The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

This week for my grad school class we were asked to check out a site about 21 century skills. I found myself staring at this website thinking, “Oh goodness another set of standards and skills they want us to incorporate.” At the beginning of the school year we were trained on something called Common Core. This basically takes the state standards we have now and streamlines them to be universal or across all states. This is good for when you have a student transfer in from another state so that we have the same standards we will teach to. Of course this is just now being developed and will probably be years before we see it truly work. My first thoughts on Common Core were “finally we can streamline all of these standards they give us.” Common core includes standards that are for college and career readiness. I think this is similar to what P21 is trying to do.

I looked over the information I found on the P21 website, http://www.p21.org/index.php, and found that it was not describing anything I do not already do. In the document where they include the definitions, http://www.p21.org/documents/P21_Framework_Definitions.pdf, I noticed a lot of similarities to how I already structure my classroom. In the description of learning and integrating skills it talks about different ways to incorporate within the classroom. As I read the descriptions I immediately thought that this was something we are already doing. It seems like it is common sense to teach students how to work together, think creatively, and make judgments. It does not seem to me that this needs to be written out in a framework. It is something I think we have done as a change to the times. Why is it that it always has to be written out somewhere for it to be commonplace? Like if it is working and we are already doing it, now lets complicate things more by writing it down and forcing everyone to include it. Plus on top of that lets make a new set of standards showing you how to use this framework.

I am not saying I like one over the other. I am saying that there are way to many standards, streamlining them I am for. I am saying that we do need to implement things in our classroom to prepare students for how the world is today. In no way shape or form do I want to ill prepare my students for the real world. I am not quite sure idea incorporates a better set of skills for students. Honestly I think that the only person who can prepare their students is the teacher. You are given a class or 20 or more students now a days and each student is different. To say that every student is going to be best prepared by doing this or that is not always true. The teacher needs to know what the students need in order for them to be prepared. Sometimes the teacher’s creativity and knowledge is all that we need to educate our students effectively.

Incase you want to read about Common Core their website is: http://commoncore.org/

They do have a whole section about why they disagree with P21. I read into it slightly but have not formed my own decision yet. Honestly I have not worked long enough with either one to say which one I feel is better. I do believe they both have the right idea at heart. That idea is to combine the core subjects and knowledge with skills needed to succeed in the world today.

The Use Of Blogs

How might one use a blog with 4th graders? I thought about this for a while and I thought of a few ways. I thought about the personal response or essential questions that are often asked at the end of a lesson. I thought about the importance of getting our students to write and how we are using journals more often. My thought is that we could take that journal and make it interactive by using it in blog format. I'm not saying to take away the paper and pencil journal book. It is important for our students to be able to write as well as type. Although we want our students to express their thoughts on paper society today is much more digital based. We have replaced mail, for the most part, with e-mail. Getting the students to write out the response is the first step. Getting them to type what they have written is the next. I would use a blog as a way for students to reflect on those essential questions or big pictures from the lesson. It would be much like their journal writing, allowing for personal thoughts and ideas to be expressed. It would allow for students to interact with others and comment on what other students thought. It might not be used everyday, as getting access to a computer is not always easy. It would be used maybe once a week or once during a unit in any given subject. I think students would get a lot out of being able to use the computer to discuss things with other students without it being just chat based. They love when they get to use to computer so to be able to show how their thoughts are represented on the internet to their parents would be pure joy to my students.

My first post

I have set up this blog as a way to talk about ways to intergrate technology in the classroom. I want to focus on the importance of technology in urban education. The school I teach at is located in Baltimore City. We are an inner city school with a population of prodiminately African American students. Every classroom in our school is equiped with a Promethean Board and every teacher has a laptop. Technology is to be used everyday and in every lesson.

In my classroom we do not only use the Promethean Board software. We use the internet to look up information on topics we are covering or to answer questions we encounter. We take virtual field trips online. We use the ActivExpressions to complete assessments and collect data. We are constantly looking for new ways to use the technology in our classroom. I will share ways that we incorporate technolgy and hope that others will share ideas also.