21st Century Skills

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills website discusses the need to revitalize education to meet the changes technology is bringing to society. Schools have been much slower to embrace the new technological advances than businesses, and have less advanced technology than most people have access to in their personal lives.
The overview to the website states that they advocate focusing on “critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation” (http://www.p21.org/). Which is what good education is all about regardless of how, or even whether, we incorporate technology. That said, they are right that we need to do a better job of incorporating technology into our teaching. Not only are these skills going to be necessary for our students’ success in college, careers and life in general, but using technology engages their interest. As the website points out students need to see that their learning applies to the real world, and that they “retain more when their learning is relevant, engaging and meaningful” (http://www.p21.org/downloads/P21_Report.pdf p. 6). While, again, you can make learning meaningful and engaging without technology, in today’s world students see and use technology all the time, and they see the lack of technology, or the antiquated technology, in classrooms as yet another sign that education is not relevant.
Employers are going to be looking for students who understand how to use technology to find information and to collaborate, and they are going to be looking for people who can problem solve and use the technology creatively. Thus as educators we need to engage them in lessons that utilize technology so that we can teach them how to navigate the internet, how to collaborate and problem solve with technology.

I did find the following claim on the website to be completely absurd: “Children know more about the world today than their teachers, often because of the media environment they grow up in” (http://www.p21.org/downloads/P21_Report.pdf , p. 8). Actually, I think “completely absurd” is an understatement. I find it laughably ignorant. Students are often, if not generally, more “tech savvy” than their teachers, but they certainly do not know more about the world. Of course there are exceptions, but I have found them to be rare.
Ultimately however, I found this website to make a lot of sense. Incorporating technology into the classroom makes it more relevant to the students lives, provides powerful learning tools, and better prepares them for their future.

Blogs in Education

As a high school language arts teacher I would like to use blogs to enhance my students understanding and appreciation of the literature we are reading, as a way for students to interact with each other, and to improve their writing skills. As Richardson (2009) notes, “blogs are only one of many tools of the Read/Write Web, but I would argue they are the most important” (p. 54). Blogs are a great way for people to engage in discussions, and can be an extremely valuable teaching tool.
One way to use a blog would be to post a quote from the literature we are reading. The quote would be taken from the homework reading assignment, and the students would need to discuss it in the context of the reading, and respond to at least one other student’s comments.
I would also like to post discussion questions on the literature we are reading. I think the blog format is a great way for students to express their ideas. The students would be required to make an original posting, and then to respond to two other students’ comments. I think this would really get the students excited and interested about the literature we are reading, give them more experience writing and discussing literature, and jump start the class discussions. Class discussions are often dominated by a small number of students; giving them more time to think about the question, as well as the ability to see their classmates ideas should help to get many more students involved.

Reference
Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wiks, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Welcome to my Waldenu U. classmates. This is my first ever blog. I look forward to learning more about how to use blogging in education.