21st Century Skills

The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills has an informative website http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ detailing the skills our students will need to develop to be successful in the future. Our education system can no longer be based on the agricultural or industrial ages, if we hope to prepare our students to live and work in the 21^st century. I heard of the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills at a meeting, but had not viewed the website until this week. Interestingly for me, the gifted education program I am a part of focuses on the skills described on this website. The semester progress report that we use to evaluate our students correlates closely, as our main areas for evaluation are critical and creative thinking skills, and independent and interactive learning skills.  The students’ progress in these areas are indicated on a rubric and we consider growth over the two year period that our students attend our center.

The information on this website is presented in clear, understandable language and it is easy to navigate. There are numerous links to news stories and articles supporting and discussing the need for the 21^st Century Skills. The link to Route 21 is my most favorite, http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/route21/ as there are links to excellent resources for activities and lessons to develop 21^st century skills. I plan to explore these resources further, but already have identified an activity I plan to use to practice and encourage both collaboration and creative thinking. The lesson, “Solving Problems With Simple Machines” http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/2870 will also reinforce science concepts.

The more we, as educators can incorporate multi-disciplinary, hands on problem solving activities into our lessons that encourage collaboration, critical and creative thinking, the better we will prepare our students for the 21^st Century. 

 

Creating a Community of Learners Through Blogging

I teach 4th and 5th grade students identified for gifted services from six different elementary schools. I teach a different group of students each day of the week. During each class session my students work on a center topic they self-select out of over 50 choices. Students work independently on their centers using a contract as a guide. 

I am interested in using blogging for students to have a forum to share their learning and projects from their centers. At any time, it is very possible for all of my students to be working on different centers or activities within a center. Blogging could provide a unifying experience for my students to communicate with each other about their centers. Students attending on different days, but working on the same self selected center could share ideas, interests, and projects with each other. Blogging could remove the barrier of not attending the center the same day. Students who might otherwise never meet, but share similar interests, could further their ideas and learning by collaborating with each other through a blog. Additionally, students could share projects and products from their centers with a larger audience and receive feedback from each other. Ideally, the blogs could spark a student's interest in a new topic by reading about and discussing their classmates' center experiences.

Has anyone had experience using blogging to share independent learning projects? I am also interested in suggestions for organizing the posts

Starting From Scratch

This is my first blog, the inaugural entry. I have enjoyed reading blogs in the past, but this week I'm diving in, responding to blogs for the first time and now writing my own. This has been an eventful technology week for me. I am working to integrate new information and put it into practice on a personal level - like the blogging and subscribing to favorite blogs through an RSS feed, I had no idea I could do this and have been checking several blogs on a regular basis separately. It is amazing to me that now the updated blogs come to me. 

On a professional level, I now have this new knowledge about Wikis, blogs and podcasts and I am in the idea stage of how to integrate these into my classroom. On top of this, I have expanded the blogs I am reading and have these new resources to use with my students. I look forward to sharing ideas with others and making some of the ideas realities in my classroom.