Review of the partnership of 21st century skills website

This website has a wealth of information for anyone for anyone in a community. It allows many people outside the realm of education to come and join educators, policy-makers and business people to help close the gap on 21st century innovation and its ability to supplement education.
Ken Kay, the head of the website, explained to those visiting the site that core subjects are very important to the 21st century. I do not know if this was surprising as much as it was refreshing. Him saying that cores need to be a part of technology is exactly what we as educators should be trying to stress to our students all the time. Students will never live in a world where they are only required to know one discipline. Some might say that engineers do not need to know how to write but if they truly believe this the must not think that engineers need to fill out a resume. If life does not allow students to put their learning into separate compartments then we should not prepare them for their future that way either.

Route 21 makes me a little wary of the site. Granted, no one has to buy any materials from the link, nor do they have to even look at it, but whenever interests become mixed with monetary gain I become skeptical of whether those interest are self serving, which I am sure they are in many cases, or for the greater good of the community. It is great to see a learning community made up of so many different types of people and groups, but again, I am always critical when for profit groups are involved with education.
All that being said; I think this is a great resource for the community in general and should help close the gap between technology and its use in education. I am excited to follow this site and can’t wait to discuss it with my students and the parents of those students.

The communication power of blogging in the classroom

One of the first blogs that I ever had my class do was a reading blog. In our school, students are required to read so many books per semester. Knowing that most students do not talk to one another about what they read I created a blog that I allowed them to use after their class work was done. The results amazed me! I had students recommending books, discussing books they had read, and asking others for suggestions. By the end of the first week there were 110 comments. I saw students who would never speak with each other in school discussing books and scenes they liked as though they were old friends. It helped them find common ground in class and I started noticing that once they had blogged about it they felt more comfortable talking about it in class and in the halls. The two years I have used this blog was for 7th and 8th graders and I will continue to use it in the future. Perhaps the most impressive thing to me was, using the blog wasn’t for a grade, it was a resource and boy did they use it.

Technology in the classroom

It is my hope that teachers embrace technology in their classrooms and share what has worked well and what has not. Currently, my class has blogging assignments, Smartboard privileges, and a C.O.W. I encourage my students to use technology and remind them that very few of them, if any, will not use it in the future. I hope to use podcasting much more in this next year.

Please share any kind of technology you have used successfully or unsuccessfully in the classroom.