Digital Promise

Digital Promise is a nonprofit organization authorized by Congress to spur innovation in education in order to improve the opportunity to learn for all Americans. Through its work with educators, entrepreneurs, researchers, and leading thinkers, Digital Promise supports a comprehensive agenda to benefit lifelong learning and provide Americans with the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the global economy.

Digital Promise is focused and committed on closing the Digital Learning Gap, and recognizes an important part of that is making high-quality maker education available to all students. The projects under Digital Promise’s Maker Learning initiative focuses on opportunities and resources for educators to bring elements of maker education into their work:

Maker Learning Leadership Framework

The Maker Learning Leadership Framework is a toolkit for education leaders as they work towards ensuring all students have opportunities to make. Created through a year-long collaborative process with school districts from around the country, the Framework offers resources, strategies, and models to help school and district leaders establish their vision, build their culture, and make their program.

filmMAKER Challenge

The Digital Promise filmMAKER™ Challenge is an opportunity for middle and high school students to learn about product design and filmmaking through a set of activities, culminating in a challenge to redesign an everyday object and create a documentary video that tells the story of the process.

• The filmMAKER Challenge guide contains activities, projects, and video challenges to help students build the skills they need for the Challenge.
• The filmMAKER Challenge Webinar series was created to help teachers lead the challenge with their students and features experts in design education and film production.

Educator Micro-credentials

Micro-credentials are a natural extension of educators’ professional learning journeys. Educators engage in both formal and informal professional learning activities but are rarely recognized for their informal learning. Micro-credentials do. Many micro-credentials support the skills of maker educators, including a stack of micro-credentials developed by Maker Ed to recognize important teacher competencies when “Getting Started with Making.”

Learning Studios

Learning Studios are currently being piloted in 60 schools around the world. This program helps teachers leverage powerful technology for digital fabrication and media production to help students develop skills in design thinking and social entrepreneurship.

• The Learning Studio Teacher’s Guide includes projects and resources you can use in your classroom.

360° Story Lab

Digital Promise Global’s 360° Story Lab supports young people to produce 360° media that goes beyond the frame of traditional media and journalism.

• MY World 360° is a global campaign which supports youth worldwide to create 360° media sharing their perspectives and advancing positive action toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• The 360° Production Guide  includes classroom activities and student-facing resources for creating original immersive media products, including 360° video and photography.