Bringing the Classroom into the 21st Century

This week, I’ve been exploring the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website. The belief that today’s students need to be educated with the understanding that our modern world is very integrated and education has to evolve to better prepare students for this world is becoming a part of my philosophy as a teacher. In an interview about the changing workplace of the 21st century, Dr. Chris Dede discusses how the students we are graduating are heading into a world in which they must compete not only globally against other workers but against the emerging technologies themselves (Laureate, 2008). How are we in education preparing these students? Are the methods used to teach us going be enough to get our students ready?


About the site

This is really quite a website, worth far more than just a quick glance. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is an organization dedicated to making our students literate. As the site illustrates, it was once essential for a student to learn to merely read and to sign his name. Then it became more important to become literate in other skills as math, science, and history. In today’s information age, it is now essential for a student to be literate in technology as well. I am so excited to have been shown this place in which educators can learn about methods for helping our learners become literate in these areas beyond the traditional “three R’s.” This partnership between businesses and educators provides curriculum, ideas, methods, strategies, and resources for teachers to integrate their traditional core subjects with the emerging technologies and interlink them with interdisciplinary themes such as Civics, Health Literacy, Economic and Entrepreneurial Literacy, Global Awareness, and Environmental Literacy.
I was so excited to find a site to help me. I know as an English teacher that I have to help my students become better communicators. I also know that for today’s student, that goes beyond reading a novel and writing an essay. I believe that I need to help my students learn to tap into the global world of telecommunications. I also need to help my students connect the things we do in an English class to other disciplines and relate them to this “flat” world in which we live (Friedman, 2005). Partnership for 21st Century Skills is a treasure trove of information, ideas, and resources for how I can better do this in my classroom.



The Wow Factor

I have to admit, this website really surprised me. I have been concerned for some time now that I need to do some things differently in my classroom to better prepare my students. I need to make my classroom more of a 21st century class. I just wasn’t sure how to do it. This site has shown me that I don’t have to wait for my state or my district to adopt a new curriculum or incorporate a new plan. The ideas and tools are right here at my fingertips. Score another one for the World Wide Web. Like I said, we are a global community.
A big surprise for me was the limited number of states that have gotten on board and joined the partnership. My own state is one of those yet to join this partnership. I was taken aback by this. What was even more of a surprise to me was many states much bigger than mine with far greater financial resources than ours that have not become part of the partnership.
On a more positive note, the biggest surprise for me was the accessibility to the information and resources. There is so much for a teacher on this website. Many, no, most websites offering fewer resources with less affectability tend to charge teachers for the things they offer. The Partnership provides the cornucopia of products without even asking the educator to become a member of anything. That is refreshing as well as a godsend.
I should say that I generally agree with so much of what I see on this site. I do have to question the idea that we need to completely leave the concepts developed when our culture was more agrarian. For starters, I believe we need to keep in mind that there are still the more agricultural communities and cultures. I do believe that these 21st century skills can aid them; we just need to be mindful that not all students will be going into a financial or computer industry after high school.



My Students and Me

Our students are different than we were twenty years ago. I was recently in a meeting in which a fellow educator commented that students aren’t any different today than we were as students. I understand what he was talking about; he was referring to discipline and classroom behavior along with teachers being prepared for their students. However, when you think about it from this 21st century frame of mind, I would say students are very different. Our students today know how to work a computer and surf the web before they can even read. My own children are a perfect example. Every thing they do seems to be multitasking with the latest technologies. Even students who struggle with reading a novel read and comprehend vast amounts on the web (Miners and Pascopella, 2007). Partnership for 21st Century Skills has great implications for my students and me. This is literally a clearinghouse of information for educators. I have instant, free access to ideas, suggestions, resources, and strategies along with a curriculum to help me reach these contemporary students in my classroom. Not only will this help me and make me a better teacher, but by becoming better armed as I enter my class, I will be making my students more rounded and better prepared when they leave the high school.


References:

Friedman, T. (2005, April 3). It's a flat world, after all. The New York Times. Retrieved January 18, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2008). [DVD]. Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society, “The Changing Work Environment: Part 2.” Baltimore, MD.

Miners, Z., & Pascopella, A. (2007). The new literacies. District Administration, 43(10), 26–34.

Using Blogs in my Classroom

“Weblogs truly expand the walls of the classroom.” (Richardson, 2009) This is exactly what I want to do with and for my students. I don’t want learning to end just because the bell rings. When I was first beginning in the classroom, I thought students would just do this on their own. Boy was I wrong. True, there are the few who do. And that doesn’t mean that students are bad learners. They are just being teenagers. I have to come up with ways to keep things going after they leave my classroom. Blogging assignments can be one way I am able to do this.

One way I plan to begin using blogs with my English classes is to have my students blog as characters from the novel Battle of Jericho while we are reading it. I plan to have my students respond as characters from the novel to discuss why he/she (the character) wishes to join the Warriors of Distinction. I believe this will help to accomplish multiple goals. I want my students to comprehend the varied motivations for the different characters. It could be discussed in class, but I would like for my students to take on much of the interpretation by this point of the course. My students will gain better depth and understanding of the characters if they not only look into the characters on their own, but express this understanding by speaking or blogging as the character. This will also provide my students with an opportunity to gain insight from each other. As weblogs are a part of the World Wide Web for anyone to access (Richardson, 2009), each student will be able to read the blogs of his peers. A student might get something from another student that he didn’t get himself. It will be interesting to see the differences of interpretation here. This, too, should add to the learning for my students as they read their peers’ blogs.

Since virtually anyone can read blogs, I know that blogging will be a great way to showcase my students’ work. I am not quite yet sure how I want to utilize this. I am still working on this exactly. To my peers, I would like suggestions as to how you guys will be doing this with blogs in your curriculums.

As I become more confident and better at this, I know blogging will become one of those things that is just part of my class’s curriculum. I will probably be asking myself one day, “How did I teach and not do this?”


Reference: Richardson, Will. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Pr.

In the beginning...

I am an English teacher. I've been teaching for eleven years now, and have always felt I was ahead of my fellow teachers as far as incorporating technology into my classroom is concerned. However, I have yet to utilize blogging in my class.

Well, it is time for me to do so. I am first just trying to learn to blog myself. Once I've done so, I want to learn ways to include blogging in my curriculum.

Any ideas or tips anyone can give me as to how to incorporate blogging or make assignments inwhich my students blog I would be most happy to recieve.

Thanks. Look forward to hearing from you guys.