Education in the 21st Century

My initial reaction to the Partnership’s for the 21st Century Skills website http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ was extremely positive. I find it extremely important for educators to come together with individuals in the business profession to find a common goal: educating our students to be prepared and successful in the 21st century. Our education system has strayed far from the importance of preparing our students to lead successful lives. Our current students are the future leaders of tomorrow, and we need to prepare them for the obstacles ahead. This will not be achieved through standardized tests and teaching to the test. It will be achieved by taking content standards and tweaking them so that they directly apply to the students’ lives. It will be achieved by bringing technology into the classrooms so that students can research and collaborate with one another. It will be achieved through allowing creativity to shine in the classroom and build upon it in the community.

After examining this website, I was somewhat surprised to see that there is so much support for the motivated individuals who are taking a stand for future accomplishments. They are demanding a change in our school systems and have a lot of research and resources to back up their views. They have up to date information on where our lives are heading and ways to improve them. This website has a wealth of information not only for educators, but for all individuals who are interested in future progress of our schools and country.

There are many views as to where our future education should take us. My personal opinion is that we have to get out of the mindset that standardized tests are the way of education. Our students are missing out on opportunities that will guide their way of thinking for their future. These tests are shutting down the creative side of our students, which only hurts us as a nation. I feel that we need to find a balance between the content knowledge and testing of our students and the developmental technology we use to teach our students to live and succeed in the real world. This balance will not necessarily be an easy task, but it is possible and necessary.

For the students of today and leaders of tomorrow, it is imperative that they learn academic skills and knowledge required by the government. More importantly, this information should be used to provoke ongoing creativity and critical thinking skills, while using technology as a resource to aid in this development. As educators, we are responsible for teaching our students the applications to the content standards. It is our job to show our students how this information relates to their current and future lives while building upon it throughout their school aged years. We must expose our students to as many learning tools as possible so that they can easily adapt to the changes in their environments when new technologies are formed. We must work together with the business world to help guide our focus on technology in education.

Blogs! Blogs! Blogs!

For my current students, I can see how they can grow into blogs, but as of right now, many of them are still struggling to read and write. On my caseload, I have 7 students in grades K-4 with both behavioral and academic needs. Out of those 7, 2 of them are able to read and write well enough to blog their ideas independently. I could see blogging working for both of them. For the other 5, I think it would be interesting for them to use blogging as a resource tool, but they would need a "scribe"/typer and a reader to use it effectively. They would not be able to blog independently because they do not have the necessary skills of reading and writing to accomplish this task.

One area where I could see blogging to be beneficial is in Writing Workshop. I think it would be interesting to see what the students were able to write knowing that an audience would be reading and reacting to their writing. I feel that it is important for the students to develop the necessary skills of paper and pencil writing as well as the ability to type their writing. After the students typed their stories into a blog, they could respond to their classmates' pieces of work with a comment, a question, or a suggestion on how to improve the piece of writing. The students may be more receptive to this type of constructive criticism because it is personal and is coming from their peers. (The teacher could always post a response blog as well.) This type of blogging lesson could be used to showcase their work in addition to using it as a learning opportunity.