Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Putting it all together

In reviewing the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, I am amazed at all the groundwork that has been put in place and the research that has been involved in developing this partnership. I am a bit overwhelmed at how far we need to go to achieve our goals and to prepare our students for the new times that are rapidly approaching and are in fact already here. I really enjoyed the graphic that was a bridge with the outer circles of professional development and learning environments holding up the Core Subjects and 21st century themes which are supporting life and career skill, learning and innovation skills, and information, media & technology skills. I think that the diagram helps to bring all the aspects of the program together.

I thought it was interesting as the partnership identified the 6 elements of a 21st century education that the first focus was on core subjects, I thought it was meaningful as well that they focus on incorporating basic skills and 21st century skills and that they are not to be taught in isolation. I think that is more and more important as we proceed into this increasingly interactive world we are living in.

As we proceed into this 21st century world, we need to as educators be including the skills that our students need not because we just think they are a "good idea" but because they are a requirement. Miners & Pascopella (2007) discussed that students are "spending 27 hours a week online at home, compared to an average of 15 minutes per week at school." We must teach the skills not in isolation if they are to be used effectively and that is where the Partnership for 21st century skills is so important. By having an interactive framework to develop this strategies between business (employers) and schools (educators) then we will be able to make progress towards our goal of helping students have the critical skills they need to succeed in our rapidly changing world.

The implications of this are clear for me as an educator, we can not and must not disregard all that we already do... the basic skills, core curriculum are necessary for our students but we must do much more than just teach the content. We have to help our students become literate in so many areas of information literacy. They must be able to access information that they need (especially if we are no longer requiring them to memorize it), they must understand how to process that information critically, so that they are not believing things that are not real, and they must learn how to create something new and not just wait for the information/project to be handed to them on a silver platter. Students are going to need to be more outgoing and more involved in their classes, less sitting and getting information and more discovery based learning. Of course, this should not be a huge surprise to educators, I have always enjoyed a class more when I interacted with the materials than when I was forced to just "sit and get" information. If we can involve our students more and more we are hopefully going to have better and better results with our students. This will take a long time and require a lot of commitment of time and resources in order to be done effectively.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Using blogs to enhance learning in the classroom

Using a blog effectively in the classroom will allow students to learn to use a critical piece of technology that they will need in the future. One of the goals at my school is to create life long learners and using technology is definitely the wave of the future. I have not previously used a blog in my classroom and I considered two ways that I might utilize one in my classroom.

One way that I might see that one could use a blog in the classroom is as a scribe blog where one student blogs about the experiences of the class, what material was discussed in class, what the assignment / activity consisted of that day, what needs to be reviewed and/or completed at home and then other students could comment if they had questions, needed clarification, or felt that more information needed to be provided. I teach in a middle school and I currently am teaching a 7th grade Gifted Social Studies class. I do currently use a homework website where I post a summary of my class each day and post assignments and attachments for the class. The difference in using the scribe blog is that the responsibility would rotate among the students and they would have responsibility for the content. The advantage of this would also be found in the fact that parents would be better able to see what was going on in class each day and would have an additional source of information about what is being learned in class. This is particularly relevant for my class because I use the textbook very infrequently because most of what I teach is not in our textbook.

Since I am just beginning to explore the ways to best utilize blogs in the classroom, I think I would also be interested in using a blog to explore learning opportunities for students to hold class discussions about a common topic. I would post a weekly discussion question on Monday that either reinforced a concept from the previous week or one that would be discussed in class that week and would have students post a response. I think that this would improve writing skills as well and would help students realize that what they are writing is important. Students would also need to post responses to the other students in the class so that they receive feedback on their posts. This would be beneficial to students as well because we have several objectives that repeat for different units of study and would need to be applied to various regions of the world. These discussion posts would give students an opportunity to compare and contrast regions of the world and to get feedback from more than just their table which should lead to better understanding of the topic.

The one stumbling block that I have in utilizing this technology is the limiting number of computers in my classroom (1) and the limited number of labs/laptop carts in my school. I do think I could work around this by setting up certain response days in class. I would also need to find out more about the limits and filters placed on the Internet access at school as not all of my students have Internet access from home. I will have to explore more my school system's policies on using blogging in the classroom as well.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Welcome to my blogging adventure!

I am a seventh grade teacher of Social Studies in metro Atlanta. I have just completed my tenth year of teaching and I am working on my Masters in Education degree from Walden University. I am learning a great deal about intergrating technology in the classroom and I am looking forward to communicating with fellow educators about technology and Social Studies using this new format.