21st Century Skills

21st Century Skills

            The implementation of 21st century skills into our current educational model has been growing over the past several years.  In the development of new state-wide and national curriculums many concepts of the 21st century skills have been incorporated.  My school district resides in the state of Iowa.  We have been working on implementing new standards and benchmarks from the common core.  One particular section of this curriculum is dedicated to the 21st century skills.  With students spending the majority of their out of school time using technology it is obvious that we need to educate students on how to use this new aid educationally (Miners, 2007).  I agree with many of the proposed concepts that should be used in the classroom to promote skills growth.  The major themes of the 21st century cover multiple disciplines.  The focus primarily on learning, innovation, technology, and career skills (Partnership, 2011).  Many of the benchmarks addressed in the curriculum seem very obvious but these skills might not be covered in conventional curriculum.  The major theme that I agree with is teaching problem solving skills.  Students need to be able to adapt to situations and develop a reasonable answer to scenarios that could be open-end.  My largest argument with the curriculum is how it is interpreted.  It is far too convoluted and basic points are lost in over wording benchmarks and standards.  There will be a positive impact for students when it comes to being prepared to enter the workforce.  However, educators and school systems may have many problems trying to incorporate all these skills and concepts on top of their normal curriculum.  It will boil down to whether there is enough funding, time, and support as to how much impact the 21st century curriculum will have.

References:

Miners, Z. (2007, October). The new literacies. Retrieved from             https://class.waldenu.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/USW1/201320_04/MS_EDUC/NCATE            _EDUC_6710/Week 4/Resources/Resources/embedded/The_New_Literacies_article.pdf

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2011, March).Partnership for 21st century skills. Retrieved    from             http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/1.__p21_framework_2-pager.pdf

Blogging in the Classroom

Activity: Science Soapbox
Grades: 9,10,11,12
Subject: Physical Science

The activity that I'm am proposing to my students is using blogs and RSS feeds to develop discussions about subjects in Science.  I used to do this activity with students where they would find articles and television shows that interested them in some aspect of science.  They would then develop a short presentation to introduce their interest to the class.  The downside was sacrificing large amounts of classroom time to have these discussions and presentations.  With the ability to blog and follow each others' postings, I can have this serve as a activity outside the classroom where students can debate and discuss their findings without using in-class time.  It can be used as a scaffolding activity that was illustrated in Richardson's text about blogging (Richardson, 2010). I can then monitor student progress, give suggestions, and promote discussion by posting to individual blogs.  This can be a year long project similar to our posting activity on the Walden website.

References:

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. (3rd ed.).   Corwin Press.

No One Left to Hate

After the tragedy at Columbine several schools and states have taken drastic actions in order to prevent further events from occurring.  Several laws/ordinances were imposed upon students to increase their safety and prevent future problems.  On the surface, they seem to work, but are they really fixing the problem?  The answer is no.  Students are instructed to respect one another and treat each other kindly.  Now what students are told and what they will do are two entirely different things.  Students have to learn to respect each other for their differences and their similarities.  How can we as educators teach our students to respect others?

            The answer is simple; we show them.  Students can learn many things through the examples of teachers or adults.  We need to take this into consideration when we expect our students to treat each other with respect and we do not necessarily do it ourselves.  This problem is addressed in Elliot Aronson’s book, Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion After Columbine.  He discusses that social learning through modeling in the classroom can be highly effective.  Students learn directly from their instructor’s actions and model behaviors that they have seen.

            Even though respect might be shown to the students, this does not necessarily mean that they give respect to their fellow classmates.  Respect can be earned through valuable class discussions and group work.  Students can learn how to treat each other and gain respect for others through discussion.  Once students can understand their fellow classmates and their beliefs then mutual admiration can occur.  The use of advisory programs can also help in the creation of these bonds amongst students.  These programs are tailored fit to address these kinds of issues in a school setting.

            Educators know there are programs and techniques out there to help students develop social skills; we just need to use them.  Lawmakers cannot solve the problems inside our schools.  They do not have the first-hand experience of teachers nor the educational knowledge to back their decisions.  Teachers know what to do; we need to stop being ignorant to the real problems and solve them ourselves.

References:

Aronson, Elliot.  Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching compassion after columbine.  New York: Henry Holt, 2001.  pp. 169-178