Region 1
Friday, May 7th, 2010My own personal welcome goes out to the Region 1 Superintendent’s Study Group on 21st Century Skills. Their May meeting is being hosted in Goochland (today), on Friday, May 7, 2010.
While I’ve prepared a wiki page with a lot of links for them, I thought I’d pen a few thoughts about 21st century skills here, and why I’ve bought into them.
There is a lot of criticism that’s now come about around the terminology “21st century skills,” what they mean for education, and frankly, what good teaching is about.
I’m not in disagreement with some of the points educators and their most outspoken critics make. First, these skills are not going to “save” education any more than bandwagons of the past have been able to do so. But they are an evolutionary step away from one type of thinking towards another, and this is a small but positive step.
Teachers often look at technology and knowing that, since it’s been purchased and put into the hands of students, it ought to be used…? well, yes, someone, somewhere in your school or district saw an advantage for that computer, laptop, or handheld to be there. But simply putting gadgetry in the hands of students isn’t the point at which we stop and pat ourselves on the back.
Twenty-first century skills for us have taken the emphasis away from the tools themselves. Instead, the focus in on a number of prescribed skills that are open enough to be exercised in a variety of ways, shaped by the expertise of each educator/practitioner, in one or more disciplines, towards the goal of engaging the student in a meaningful learning experience. Within the context of today’s schools, today’s budgets, and today’s state of the world, this isn’t such a bad thing.
The tools I’m showing you today have been used in schools, but I don’t want you to walk away today thinking Goochland kids all use Twitter, they all spin the globe digitally each day on each one of our Promethean boards, or that we only use open software tools. I’m sharing trends that go beyond schools, because they illustrate how I think learning will likely be transformed in the short term in our schools, if we take advantage of these new tools. Our charge, on the national, state, and district level–and in this case the regional level–is to evaluate not only the tools but the ideas behind some of these tools. We make them available, we educate teachers how these tools can be a part of their emerging educational toolkit, and how we need to prepare students to personally succeed when access to these tools becomes available. In short, the job is taking the tools, adapting them, and showing folks–when it clicks–that these tools we’ve found are the best at promoting twenty-first century skills. (If they aren’t the best, then either it’s the best you can afford; otherwise, don’t change!) The tools in 5 or 10 years won’t matter, of course. In the long term, it’s showing kids the way towards:
- better communication and networking with others
- working with their peers
- using available knowledge bases to solve problems
- understanding the issues behind being better digital citizens.
To learn more about our efforts, visit our G21 page.