Preparing Our Students for Their Future Workplace...

I am taking a class about Integrating Technology in the Classroom.  Through my class, I was introduced to the website of a group called the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills whose mission is to “encourage schools, districts, and states to advocate for the infusion of 21^st Century Skills into education.”  The student outcomes that they target are the 3 Rs (which we should all be familiar with …Reading, (W)Riting, and (A)Rithmetic) and the 4 Cs (Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity) along with Life and Career Skills and Information, Media, and Technology Skills.  A lot of the information reiterated what I have been made more aware of these last few weeks… we are not preparing our kids to compete in today’s or tomorrow’s  global economy.  I was surprised by the states that have adopted the initiative, 16 of them to be exact, and the fact that it is endorsed by the US Department of Education.  I was surprised to see that West Virginia, a state not usually associated with educational reform,  was mentioned several times as being a state that has gone so far as to change their state assessments to incorporate critical thinking and problem-solving.  I am also surprised that I have never heard of the 4 Cs.  Our district is much more focused on the formal, high-stakes tests, especially now that there is a push for teacher accountability for scores.  What I didn’t agree with was the blatant E-Learning endorsements that were given though many of the resource links.  Public schools are in competition with cyberschools and there is not enough data to support whether online learning really is an effective teaching tool for the core subjects, let alone to support that online learning is a better way to teach the 4 Cs.  What this means for us public educators is that we need to integrate more technology, critical thinking, STEM skills, and collaboration into our core curriculum should we want to produce students that are ready to compete in the global market.  The website did have a number of great ideas about incorporating 21^st Century skills in the classroom.  Check it out for yourself:  http://www.p21.org/

And Now I Find Myself Entering the Blogosphere...

I am the Gifted Support Teacher for grades K-12 in my school district. I believe that the best use of a blog for me would be as a class portal and online filing cabinet.  The biggest benefit for me is the control that I will have over what gets posted and when it is posted.  There is a link on our district website for my Gifted program, but if I want anything published on it, I have to submit it to our technology person and wait until he gets around to uploading it.  With a blog, I will be able to post things at my convenience without concerns over whether it will be uploaded in a timely manner.  I plan on implementing a Gifted blog where I can post pictures and videos from recent competitions and events in which we have participated.  This way, parents and the students can be kept up to date with what is going on in G.A.T.E.  I would also like to have the students post a description of their experiences, tips, and advice for the different events and competions where other students can comment.  With the search feature on the blog, students in future years will be able to search the posts of past years to get an idea of what to expect going into a new event.  I could also list links to resources for the parents and students to access at home.  I like the idea of the online community that it will create that will incorporate the parents of my students, my students, and myself.  In a broader application, we could include other Gifted students from other schools...oh, the possibilities!

And then in Third Grade...

I am taking a technology class online.  This is the first class that I have taken since I finished my Master's Degree almost 10 years ago.  It has got me thinking about how the use of technology has changed the way that we need to teach and the way that students learn.  I loved school as a child, and I have tried to think about how technology was used when I was in school.  Besides the previously mentioned SR-80, I can not remember much technology at all.  In 1983, I was in the third grade and we got 10 Commodore computers in a computer lab in the school.  We went there once a week with our homeroom teacher, who, in retrospect, probably did not know any more about computers than we did.  We did typing exercises where we had to type the sentence on the screen.  Something about a brown fox jumping over something because it was a sentence that had every letter of the alphabet?  There was a lice outbreak in the third grade and they quarantined the students with lice in the computer lab because it was the room that was used the least.  How funny!  We have 4 computer labs at our school where I teach now, and I can not imagine using the lab as a quarantine unit!  I remember that the printer used the paper that had a perforated line with holes on either side that you had to carefully tear off before you turned your paper in to the teacher.  Ms. Yorkgitis was definitely not using the computer to teach different things instead of teaching the same things differently!

My Journey started in the First Grade...

I tried to remember what the first technology was that I had access to in my classroom as a student.  The earliest technology that I can remember was the SR-80 (if that is even the correct name?).  I was an "early reader".  Back in 1981, students were taught to read in the first grade.  Kindergarten was more about the letters and the sounds that they make.  Anyone remember the Letter People...Mr. N had a Noisy Nose, Mrs. M had a Munching Mouth?  So, when we entered the first grade and everyone else was learning to read, I already knew how.  I had taught myself with some help from my mother, who was an elementary school teacher. When my reading group, The Bluebirds, was done with our reading assignment, we were allowed to go on the SR-80 to complete a reading program.  According to my memory, the SR-80 was a huge computer with three large buttons, a yellow one with an A on it, a red one with a B on it, and a blue one with a C on it.  Seeing as the only high tech device that I had at my home was a VCR, I was highly impressed with this hulking piece of machinery and made sure that I completed my reading assignment correctly before anyone else did, because there were only two of these precious machines in our Catholic school classroom.  Talk about a motivator!  Even in 1981, technology was used to motivate a student to learn!