robust online curriculum resources for Elementary, Middleschool, and High School educators and students. The emphasis will be providing classroom ready curriculum for direct student engagement. This course will be offered for recertification credit building on my 20 years experience teaching educators online.

This unique new course will include a special self-directed learning track for adults and non-digital Montanan leaders and legislators, both Native American, and non-native. This non-technical “Elderhood” track will present the overview understanding necessary for creating intergenerational support and participation for this overall initiative with cultural sub-emphasis on preserving elders stories and wisdom for all future generations, made possible through exercising the skills of the first digital generation. The most important component of this course will be easy tutorials on new Web 2.0 tools that allow anyone to create online instructional video resources for others. Example: View the 3 minute video tour at www.jingproject.com

The recent National School Board Association report on Social Media in Education further validates the potential:
Creating and Connecting; Research and Guidelines on Online Social- and Educational – Networking   www.nsba.org/site/docs/41400/41340.pdf

Proposed new online course: "21^st Century Workforce Basics for Montanans"
Designed for K12 educators, parents, adults, and including hands-on activities for learners of all ages, this course covers the essential concepts for global citizenship with emphasis on meaningful participation in the global information society and economy. Global citizenship demands an appreciation for cultural diversity, and an understanding of the emerging social media dynamics for social entrepreneurship, youth E-entrepreneurship, rural revitalization, global service learning, and establishing trusted relationships.
A draft outline is at http://lone-eagles.com/montana-inclusion.htm

Frank Odasz
PH: 406 683 6270

PS:

For your consideration, here is an additional opportunity for Montanans to lead the nation demonstrating how good people can best help others online:

Lone Eagle Consulting, in partnership with the FCC Tribal Telecommunications initiative, has established a Broadband Training Best Practices Clearinghouse. The FCC Tribal Telecommunications web site www.fcc.gov/indians site has posted the beginnings of a broadband training best practices clearinghouse at http://lone-eagles.com/best.htm (listed as "Examples of Broadband Training Best Practices") on their Internet Resources web page at http://www.fcc.gov/indians/internetresources/     With a new FCC chairman anticipated and a new President we can expect to see a lot of innovation related to Broadband and Social Media.

Ecommerce advocacy letter to Governor Schweitzer, September 2007
http://lone-eagles.com/support-montanans.htm

My online paper trail via the visual search engine at http://searchme.com represents my history.
Enter "Frank Odasz" and click "search all" to see the Flash display samples of my past work. Try adding Montana, too.

Since 1998, I have been teaching two graduate online courses for educators via the Alaska Staff Development Network and Alaska Pacific University. These two online courses and many web-based curriculum projects created through these courses by Alaskan educators are at http://lone-eagles.com/teachercreated.htm

Lastly, below is an example of my most recent online course, created using the Moodle platform.

July 2008: Completed creation of a 3 credit graduate course for K12 Educators for New Mexico State University:

"Web 2.0 for K12 Classrooms"
If you'd like to explore this new online course - go to http://reta.nmsu.edu/moodle and login in as ID: franko PSWD: moodle1 and scroll down to "Web 2.0 for K12 Classrooms." It covers social media basics; blogs, wikis, podcasting, social networking, widgets, and many multimedia formats. The lesson text for lessons 11 and 12 addresses global themes related to poverty reduction, teaching entrepreneurship in primary grades to grow a global entrepreneurial culture in 3-5 years, and the commercialization of online learning. In short; how we'll learn to earn, online as part of a global information society and economy. The resources wiki is at
http://web2fork12classrooms.pbwiki.com