Teaching 21st Century Skills

     This week I reviewed a website directed at teaching students to use critical thinking and advanced communication. I was very impressed with the information that was provided on the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website. It was very organized and easy to navigate through. This national organization’s goal is to prepare students for the competing global economy that they will face in the future. I liked how the outlined frameworks included the expected outcomes for students, along with references that can be used by educators, to teach 21st century skills. It was interesting to see how different states have aligned the new skills with their current core subject curriculum.

     I took the MILE Guide Self-Assessment Survey to evaluate my district’s inclusion of 21st century skills. It was attention-grabbing to see that my district is still in the early stages of implementing these skills. Our educational support systems are transitioning towards a 21st century education, but overall we have a long way to go in improving the ways that we prepare our students to use information and communication technologies. I was also surprised to learn that there is a 21st Century Skill Incentive Fund Act which provides federal funds to support states that are teaching 21st century skills along with the core subjects. The program has shown increasing improvement in student learning in the states where it is used. I would think that these two factors alone would interest other states in adapting 21st century skills into their curriculum. There was not any information on the website that I would disagree with. I think that we need to provide students with the necessary skills to keep up with the changes in technology and the economy.

     Implementing 21st century skills in my classroom will help my students to transition from a standard form of literacy to becoming more literate through information, media, and technology. My students will learn to communicate globally using high-level thinking to get a better understanding of the core subject concepts. Learning 21st century skills will help my students to develop the life and career skills that they must have knowledge of in order to be successful in their future workplace. As a contemporary teacher, the 21st century assessments will allow me to be able to evaluate my students’ understanding of these new skills so that I know how to direct future instruction. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills explains that, “Developing a comprehensive framework for 21st century learning requires more than identifying specific skills, content knowledge, expertise and literacies” (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, n.d.). Our district and state must work together to create a support system when including these skills in our curriculum. Our support system must include standards, assessments, curriculum, and staff development. More importantly, we must create a 21st century learning environment that promotes success for our students. I hope to be able to incorporate 21st century skills into my daily instruction in the future.

Resources

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (n.d.). Washington DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/

Blogging in my Classroom

I chose to pursue a degree in Integrating Technology in the Classroom because I want to be able to teach my students using all of the new technologies that are being developed, and I want them to understand the correct ways to use new technology. Since I teach 3rd grade science and social studies, I try to do a lot of writing across the curriculum. Each week my students are given a journal topic relating to our curriculum and their lives, which they write about in their dialogue journal. For example, when we discussed producers and resources, the students wrote in their dialogue journals about what goods they would produce if they were an entrepreneur. They also had to discuss the resources that they would use. At the end of the week, I look through the journals and add comments or suggestions. I would like to integrate the idea of dialogue journals into blogging.  I will post the journal topics on the blog, and the students can use our classroom computers during center time to add their responses. I will review the blog to add my own comments to their responses, just as I did with the dialogue journals. As Kathy Martin demonstrated in Spotlight on Technology: Blogging in the Classroom, I will provide the students with a rubric explaining what is expected from their journal responses (Laureate Education, Inc., 2008). Students need to be taught the proper ways to communicate in blogs so that they will post appropriate responses. I would also like the blog to be a place where students can access from home so that they can view their peers' writing and add praise or suggestions as they would like. This would help parents to stay informed of what I am teaching and see their child's work. I hope that blogging will be successful in my classroom!

Resources

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). Program 6. Spotlight on Technology: Blogging in the Classroom [Motion picture]. Understanding the impact of technology on education, work, and society. Baltimore: Author.

Making life changing decisions...

I could not be happier to finally be pursuing a higher degree. My husband decided to go back to school online, which made me think about how I could also go back to school to learn new ways of teaching my students. I chose to attend Walden University to earn a Master's degree in Integrating Technology in the Classroom. My goal is to continue on to get a Specialist's degree in Technology. Now in my third course at Walden, I am finally in a class where I can learn how to include technology into my classroom every day. I hope you can learn as much from me through my blog as I hope to learn in this class!

http://www.waldenu.edu/