21st Century Skills Website

After visiting the website http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ , I have mixed feelings about their views and mission.  The thing that bothered me most was that they said their mission is to teach students “21^st century skills” which to me are the basic skills that all students should have when they complete their education.  These skills include things such as problem solving skills, critical thinking skills, global awareness and civic literacy.  These are some of the skills students have needed to succeed in the business world for decades and are not exclusive to the 21^st century.  

Another part of the mission statement that I did not like was the description of the 21^st century classroom with the moveable walls and the different seating arrangements throughout the rooms.  Just by looking at the illustration of the classrooms, I felt as if I was in Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, or Pennsylvania’s Southern Lehigh Middle School, both of which were built back in the middle 20^th century.  Again, this idea is nothing new. 

As with all of my critiques of any change in pedagogy, I try to find some good aspects of the organization in order to be fair.  There were two things that I thought were worth mentioning.  The first was the use of the MOUSE program to support the use of technology in schools.  The idea of the program is to train students interested in pursuing technology related jobs  to aid in the maintaining of the technology throughout the school.  This is a good program because it not only gives students a chance to work on their “21^st century skills” but it also gives the school a chance to have a stronger technology department, without having to compete with the private sector for technology specialists.

I did find it interesting how one of the papers discussed how technology can be used to track students progress through the use of formal and informal assessments that will give teachers quick and up-to-date records of a students progress and understanding.  While I do not always agree with tracking, I think this is one case where it could be beneficial for the students. 

In my classroom, I will continue to work on these 21^st century skills that teachers have been trying to instill in students for years.  In order to do so, I will use what technology my school has to give my students the best “real world” experiences they can have.  My students already use the Internet a great deal, and often just for communication, but what really needs to be done is to teach them how to build technology, how to use it appropriately, and even how to fix it if it does not work anymore.  I was at an Odyssey of the Mind activity this past weekend, and I was talking to one of the parent/coaches that was there and we started talking about how the students can do more with a computer than either of us can yet they do not know how to fix it if something goes wrong.  They do not understand the programming, or the hardware, nor do they really know how to troubleshoot if something goes wrong.  These are the kinds of skills that students need to learn, and I will do my best to teach them how to think critically and be aware of what they have around them.  

Uses in the Classroom

One of our main focuses this week in our class is the use of blogs within the classroom. Having attended a workshop on them this past summer, I started a blog with my seventh grade science students this year, and it has some good and bad points associated with it. The purpose of the blog was to create a collaborative conversation among my students outside of the classroom. Each week I would post a question or scientific topic and the students would have to post their thoughts or ideas on it and then contribute to at least two other students' posts. This worked well at first because the students loved the idea, and would lead some real good debates and discussions.

However, the site I was using (edublogs) kept having issues where it would block students out of their accounts, or the blog site would go down for a period of a few days, so I switched to to 21 Classes (21classes.com). This site was even better because it allowed my students to have their own blog that they could design and build without requiring an email address. I could monitor what they were doing and could even access their accounts from my computer. After a while, students started to create the blogs like it was their own socializing website, and less like a blog. After several warnings about their conduct, I revoked student privileges to those that were misusing the pages, and when I went through them all, I realized about 75% were using the pages not as intended. I have since stopped using them with these students, but will begin them again as soon as the new semester begins (in two weeks!), with a lot more instruction on the appropriate use of blogs.

I have seen some other uses for blogs in the classroom where students used it as a portfolio for their work demonstrating their understanding of the material they are discussing in class.  This could be a great tool in a science class because students could create RAFT activities where they must respond as a scientist as they are discovering something new and exciting (such as Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection), or to explain their thoughts on a lab done in class that week.  The possibilities are endless, but either way, it is a great tool that students can use to showcase their work, or voice their opinions.  These are two things that all students enjoy doing.

Welcome!

Welcome to the first installment of Bower's World!  I started this blog because of a grad class I am in, and will plan on using this for all kinds of interesting conversations and ideas.  I am a 26 year old teacher in a middle school in Virginia, and have been there for four years.  It has definitely been a unique experience.  As our principal has said since we moved into our new building 2 years ago, we have "gone from a trailer park to a mansion."  Our school is filled with all the top technology including SmartBoards in each room, mobile carts of laptops, wireless networking and a whole bunch of other stuff that really makes teaching fun.    

Outside of the classroom, I find myself having a hectic schedule. I coach baseball in spring, and even in the fall sometimes, as well as coaching an Odyssey of the Mind team, and building the stage for the musical, while taking time to complete a master's in education, all within the course of a week. I'm not complaining, if my schedule was not so packed, I'd be bored.