This week's assignment was for us to look at The Partnership for 21st Century Skills website. I had never heard of this website, or of the organization itself. In today's society, it is important that not only are we teaching students the academic skills they need to be successful but also the skills that will help them thrive in today's economy and workplace.
My reaction to the website is that the fusion and collaboration is very important. If we want students to be prepared, we need to provide them with the information and the tools that they need. It is a great idea and strategy to team businesses and schools together. After all, the schools are the ones preparing their future employees.
The information that helped me develop a new understanding is that we can use the main academic components (3 Rs: ELA, Math, Science, Social Studies, etc.) as an umbrella to teach the 21st century skills. It does not have to be a separate curriculum, instead it should be fused together to help students be more successful in both areas.
On the website, there was not anything that I disagree with. Rather, I highly agree with the twitter feed that discussed how standardized testing needs to be reevaluated. Instead of using it as the one and only answer to determine students' success, we need to be discovering ways to assess student learning for the challenges that the digital world presents. I feel that all components are essential in creating prepared citizens for society. It needs to be a team effort between schools and businesses to help students be successful.
Implications that I may implement into my classroom after looking through this website is that I need to be focusing on more skills such as life and career skills, learning skills and informational/media technology. I need to work on implementing these 21st century skills into my everyday curriculum, which would be easy to do. I need to address needs of survival in today's society alongside their educational needs. By addressing these skills, I will be sure to fuse academics and 21st century skills together so it flows together. Students will be learning and addressing the skills without realizing it. If I do not address these skills, my students will not have the skills they need in order to thrive in today's society. It is my job to prepare them for life, and after reviewing this website, I have realized the importance of life skills along with academics.
Happy blogging until next time!
~Sam R.
I like how you mentioned the need for teaching survival skills. There can be such a disconnect between what we are teaching students and what they will need to survive in the "real world". I agree that it is the passive learning of these 21st Century skills while covering the content that is key for teachers these days. Great plan!
ReplyDeleteGreat post Samantha,but what are these survival skills that we need to teach. I have yet taken a class that was truly in tune with what I needed to know in my professional careers except when I was a cars salesman. It is funny to think that I learned more about education from the military and from two master car salesmen. The military taught me the discipline in academics that I lacked as a student by asking me to not just answer the question but to always justify my answer with examples or illustrations. Since I have the drawing ability of a two year old child I became very good with verbal and written justifications. In car sales I was taught to use words and numbers to give the customer more information than they could process. By placing a customer in a state of sensory overload I was able to get customers to commit to decisions they would normally not make. These were essential survival skills in both of my careers but not necessarily a skill that is used in many professions. Is it possible for us to know the essential survivals skills our students will face five years from now when technology makes itself obsolete every five years? What we think of as essential today will be commonplace just a few years from now.
ReplyDeleteHello!
ReplyDeleteYou are right Doug. What we think are essentials today, will be the norm in the next few years. The life skills I am thinking of are problem solving skills, social skills, and the use of technology that exists today. I know that the technology will change, however, the way in which we handle problems and communicate with one another will not. In my lessons, I want to make sure students know how to carry on a conversation with each other, and use strategies to solve any problems they may encounter. I want to make sure they know how to use these skills, even when they are not in my classroom.
Thank you both for your responses!
-Sam R.
You are also right Samantha, nut none of these are new skills. Technology has always improved and increased. As a man that grew up pre-computer and pre-calculator, I have a vastly different understanding of how technological changes have not caused me to be a better problem solver but I may be a quicker problem solver. I think we concentrate far too much on emerging technology and far too little on using the technology to assist us to make better decisions to problems.
ReplyDeleteI feel we cannot see the problems because they are masked in the veil of technological advances or obscured in our own lack of understanding the use of new technologies. It all still boils down to the use of the oldest possible technology which we did not create. The human mind is still the one technology we need to understand and use before all others.