I'm seeing many different concepts thrown into this idea of 21st century skills. Many of the important ideas regarding student learning are much older than the 21st century. For example, Socrates was looking for critical thinking! But some of the other ideas come from best practices from the past twenty or so year. (Although if we spoke to a teacher teaching for 40, I'm sure he or she would say, "that's not new at all!")
The "best practice" ideas stressed again and again are that curriculum must have a purpose other than test prep or memorization for it's own sake. The most effective educational experiences are connected to the world or an authentic experience. This also means that the students work collaboratively with others and have an opportunity to develop their own understanding or what is being learned through dialogue with other learners. The point of the technology is not that it is electric. The point of using technology is that it helps us to connect to the world, collaborate with each other in new and effective ways, and gain access to a wealth of current information. It also allows us to process and present our learning in new and creative ways.
If I had to pick a classroom with just the best practices or a laptop for everyone without the best practices. (ie, connect the kids to on-line work books, essentially. Plug them in!!), I would pick a low tech best practices classroom. I think "21st century skills" can be misintepreted and turn into "land 'o on-line worksheets. " Early in the class, I read the wrong article by mistake and read about an on-line literacy program by scholastic. While they managed to get all of the proper buzz words into the abstract, the number of times they mentioned on-line assessment began to hint at a program filled with drill and kill. I kept thinking of the individualized SRA reading programs that were all the rage in the 1960s and 70s. They kept us quiet and self-correcting--and definitly not collaborating. Parts of the abstract sounded a lot like SRA on line.
Luckily, we don't have to make this choice. We are encouraged to connect our curriculum, use collaborative projects, and encourage critical thinking--and we have access to technology. True, we'd like more access and less technology breakdowns, but this gets better all the time. We'd also like, (or at least I would), to see a curriculum that allows the pace to slow down a few times a year to allow for really authentic and student directed projects. But we don't have the type of schedule that allows for no deviations or creative pathways--we just don't have the luxury of getting carried away. I've always felt in Sharon that coordinators and administrators want us to explore and try new things. They want to see the children moving and thinking and creating. We're lucky, because this isn't true in some places.
That's it for now...
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Hi. I agree. I think the terms and ideas have been around for a while. The tools are changing but not the basic ideals. If we're still discussing them in this way, and trying to achieve them, does that mean we aren't there? Getting closer?
ReplyDeleteI agree about how fortunate we are in Sharon to have administrators who allow us the freedom to do some experimenting and some following of our own ideas for creative projects. Yes, we are still limited by time constraints, but I've talked with people who teach in systems that have NO flexibility at all!! I think we have this wonderful flexibility partly because of the overall atmosphere of trust and mutual respect that exists between teachers and administrators (at least at the schools where I've taught, in general), and between district-wide upper administration and school principals. We also undoubtedly owe some of it to being a high-performing district -- As a district, we are usually not forced to panic over test scores, or to build our whole curriculum around wanting to equal some neighboring district that's "ahead" of us. I also think that our parent base wants us to provide interesting, creative learning experiences rather than focusing primarily upon test prep!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the thoughtfulness of this post.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the urge to provide students with engaging and challenging learning experiences embedded with the 21st Century Skills has long been the espoused theory of educators, it does not seem to be the dominant theory in practice. Realistically, however, the "proof is in the pudding."
For example, if we ask the students how they are experiencing our efforts to embed the 21st Century skills in our lessons, their perspectives can help us develop new understandings of when we are succeeding and when we miss the mark. Follow up conversations with students as to their thoughts on how we could have changed the experience so it was more on mark can also be rich with opportunities for personal insights into our teaching.
Dennis