The Georgia Department of Education has received national recognition for its work to develop technology tools that help classroom educators meet the needs of students.
The 1EdTech Consortium, a nonprofit educational technology collaborative, awarded GaDOE its Power Learner Potential Organization Award, along with its Silver Learning Impact Award, this week.
“At the Georgia Department of Education, we are striving to provide high-quality, Georgia-aligned instructional resources that are interactive and practical for our educators,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said. “Our goal is to use technology to purposefully support teachers’ efforts in the classroom, and ensure all the tools they need are easily accessible – because their success is students’ success. We are honored to receive this recognition, and I wish to thank our technology services team for their hard work to develop tools that benefit teachers and students.”
The Power Learner Potential Organization Award is “given annually to organizations leading the way in creating innovative, open, and trusted technological ecosystems that power learner potential,” according to 1EdTech.
“Getting to the future of education requires cross-boundary leadership spanning IT and curriculum and instruction from stakeholders across K-12, higher education, suppliers, governments, and philanthropic funders,” 1EdTech CEO Rob Abel said. “Our Power Learner Potential Awards recognize those organizations that go above and beyond to take those collaborations to the next level to address the key educational leadership imperatives of our time.”
GaDOE received the award for SuitCASE, its digital platform for K-12 academic standards. (SuitCASE stands for System Unifying Instructional Tools using CASE; CASE is the Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange format created by 1EdTech.)
The SuitCASE platform places Georgia’s K-12 standards in a machine-readable format and allows for clear associations between each individual standard and related instructional resources – meaning teachers have a simple, streamlined way to access the information they need to design high-quality lessons.
“It starts with academic standards – that’s where learning begins,” GaDOE Chief Information Technology Officer Dr. Keith Osburn said. “Teachers are looking for digital systems to support what’s happening inside their classrooms, and that’s what SuitCASE does. It’s ensuring the availability of standards without coming at the cost of instructional time.”
The SuitCASE platform provides a unique opportunity for educators to engage with learning standards in the digital environment. Functions such as adding individual comments to any standard item, pinning an item to the frameworks board, and connecting to GaDOE’s Inspire application for curriculum maps and resources allows for a collaborative approach.
“It’s been a way for us to engage with the standards,” GaDOE Deputy Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Dr. April Aldridge said. “They become more than just a PDF. This is very important as we implement new standards, because it helps our teachers connect to what they know and have been teaching, and bridge to where they’re going now.”
