21st Century Skills

After looking at the website for The Partnership for 21st Century Skills at http://www.p21.org/,  I find myself a little overwhelmed at the amount of information on their site.  I did notice that they are a big promoter of how wonderful No Child Left Behind is.  As a teacher, I see how NCLB has actually hurt our students, turning them into burned out test takers.  The students feel overwhelmed with the amount of testing that takes place during the school year to assess academic readiness which forces the teachers to "teach to the test".  I know that I have very little time to work with my students on teaching them the technology skills they will need in order to cover my curriculum for the state assessment.  My question is how do I teach the tech skills, and still get through the curriculum?


I understand the issues surrounding developing 21st century skills and see the need to do so, but how do we do this in an educational environment that does not see the value in these skills?  We are told to give the students an education that will make them competitive in the business world, but set up our educational system on a pattern that worked before the technology revolution and resist the changes necessary to carry out our goal.

The only way I see this happening is for me to take the burden on myself to take the steps to teach these skills the best I can and as often a possible.  Instead of reports printed out and turned in, use wikis instead.  Give students assignments that they do as blogging or in e-format. In order to do that, I must take the steps to get the training I need by following some of the links on p21's Professional Development page, and be familiar with my states technology standards. 

Yes, I will have to take some initiative.  Not only in the classroom, but also on the floor of the Legislature to convince my elected representative to spend the money for our future.

Socratic Teaching in the 21st Century

Greetings all.

Over all my time as a 8th grade American History teacher, I've noticed over the years that my students get more and more disengaged with early American History.  One question that I get frequently at the beginning of the year is "Why do I have to learn about some boring old dead white guys?", and the answer I give: "So you can understand why we are who we are today" just does not work any more.  I don't necessarily think that using more technology is the "magic pill" that will fix what's wrong with education, but I think it may close the gap that is widening every year, and blogging may be a good first step.

One way that I think that having a blog will be beneficial to my students is by using it as a forum for independent study.  Teaching similar to how Socrates did.  Each week I will post a question that the students need to reflect on and let their comments and questions drive their learning.  I already do something similar with class discussions at the end of a unit, but discussions tend to sputter and falter after the same 4-5 students have stated their opinion.  Maybe by having them blog, their interest will be piqued and more than the same ones will be adding to discussion. 

Trying Again

I set this up years ago, but never used it. Now, I'm giving it a second try.

So, the question that I have is how do I use technology in my classroom, but keep my students safe? How do I keep going in a classroom that has changed even in the 13 years that I've been teaching without falling flat on my face and reach students who are more tech literate than me? I guess that's what this course is teaching us.