VARtek Blog

I’ve been interested in 21st century skills for several years now, ever since I realized the traditional way of teaching isn’t reaching the students. In my research to learn more I came across the organization: Partnership for 21st Century Skills located at http://www.p21.org/. They have put together a plan that connects curriculum and 21st century skills. Just as we've heard about the 3 R's of reading, writing, and arithmetic, the 21st century skills are called the 5 C's.  These are critical thinking, creative problem solving, communications, collaboration, and cross cultural relationship building. Let’s take a closer look at these skills. Critical thinking and creative problem solving are skills that we need to learn to help us understand the world around us and interact with it. Communications and collaboration are skills that help us work and interact with others in our work and learning situations. Cross-cultural relationship building is something that is important in our global economy.   I’ve been working with my students for several years using group work (collaboration), having them journal and reflect on their answers (critical thinking), and doing problem solving as individuals and partners. Two years ago, my class connected on ePals (cross cultural relationship building)...

  I received an email from an administrator in one of our districts a few weeks ago.  The email signature read "Rigor, Relevance, Relationships".  For some reason the words stuck in my head.  I started to realize that these three words captured the qualities that allow a project to be successful just like they allow learning to be successful in the classroom. Rigor - You typically hear of a leader being rigorous, but what about the team members or students?  It is very easy to observe the rigor of someone in charge, but I think the rigor of team members or students makes the most impact.  Students, like project team members, are the people that perform the most amount of work on a project or assignment.  It is teacher's or project manager's job to develop the critical thinking and problem solving skills in their team members.  The solution to an assignment or project is not always a clear choice.  They need to be able to take in information they find on their own and decipher what is helpful and what is misleading. Only then, they can organize the helpful information into a plan to help them get where they need to...

So where am I going with this, you may ask. I want you to ponder and answer these questions: What does real learning look like? And what is the teacher’s responsibility in this? When you look at the history of public education, you find that it has its roots and design in the industrial revolution. School was deigned to create good workers who follow instructions, and then become good consumers.  As an example, students sit in straight rows of desks, open to the page the teacher tells them, and then listens as the teacher shares their knowledge. This was fine when most of the jobs out there were industrial. Isn’t the picture of a worker on an assembly line similar?As a teacher, my classroom looked exactly like that for many years. I did as I had been taught. I began to question whether that was the best way to teach. Through today’s brain-based learning research scientists have found that our brains don’t really operate at maximum efficiency or even close in a setting like that. Now enter the 21st century, and everything has changed. Technology is all around us, and students are connecting and engaged on a daily basis in some...