Important Charateristics/Themes for Educating 21st Century Students:
Personally, I think schools need to be revamped to include 21st century skills. In tomorrow's world students will need to be resilient, creative and comfortable with digital technology and its advances. A typical high school should offer classes such as: social networking, creative cognitive thinking, problem solving, the art of compromise, evaluating online content for bias, etc. Students will no longer have to take a class where they learn how to type or a class where they learn how to write legibily.
The concept of a school will probably change as well. I invision a virtual school four days a week and a brick and mortar school one day a week. Students from all social and economic backgrounds will be interacting with each other in virtual school and once a week you will meet with students in your neighborhood to exchange ideas and discuss skills face to face. This will also allow all children the opportunity to take any class they want because they won't have to rely on their school district offering it in order to be able to take it. In addition, this will greatly improve the financial situation of schools and state budgets.
The downside to this is that if we go to far, we might lose that human element that is available in overabundance in school today. I think we need to stike the proper balance between embracing new ideas and technology and saving ideas that work today and have a place in the future.
I think it is difficult to visualize what schools will look like because technology has allowed society to rapidly change so this task is difficult but one worth thinking about because as an administrator I will be leading the change needed in education today.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYou express some terrificly ambitious ideas, Jackie. Congratulations. I love that you say you'll be leading the charge. It seems to me that at least some of the important 21st century skills you mention in the first paragraph can be incorporated into existing content courses, without the need to add more courses to an already overstuffed curriculum.
ReplyDeleteI was intrigued by your comment to me in class that you have your students blog. Would you be willing to tell the class about this at some point?
I think you'll agree with my thought that our challenge now, right where we find ourselves today, is to begin taking steps in our current settings that lead in the directions you have identified.