The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/) is a coalition of community, business, and education groups with a mission of implementing 21st century skills into today's school classrooms. I applaud their mission because I think it is necessary to get broad support to push this kind of agenda. After looking at their site, there really isn't anything that I disagree with.
One of the first things I noticed is that Colorado (the state in which I live) is not yet a member of the partnership. This is disappointing, though not surprising to me, since I believe that Colorado's education department is behind the times regarding technology and education. I am convinced that legislators must take the lead in changing education because they set the policies that govern what the rest of the educators do.
The partnership of educators, businesses, and policymakers seems like a good group to improve the education in the classrooms. However, I think it is the policymakers who are the furthest away from knowing what students need and making the necessary changes to make it happen. Unfortunately, they are the ones who actual control what is taught (standards) and what is assessed (state assessments). The policymakers need to get up to speed with what educators and businesses already know.
I will be curious to see what the self assessment tool that the P21 initiative is developing looks like and if they will provide it to educators to determine what we need to work on. I'll also be curious to see what type of assessment it is, since technology skills can best be tested using project or peformance based assessments.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Using blogs in education
I have been thinking of ways that I could use blogs either in my own classes, or with other classes by helping teachers utilize some of the benefits of blogs.
One idea I had was to integrate one program we are using that is designed to improve student writing with a blog that would allow them to publish their finished work. I really like the idea that a blog can provide an authentic audience for student writing, and that they will likely be more motivated to write better if they know that a potential large audience will see their work. Not only that, but we could encourage other students to comment on the original posts and either asks questions of the students, or provide some constructive feedback. The idea would be that once students have revised their writing into a final draft, they would publish their work on the blog for their classmates, parents, and others in the community to see and read. This would also be a great school to home connection. I teach in a middle school so the students who would be publishing their work to the blog would be in grades 6-8. Teachers could use the blog in any content area, and this would be a great way to publish student work.
A second idea I had for using blogs would be to pair up students and pose an interesting question to them that they would need to discuss and then provide a response to. This would follow the "think, pair, share" process where students first think about the question, then partner up with someone to discuss their ideas, and then they would finally post their response to the blog. The question posed to the students would need to be something that would be interesting and engaging for them, as well as a higher level question requiring critical thinking skills and not just the reporting back of facts.
I can anticipate several challenges to using blogs with a large number of students. First of all, since I teach in a middle school, I need to be careful about setting up accounts for students who could then post personal information and risk becoming a victim of an internet predator. I could use Google reader to keep tabs on student blogs, but I think that could be overwhelming if the number of students gets too large. I do think that the rewards outweigh the risks, so I intend on trying one or both of the above ideas.
I looked for any data out there that would support using blogs to improve student writing. I came up empty, except for many blogs and sites that claim it does. Has anyone know of or done a study on this, and if so, what were the results?
One idea I had was to integrate one program we are using that is designed to improve student writing with a blog that would allow them to publish their finished work. I really like the idea that a blog can provide an authentic audience for student writing, and that they will likely be more motivated to write better if they know that a potential large audience will see their work. Not only that, but we could encourage other students to comment on the original posts and either asks questions of the students, or provide some constructive feedback. The idea would be that once students have revised their writing into a final draft, they would publish their work on the blog for their classmates, parents, and others in the community to see and read. This would also be a great school to home connection. I teach in a middle school so the students who would be publishing their work to the blog would be in grades 6-8. Teachers could use the blog in any content area, and this would be a great way to publish student work.
A second idea I had for using blogs would be to pair up students and pose an interesting question to them that they would need to discuss and then provide a response to. This would follow the "think, pair, share" process where students first think about the question, then partner up with someone to discuss their ideas, and then they would finally post their response to the blog. The question posed to the students would need to be something that would be interesting and engaging for them, as well as a higher level question requiring critical thinking skills and not just the reporting back of facts.
I can anticipate several challenges to using blogs with a large number of students. First of all, since I teach in a middle school, I need to be careful about setting up accounts for students who could then post personal information and risk becoming a victim of an internet predator. I could use Google reader to keep tabs on student blogs, but I think that could be overwhelming if the number of students gets too large. I do think that the rewards outweigh the risks, so I intend on trying one or both of the above ideas.
I looked for any data out there that would support using blogs to improve student writing. I came up empty, except for many blogs and sites that claim it does. Has anyone know of or done a study on this, and if so, what were the results?
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Communication with colleagues
This blog will be used to communicate with my classmates on different ways to utilize technology in the classroom. I will be discussing the various aspects of blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 tools with others, and commenting on their ideas.
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