Teaching 21st Century Skills
Today I talked with our 6th grade team about using the new laptops that were purchased. 20 laptops for 10 teachers and 150 students. The administration is looking for “more than word processing and researching.” So today I gave them the shotgun approach to things you can do. From wikis to blogs to flickr, youtube, and podcasting. I showed them examples of other middle school projects using these tools and we talked. I kept coming back to 21st century skills. Every time a teacher would say “Yeah, but what if….” I would say “That’s a teachable moment….” After awhile I think it started to set in that these are skills we should be teaching our students. Skills like learning to comment appropriately. Writing for a worldly audience, producing content for others to use. We talked about how students will respect information if you give them the power to “own” the information. When you hand the power of information over to students and you have the discussions that come with the power of information you eliminate a lot of your problems. I quote Spiderman’s Uncle a lot:
With great power, comes great responsibility
It works for both students and teachers 🙂
[tags]SAS[/tags]
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[…] Jeff Utecht – Teaching 21st Century Skills and Technology: itÂ’s what we do, not one more thing to do […]
[…] I have used this blog on several occasions, and others in the edblogosphere have used their blogs to ask where the examples and research are that support integrating tech into the school curriculum. I have my own experience to tell me that tech along with project-based, problem-based approaches is valuable. In my opinion especially for “At-Risk” students, a strong field trip program along with the arts and physical education to build the schema so lacking otherwise should also be part of the curriculum. But, where is the support for that approach outside of those of us that have embraced it on our own? There has been for quite awhile research available that supports tech integration, but mainly in writing and a few other areas. Now comes a “study of studies,” that shows promise for tech as a valuable educational tool. […]
My friend who teaches humanities at a secondary school (Netherlands) found out that the students who did practical technology only (not much theory) were the best debaters of the school. She and other teachers were really surprised. The students were better able to argument because they had experienced how things really work. This was not an experiment, but it does suggest that tech is a powerful way to learn about relationships, predictions, truth and other important concepts, and teaches students to think for themselves better. Now this result was found at a secondary school for average and low scores on scholarly tests. The children with the lowest grades were the best debaters.
[…] I think that teachers are ready to share control and TL’s can support these efforts and projects. Jeff Utecht makes it sound easy. He wrote this blog entry about talking to […]