Building a Digital Skills Learning Ecosystem

College & Career Readiness

The Pathway School, founded in 1961, serves students with Autism Spectrum Disorders, intellectual disabilities, serious emotional disturbance, and other neurological impairments. The educators at Pathway had the vision to develop a campus-wide STEM program that would include every subject and every grade level. However, Pathway faced several challenges to fulfilling its vision: Pathway teachers were not familiar with coding. Pathway students were averse to failure and lacked the skills and patience needed to troubleshoot problems. The learning environment was complicated due to missed classes, learning disabilities, transfer students, and students with varying skill levels all working on the same material.

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SOLUTION

BSD worked with Pathway to provide solutions to overcome these challenges: Instructional Support – Comprehensive professional development and ongoing coaching for teachers that gave teachers the knowledge and confidence to teach digital skills Curriculum – Curated curriculum that focused on computational and design thinking that developed students’ curiosity, adaptability, and resilience Platform – BSD Online provided a customizable, turnkey solution for integrating a scaffolded technology curriculum into all core content areas

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RESULTS

The outcome of Pathway’s partnership with BSD is a foundation for a digital skills program and ecosystem the supports learners and teachers. Learners: Real-World Problem Solving Skills – The lesson developed students’ real-world computational and design thinking skills. In fact, after 10 weeks of coding with BSD, one student was promoted from a volunteer position in data entry to a paid development position by their employer. Teachers: Digital Skills Knowledge & Confidence – The Pathway School gained a cohort of teachers trained to instruct digital skills and technology. Those teachers can now lead their classes confidently and grow the school’s digital skills learning community. 80 students prepared for the future 10 teachers trained to instruct digital skills 6 curated courses created