21st Century Skills

After reading a Partnership for 21st Century Skills: http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/images/stories/otherdocs/p21up_Report.pdf, I have an overwhelming feeling of not preparing my students fully for their lives and the workforce they will enter. I feel like I am doing a good job of meeting the standards and lifelong learning skills that my students need. However, integrating technology into their learning is something that I feel I don’t do enough of. One reason, of course is lack of resources and training that I have received. This scares me a lot, because I actually have/use a lot more resources than other districts and teachers.

The six key elements of 21st Century Learning are: Emphasize Core Subjects, Emphasize Learning Skills, Use 21st Century Skills Tools to Develop Learning Skills, Teach and Learn in a 21st Century Context, Teach and Learn 21st Century Content, Use 21st Century Assessments that Measure 21st Century Skills. I was impressed that at the top of the list core subjects are still the emphasis, as should be. This site gives many good ideas for how schools can start incorporating these ideas to help our students be successful in the 21st Century workplace. The members and partners of this website are well known companies and businesses which makes me believe that the information is well planned and thought out.

As an educator, I know that it is my job to make sure I am preparing my students for their future in the workplace. This website accentuates the need for technology use, collaboration, and problem solving skills; among many other things. If I can start or improve me instruction anywhere, I believe these are the skills I can work on with my students.

~Tiffany

Blogs in the Classroom

Ideas for Blog Use in the Classroom: Travel blogs, journal, discussions, questions, literature circles, class meetings, writing assignments...

Purpose of Blog Use: Blogs are a way to motivate and gain student participation with writing assignments. They provide an authentic audience for student work. Students are able to interact with one another about assignments and content in a different way as well as outside the school day.

My Thinking about Blogs: I definitely have seen students work much harder and participate at a much higher level when they know that their work is going to be visible to everyone in the classroom. I recently had my students write travel blogs about a country they researched and had almost 100% participation and turn in rate, which showed the extreme benefit of blogging in the classroom.

Blog Rationale: I teach sixth grade Literacy and Social Studies and have only used blogging with my students in a modified format, using a discussion board on my classroom website. I ask my students questions and have assigned the travel blog assignment as mentioned above. Overall, I feel my students like the blog experience as technology is something that interests them. Blogging is one way to make things different for students in the classroom and help them to experiment and learn about "new" technology.

Happy Blogging!
Tiffany

Teaching with Technology

I have found that teaching with technology has great advantages. The most noticeable advantage to me is that students are excited and engaged when they use technology. An example of this is having my students play a vocabulary game once a week, for 10 minutes, on freerice.com. They get so excited and don't even realize that they are learning and practicing vocabulary. They have fun, while learning and to me that is wonderful!

If you haven't yet, check out freerice.com!