Checking out the Partnership for 21st Century Skills

One of the assignments this week was to peruse the Partnershipfor 21st Century Skills website. This Partnership for 21^st Century Skills provides tools, resources and information to educators, policy makers, and parents and communities for the purpose of readying students to perform and compete in a global economy. My first reaction was that of being overwhelmed with information. It is organized well and is fairly easy to maneuver through; however, it is tempting to just start clicking links. I recommend a person begin by looking over the home page. The Announcements and Latest News sections provide several places for both newbie and veteran P21 users to look for up-to-date information. There are a wide variety of offerings from Webinars to podcasts of interviews to online access to publications. Many of the resources that I looked at were developed collaboratively by professionals and organizations across the country. I was amazed by that. Think of the amount of time and effort that has gone into the ongoing development of the resources on this website. The members of this organization are vast and are committed to providing support and resources so that every student can become 21^stcentury ready. I found it quite interesting that the skills deemed crucial for student success in the 21^stcentury were the very same skills that Dr. Thornburg mentioned in the video our class was assigned this week (Laureate Education Inc., 2010a). Collaboration and critical thinking as well as creativity and innovation come up over and over again in our readings.

It was no surprise to find a blog on the site. Every month, two well-known educators are selected and given a question to respond to on the blog that pertains to the challenges of providing 21^stCentury Skills to everyone. What did surprise me though, was I could not identify a way to subscribe to the blog or to access an archive in order to read past posts. That was disappointing. Another thing that surprised me was that the Exemplars section called Route 21 had not been updated since 2010. I found the P21 Common Core Toolkit, accessible under Educator resources, especially usable because we are implementing the ELA Common Core Standards in our district and having a resource that has already aligned 21^st Century Skills to those standards is a no-brainer, in my opinion. I was a bit taken aback by the fact that only 16 states are implementing the 21^st Century Skills initiative and Wisconsin is one of them. I live in Minnesota and I would like to think that we are on board with our neighbors. We share boundaries and our students cross those boundaries to attend universities, everyone needs to be prepared for the future.

Even though I didn’t find any information or opinions that I disagreed with, I did find myself wondering if there was any political agenda behind this initiative. There are a lot of big corporations that are involved in supporting this organization. I do not profess to be too involved in the drama of politics and the influence of big money from corporations, but it made me wonder. What do you think? Even if there is, would it be a bad thing? What would be the motive other than preparing the young people of our country to compete on a global level?

As an educator that is highly engaged in learning about technology and in implementing innovative ways for my students to participate in their own learning, I am very interested in the message behind the 21^stCentury Skills initiative. One of the issues, of course, is how do we get everyone on board so that we can prepare our students for the future. According to Levy & Murnane (2006) the jobs of the future are going to require expert thinking and complex communication (p. 62). Dr. Dede (Laureate Education, Inc. 2010b) states the same thing when he talks about the expert thinking and complex communication skills required to solve some of the wicked problems that are in our future. There is no doubt in mind that we need to motivate our students to become impassioned and engaged in caring for our world. The questions I have for my fellow bloggers is are you scared? How urgent is this matter? How in danger is the United States of falling behind and being left in the dust by other countries? Does it mean the difference between our economic survival and failure? We have read a lot about global collaboration on some of those wicked problems we are already dealing with such as global warming, tsunamis, and hurricanes. Can we have faith that our world will shrink and boundaries will disappear as we collaborate on big world problems? I am probably thinking too hard.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010a). Program eleven. Skills for the 21st century [Webcast]. Understanding the impact of technology on education, work, and society. Baltimore, MD: Author

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Program twelve. Technology interfaces [Webcast]. Understanding the impact of technology on education, work, and society. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Levy, F., & Murnane, R. J. (2006). Why the changing American economy calls for twenty-first century learning: Answers to educators' questions. New Directions for Youth Development, 2006(110), 53-62.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2011.). A framework for 21st century learning. Washington DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/overview/skills-framework

Creating a class blog for my Child Development class.

In class this week, we were asked to come up with an idea for using a blog with our students.  I will be teaching a Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS) class next trimester called Exploring Childhood.  The class consists of a mixed group of male and female 9-12 graders.   In a nutshell, the learning objectives for the course are to identify developmental characteristics of two to five years olds and analyze and apply knowledge of child development theory toward the planning and implementation of a five week preschool.  There is a lot to process in this 12 week class.  Students collaborate in teams of three or four as they plan activities for the preschoolers.  They are expected to adjust activities to the age and developmental levels of the children they are working with.  They are also expected to observe children as the engage in play and collect anecdotal evidence to support established theory.   In the past, this class has consisted of a lot of discussion and feedback, seemingly mostly on my part, as we evaluated the activities that students planned for the preschoolers and related back to established theory.  There is a considerable amount of scaffolding taking place as I model my thinking, however, I am wondering if perhaps using a blog might be advantageous as students begin to apply their own knowledge and experience to this process.  Knobel and Wilber (2009) suggest that “collaborative class blogs are helpful in any subject area.”  Why not FACS?

Thinking along the lines of using the blog for reflection and extended study as suggested in Chapter 2 of our reading this week, I visualize posing a question each week for students to respond to that relates to our study of child development (Richardson, 2009, p. 33).  As students reflect on what they are learning, they can use resources that I provide on my class blog to extend their thinking.  I would require them to respond to the blog posts of at least two other students and provide feedback on those posts.  In the video segment Evolution of Technology and Pedagogy, Dr. Christopher Dede suggests that technology isn’t going to make a difference to our students unless we change how they are learning with that technology (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010).  I think that choosing a blog over in-class discussion will be achieving that end because they will be doing something different.   In her blog post, Michaelsen (2012) shares the perspective of Peter Senge who wrote the The Fifth Discipline:  “The problem with school he says is that it is very individualistic…it is never about the smartest guys in the room, it is about what we can do collectively.”  All students will be reflecting on a much deeper level and engaging in a higher level of critical thinking and reflection with their peers.  I am hoping that the discussions my students will have will be far more engaging and interesting to them than if I was directing them in the front of the class.  

One thing I would have to spend some time doing at the very beginning of this experience would be to prepare the students for blogging etiquette and safety.  Richardson (2009, p. 45-46) gives guidance on how to begin with students by introducing them to blogs and letting small groups respond to the class blog; creating clear expectations with administration and parents before students create their own blogs is also paramount.  I am excited at the prospect of creating a class blog for this class.  I think both my students and I will find that we have a lot to learn.

Knobel, Michele, & Wilber, Dana (2009, Mar).  Let's Talk 2.0.  Educational Leadership, 66 (6), 20-24.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Program two. Evolution of technology and  pedagogy [Webcast]. Understanding the impact of technology on education, work, and society. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Michaelsen, Ann S. (2012, March 6).  Peter Senge-what schools need to focus on now!  [Web log comment].   Retrieved from

http://annmic.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/peter-senge-what-schools-need-to-focus-on-now/

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

Introduction

Welcome everyone! 

I am so pleased and excited to work on my very first blog. I created this blog as an assignment for an online class that I am participating in at Walden University: Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society. After spending considerable time trying to come up with a clever and catchy name, I realized that sometimes simple is better. I have named this blog My Learning Journey into Technology because it best represents the fact that technology will be an ongoing thing in my life without a final destination in mind; not meaning to sound cliché.

I am already in a bit of a quandary, though. Since I am the type of person that likes to throw my ‘all’ into a project, I have discovered that I am already spending far too much time playing in the blog world, looking up templates for cool looking blogs, and investigating all of the interesting links and resources for class that you all are sharing. I am going to have to set a timer or something, because I have a job as a high school Reading teacher and serve on several school improvement and curriculum related committees that keep me pretty busy as well. I look forward to this journey and am most looking forward to the wonderful ideas and resources that will engage my students in doing something different with technology in my classroom.