21st Century, Students, Teachers, Schools

Jul 25 2007

Published by safeonthenet at 5:20 pm under Reflections

Students need 21^st century skills to be successful citizens. The student outcomes outlined by The Partnership for 21st Century Skills include:

These two areas in particular speak to why the use of Web 2.0 tools is important for schools and students. Students need the applications of Web 2.0 in order to extend their learning beyond not only the classroom but also the teacher. They need opportunities to seek out learning that is important to them. The millenials need guidance in leveraging the collective intelligence of groups. They are learning from each other and from others in the world and we as their teachers need to get on that bandwagon and be part of who they are learning with in a virtual as well as face-to-face way. We are no longer the sage on the stage; we truly must be a guide on the side. Where teachers become learners and learners become teachers. (David Warlick)

As is typical much of what I read concerned higher education. Some colleges and universities are late coming to the Web 2.0 table but more and more are recognizing the importance. My take on this is colleges and universities, unlike public K-12 education, need to attract students. It is a business; if students are looking for this type of engagement using Web 2.0 tools they will seek schools that offer this. As more and more students become accustomed to using these tools more and more higher ed. institutions will need to jump on this bandwagon in order to compete. ( John Thompson )

I believe key to the success of school 2.0 is twofold, one is student buy in as a way of formally learning through the school environment and two is the faculty buy in. I believe the latter will require much more work. Faculty are not digital natives, this stuff at varying levels is hard for us. We will need to create professional learning communities for our faculty to move them forward and it will take time, time, time and support. If we model this type of learning for our faculty, to learn using these type of tools we can hope there is a transference of these skills to their own teaching. 21^st century professional development includes “among communities of practitioners, using face-to-face, virtual and blended communications”. (21st Century PD) When David Warlick says in More on School 2.0 (David Warlick), “But most everyone now knows what a blog is, wikis hold no mystery, we’ve gotten over wikipedia, and podcasting is no longer the ‘next big thing’”. I wonder what school he is referring to, certainly not mine. We, in our district, feel we are so far ahead of the curve as compared with other districts in our area, yet we have a very LOOONNNNGGGG way to go to bring people up to speed with the concept of Web 2.0. Yet, in my opinion, with a new state standard where students must stay in school until 18, we need to engage our students in the learning process, we need to prepare them for 21^st century skills, we need to help our faculty think about teaching differently.

My role in this is to inform faculty, even snippets so they can digest this information. I want to include as many of our faculty as possible in taking these courses we have through VHS to go through this type of learning process. I am the cheerleader for this; it will also be my role to vision this out with the other administrators in the district so they are able to see the value of this type of professional development.

2 Responses to “21st Century, Students, Teachers, Schools”

# msfubuon 25 Jul 2007 at 11:27 pm

Debbie,

First of all let me compliment you on the look of your page… There have been a lot of updates since the last time I checked in. In what at first seems tangential, it’s actually somewhat related that I don’t have my own sites set up as efficiently. While my students’ face pages and My Space pages are all “tricked out” I realize that I don’t have the patience to spend so much time building my sites. This kind of relates to your point of being “ahead of the curve”. In some ways we’re on the cutting edge because we’re doing this at all. In other ways I feel like I do when I’m two pages ahead of the kids.

I appreciate your comment about faculty buy in as well. In my school, where teachers already feel like they put in many, many hours, getting everyone on board with this idea of blogging as part of the class would seem like yet one more thing. There are teachers who have websites, etc, but it’s not all.

The most valuable lesson of all for me is having an active blog. My summer reading blog and the accompanying e-mails is interesting. I already see what I will have to do differently next summer, and yet I can see that in some ways setting things up this way is better than receiving a bunch of book reports the first day of school. I will know in September what I will have to do when I have students set up their own blogs for journaling, and for setting the standards for things published on the class wiki site as well. I’m a little scared– a ‘lottle’ scared is more like it. Your district is lucky that you will be encouraging administrators to support this *and* to support your teachers in doing this instead of simply putting them ‘out there’ to figure this “stuff” out on their own.

–Ms. Fubu (aka Kimberly)
# dfosteron 29 Jul 2007 at 9:35 am

Debbie,
It is so telling that we all used David Warlick’s article to start our discussions. He makes very important points that are invaluable to us all. You mentioned the fact that while we as a district are far ahead of a lot of schools around us, yet we are still far behind. I so agree with you here. Thankfully an important piece of Web 2.0 includes the Open Source materials. This can only help us in the long run with being able to begin this journey. While we will continue to need the infrastructure and hardware, the shared materials will be so important and a cost saver. I know we have a lot of work ahead of us, but I know we have a great start on it. We just need to stay focused and work together. Thanks for the great insights in this entry.
Donna

(PS What color pom poms would you like for your uniform? lol)