Government Shutdown Spurs TregoED to Give Back

PRINCETON, N.J. - Oct. 17, 2013 - PRLog -- Imagine a world where the leaders of our democracy set the example for civil discourse, making good decisions, collaboration, and negotiation.   TregoED (http://www.tregoed.org), experts in helping education leaders make and implement great decisions for over 20 years, understands that our future leaders are in our schools right now.  In the hopes of removing all potential barriers for getting leadership skills into the classroom, TregoED is proud to now offer their innovative online SCAN tool free to all educators. SCAN was designed using a proven critical thinking strategy to help young people think logically, ask good questions, and work collaboratively.

Ben Tregoe spent his career successfully studying, developing, and sharing problem solving and decision making strategies with Fortune 500 companies. Twenty years ago he started the nonprofit organization Tregoe Education Foundation (now TregoED) to help bring these same strategies to the educational community believing that, just like their business counterparts, education leaders and students can be taught how to think – not just what to think. To this end, TregoED developed the online SCAN tool (http://tregoed.org/teachers/new-to-scan.html) capitalizing on the next generation’s passion for interactive technology.

The SCAN tool was built around Situation Appraisal, a problem solving approach that helps users understand and address a complex issue.  This tool can help educators address Common Core standards by providing authentic topics and guiding questions that have students reading informational text, using evidence to support arguments, writing across disciplines and collaborating to solve problems across all disciplines.   SCAN is simple for teachers, engaging for students, content-ready, and provides a private discussion place for classes. Teachers can use the library of 100+ lessons or write their own for just-in-time learning.

TregoED critical thinking strategies have reached over 9,000 school and district leaders and 40,000 students.  Teachers using the SCAN tool report a high level of engagement and critical thinking. “SCAN equips students and teachers to think about a variety of perspectives on any given issue, which is a critical 21st century skill set.  The ability for teachers to create and contribute to SCAN takes the learning strategy and tool to an entire new level” declared Jennifer Miller, District Instructional Technologist at Dublin ISD, TX.  TregoED believes that today’s students need to master more than core subjects to be good citizens and college- and career-ready.  It means being prepared to collaborate, communicate effectively, consider different perspectives, evaluate information from multiple perspectives and multiple sources, and make sound and informed decisions.  Cynthia Cassidy, a Media Specialist from NJ believes that the SCAN tool does just that, “SCAN immediately engages all students in the conversation and builds collaborative problem solving skills using high-interest authentic situations.”

Over the last 20 years, TregoED has helped school leaders maximize their decision making capacity and save millions of dollars using a proven combination of high-quality workshops, targeted consulting, and structured support.  By offering the SCAN tool online at no cost, it is their hope that they can help build the leaders of tomorrow by removing all cost barriers to that same capacity building for students. In doing so, they hope to further their mission to “improve critical thinking and decision-making skills among students and educators through collaborative online tools and workshops” in a way that is engaging for kids, easy for teachers and beneficial for both.

Teachers and school leaders interested in learning more about using the SCAN tool in the classroom or leadership workshops can visit http://www.tregoed.org or contact our office at 609-252-2539.