P21, 3R's, 4C's and a good pair of running shoes

     P21 is not the latest fitness craze.  P1 stands for Partnership for 21st Century Skills which is a national organization that "advocates for 21st century readiness for every student". This  organization encourages the education system to be mindful of not just the core subject areas, the 3 R's, but also to be mindful of  4C's.  The 4C's stand for Critical thinking and problem solving,Communication, Collaboration and Creativity and innovation.  The goal is to help American students breech the increasing gap in achievement that seems to have been created with our last greatest educational reform.  These are not NEW skills but perhaps they have become forgotten ones for many of us.  Someone probably spent a lot of time to generate the rainbow graphic complete with supporting pools to illustrate the framework for 21st century learning .

      I suppose I have always subscribed to the belief that young people need to be taught not just book skills but life skills. This P21 framework encourages us to think of all the parts as being interconnected and that just makes sense.  That in itself should be scary but perhaps there is some hope then that the policy makers and researchers are finally realizing what educators have known for years.  There is more to teaching than what is in a text book or on a test.  My greatest fear is that the bureaucracy  that is our education system will take a goal so pure and common sense and muddy it up by trampling it under its misguided but well meaning feet.  Students need to be able to read and write and do basic math.  They should leave school knowing how to read a car contract or an apartment lease and they should know how to balance a check book and understand the fine print in a loan paper.  Students should be taught how to find information, not forced to remember minute details. Students should leave school prepared for what lies AFTER school and that will most likely involve working with other people and negotiating the technology of the day. 

     This all makes sense but at this point no one can tell us exactly what it will look like in the actual class room.  I want to know how we are going to teach children these skills. What courses will we offer?  How will we determine if it is successful or not? P21 offers comprehensive resources for policy makers, educators, parents and students. They have a plan for the learning environment all the way through professional development and curriculum design,  This is the complete package but I'm not sure if I am ready to open it.  At the moment everyone is buzzing about 21st century skills.  Dr David Thornburg identifies no less than a dozen key skills for the modern learner to be successful and speaks of "deep global transformation". Dr Chris Dede lauds collaboration as the next greatest interface.  Everyone is talking the talk but as of yet, I'm not sure who is walking the walk but rest assured when the time comes to lace up the walking shoes, the teacher in the class room will be the first to get blisters.

Wha wha wiki wiki wiki...whaaaaaaaat?

My day is complete.I have learned something new. In Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson explains that the term wiki is an abbreviation of wiki-wiki which in Hawaiian means "quick".  For the average teenager, add -pedia to it and it becomes the sole source of all human knowledge. Add "group" to the front of the word and it becomes the bane of my existence at the moment.Richardson suggests that Wikipedia is the "poster child for the collaborative construction of knowledge and truth that the new, interactive Web facilitates".  I feel like a different sort of poster child.  I understand how Wikipedia works. People from all over the world can edit and supplement information about any topic ranging from snail tails to rocket trails and the idea is that since it is public to everyone, no one group or individual can spin the information too wildly out of proportion. I'm okay with factual stuff like how many kilograms there are in a pound (It's 2.204 by the way. I didn't have to look it up but I did confirm it and even SIRI understood what I wanted and she almost never gets things right) but I am a little sketchy on subjective issues like race, politics or religion. After all some things just can't be quantified and individual experiences can build bias.  Meanwhile Thomas Friedman insists that the world is flat as a result of all the potential globalization that technology provides and Wikipedia is just one part of that new world map. Following closely on its heels is the idea that students in individual class rooms will benefit from a class wiki site.  Some educators are well on this path while others, myself included, are just hearing about this latest and greatest tool. Richardson assures us that regardless of how we feel about them, using wikis in the class room can foster a sense of community and encourage the exchange of information and creative ideas among students.  If group collaboration is the new hope for the future then perhaps I had better try to prepare  my students for this new world order.  After all some day I may start to drift off in a haze of anesthesia and glance up to see face of a former student frantically tapping away on the latest portable electronic device trying to retrieve vital information needed for my operation.  I can only hope that they know how to access Anesthesiologists-R-Us and that I was the one that taught them how.

To Blog or Not to Blog?...That is the question

Well if the question is to blog or not to blog, I must admit that I'm not sure of the answer.  Currently the purpose of blogging seems to be to keep me up well beyond a healthy bedtime and to challenge me to develop a series of electronic breadcrumbs so that I am able to find my way back to where I once was on my computer.  Often my computer prompts me condescendingly, "Are you SURE you want to close all tabs at once?"  I suppose the the actual edict of the week is how will I incorporate blogging into my high school class room?  Initially I believe that I will use it as a means of communication with my students.  It will be a place where they and their invested adults can see what's going on in any particular week in a course.  I am hoping to have a calendar with upcoming due dates and assignments as well as links to resources and additional content information.  Since I teach science, I like the idea of providing links to current events or stories in the news that have a science spin.  Genetics, bio-technology, world health, environmental issues and the ethics of how society will use its new found technologies are all fair game for stimulating thought and discussion.  A blog would be a good place for students to post their comments about both sides of any of these issues and to extend their thoughts by providing additional research and support about their stance. So just in case anyone else's bread crumbs have brought you to this site, I encourage you to please let me know if and how you are using a blog in your class room.

Does anyone know how to spell USB?

Not to date myself but I remember going to the drug store with my dad to test television picture tubes. He seemed like some techno-God being able to figure out just how to fix the horizontal or vertical hold of our beast of a television.  It was its own separate piece of furniture, big enough for its own zip code yet it had a picture area small enough to be blocked by the family cat. OK, so we had a BIG cat but the greatest advance in tv's at the time was if you had color and  whether or not you needed to put tinfoil on the rabbit ears to make the picture more clear.  Today electronics pervade nearly every aspect of our lives and my own children insist that I do not "deserve" a Smartphone because I don't know how to effectively operate one.  Meanwhile I find myself teaching in a high school with children that have never known a time without computers and cell phones and I am at best, electronically "special". I am aware that the proper term for this generation of youth is "digital native" and I am also WELL aware that I was not born on the same planet as most of my students let alone the same country.  I can't help but feel as if I am a visitor to their world and they are ordering 5 course meals in electronic technology while I can barely ask where the bathroom is.

So here is the beginning of a journey, a crusade perhaps or at least hopefully me not spending 40 years wandering in the desert looking for a place to plug in my laptop computer that is probably wondering how IT got paired with ME. The objective is to become more sound in the field of technology and specifically how to best use it to help our students become successful learners.

By the way, does anyone know how to spell USB?