So full disclosure, I am a skeptic. I'm not an early technology adopter. I am highly interested in it but only in how it can streamline or bring deeper meaning to the life I want to live. That said- teaching philosophy... I believe much more in the art of teaching than the "science" of prescriptive or reactive education. Yong Zhao and Michigan State University (my alma mater! go state!) has been blogging about this recently. So any sort of educational research that attempts to apply to all students in all classroom makes me wary. Not to say I totally discount it, but you've really got to convince me.
So here are my thoughts: The imagery of education as a factory producing a product alluded to at the beginning of the chapter is one which I dislike intensely. But the idea of 21st century skills not only for the workforce- (really that is not the sum of a person's meaningful life)- but for successful citizenship, I am intrigued by. The examples of 21st century skills: adaptability, complex communications/social skills, non-routine problem solving, self management/self development, systems thinking, all sound like skills that were used when family farms were the norm and people collaborated for success rather than competed against one another in their "cubes" to have the most. (The U.S. competing against the rest of the world instead of collaborating for a common good got me going a bit too.) Somewhere along the line we have "untaught" or removed the opportunity to learn these skills. I'm not sure how or where that happened. The upshot is... I'm not sure I'd accurately call them exclusively "21st Century Skills."
Thoughts on "adapting" or applying the 21st century skill set in the science classroom: I really get excited about these. Using authentic scientific experiences in the classroom, I agree is best practice. Giving students the opportunity to "act" like real scientists- dirt and uncertainties, arguments and all, encouraging thinking outside the box or circle or whatever- what students often miss is the importance of creativity and collaboration in the scientific world. I'm excited by how 21st century technology will come into play in helping students develop these skill sets.
Great thoughts! I esp. like your comment about family farms and when people collaborated for success.....I hadn't thought about all of this from that perspective.... having untaught these skills in public education is totally true....and now we are responsible for bringing that way of communicating back into reality. Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteP.S. GO STATE!!! My whole family is a big green bunch of Spartan lovers. ;)
Ahh...Spartan fans. I assume you are all pretty happy that Izzo is staying put.
ReplyDeleteI think we share a fairly similar outlook on the purpose of k-12 education. I wrote a bit about it in a comment on Mr. Buck's Blog, so instead of repeating it I will give the link: http://buckscience.blogspot.com/2010/06/one-world-web20.html
I do think one opportunity provided by these "web tools" is to really focus on inquiry - in a broader sense, not just science inquiry. May of the web tools that we will explore help teachers and students connect and communicate in authentic ways.
Later in the course, we will explore an independent research / inquiry project called "We Are Scientists" - I think these types of approaches will really appeal to you.
Go Badgers!
Wow, that's spooky how similar our views are. Very interesting contrast in our view of the family farm: in my construct, I've painted it as something that constricted/restricted the school systems' flexibility, but you've--and rightly, I think--applied these "21st century skills", as we're calling them,to a much older agrarian structure. I think we both have strong points, but I like your take on the cooperative skills of an agrarian society. Thought provoking!
ReplyDelete