Are we ready for the 21st Century?

For anyone interested in a roadmap to educating students in the 21st century, stop what you are doing and go to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website. Watch a short Video form the National Summit on 21st Century Skills. Partnership Video 

It is obvious that our educational system is becoming less and less relevant in regards to preparing students for the new communication age. In many ways our schools are years behind other countries that have communication technologies and curriculum in place. We need to educate students that can adapt and learn in this quick paced “flat” world. We must have a vision and have a plan to carry it out. This website is thorough and complete. Leaders of education and technology have created a vision with foresight on many different interconnected levels. Stop by Route 21 to see how the group Links 21st Century skills with support systems and resources. 

Being a Social Studies “geek”, I am happy and surprised that the Social Sciences of History, Economics, Geography, Government and Civics are core content areas that this group highlights as relevant for 21st century learners. Standardized tests create a narrow vision of education being centered through Language Arts and Math departments. In my opinion, Social Studies have been pushed to the side by the NCLB driven test frenzy. Look at these interdisciplinary themes suggested for 21st Century success that are saturated with Social Studies content! 

• Global Awareness
• Financial, Economic, Business and Entrepreneurial Literacy
• Civic Literacy

So what’s the catch? Is this pie in the sky optimism that we can bring this new age of learning to the fore front of our educational system? Can our system change as dramatically as the Partnership calls for.... or are we doomed to education being bogged down by the same old bureaucratic quagmire of the past? Although this is a “dialogue about education", this is also backed by many big companies  like Dell, Cisco, ATT, etc ... a who’s who in the technology industry. They are trying to advocate for a better trained American workforce for business reasons.  The workforce is changing  therefore so does the education system that supplies them (Levy & Murname, 2005). If we don’t supply a workforce with 21st century skills these same companies have already started going elsewhere like India and China.

One of the implications here is that while a roadmap and vision for the future is in place, the future is now. We as a collective nation must make dramatic changes quickly. As an educator I must lead by example and immerse myself in teaching the skills for the future. Students already are digital natives and they must see me as one also. I agree with Partnership’s position that standardized tests for accountability are needed ,so to are classroom assessments that challenge students to become adaptive learners. Students must embrace this technology. Many are technically advanced in the social use of technology but do not know how to use the technology in an academic setting (Miners and Pascopella, 2007).

References

Levy, F., & Murnane, R. (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. 

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

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (n.d.). A report and mile guide for 21st century skills. Washington DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/images/stories/otherdocs/p21up_Report.pdf

I teach eighth grade, early United States History. Being new to blogging as an educational tool, I thought I would first create an assignment for students that I already give. I have students do a current events assignment every other week in my class. In this way students would do something differently and have students do different things at the same time. One of the purposes is to show that the people from the past had similar issues. The issues that people struggle with are not new, just different. I will post current events links to the blog and allow the students to have a choice of what they want to blog about. This is still in the infancy stage and I will have to work with the district to allow it. This would be a no brainer as students can not only access text but video of an event making it more interactive and realistic to their way of viewing the world. This makes blogging a “democratic tool” which will differentiate and empower students (Richardson) I thought to begin with I could choose issues and give prompts for students write to and respond. Eventually I would want students to seek out and submit their own current events issues. My first teaching issue is how to get students to use correct etiquette and write to the “world audience”. A second issue would be how to assess and grade the work. Any suggestions?

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