everything21stcentury

Read the article below related to 21st Century teaching and learning. After reading the article, click on the "Discussion" tab at the top to post your synopsis of the important points in the article. After posting your own response and reading through the responses of other colleagues that read the same article, use the "Discussion" page to work collaboratively with the other course participants who selected this article.

As a group, outline a 1-3 paragraph discussion post that (1) states the name of the article, (2) outlines the important content from the article, (3) explains how the content of the article relates to students making authentic connections with their digitally-charged world, and (4) lists the names of all contributors to the post. After your collaborative posting is complete, nominate one person to post the final product to the **Discussion: 21st Century Skills** in the LoTi Classroom.

//**Note:** The discussion also asks each person to add a very short individual post so that the collaborative post can be graded appropriately.//

Enjoy the article!


 * Everything I Wanted to Learn About 21st Century Skills, I Learned in Kindergarten** //by Dr. Chris Moersch//

The 1985 hit song, //The Search is Over//, by the musical group, Survivor, aptly describes my quest for an authentic 21st Century learning environment. My journey began years ago attending “21st Century Summits, observing technology integration-best practices classrooms, and visiting one-to-one laptop schools across the nation. In the majority of cases, the emphasis was on 21st Century technology, but not 21st Century learning. Though the technology including Google Earth, podcasting, learning management systems (e.g., Moodle, Blackboard), and sophisticated multimedia applications provided a clear pathway for students to demonstrate rigor and relevance beyond the core curriculum, the remnants of didactic instruction coupled with an exclusive focus on content mastery still dominated the learning environment.

What precisely do we mean by 21st Century learning? According to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills ([|http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/),] 21st Century learning comprises a series of skill sets, themes, and content that should serve as the foundation for planning, implementing, and evaluating curricula.

While conducting a routine series of classroom walkthroughs at one of the LoTi Project Schools, I stumbled upon a mother lode of 21st Century learning. What I observed was engaged learning, student coursework adjusted according to student dominant learning modalities and multiple intelligences, technology used in a seamless fashion to support student complex thinking skills, small learning communities of students, and the teacher operating as a facilitator of learning rather than the disseminator of information. You, no doubt, guessed where I was during this 20-minute excursion into the future… A kindergarten classroom! A breakdown of this 21st Century learning environment parallels the critical attributes embedded in 21st Century Skills and Themes.


 * 21st Century Skills**

//Information and Communication Skills// Two of the eleven learning stations in this kindergarten classroom focused on students working in small learning communities creating mathematical patterns with a pod of computers. A third station used a computer connected to a large monitor to convey the daily learning station rotations and a student-friendly rubric to establish expectations for each station while a fourth station engaged students in a listening comprehension experience using a computer, CD, and a set of headphones.

//Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills// In three additional learning stations, students worked collaboratively exchanging ideas with one another and collectively solving problems ranging from word recognition and sentence construction using manipulatives to generating hypotheses at their science station about the growth of their plant seedlings.

//Interpersonal and Self-Directional Skills// In all of the learning stations, students were given scaffolded levels of autonomy depending on their individual and group readiness levels to explore, create, question, invent, and hypothesize concepts and processes based on specified guidelines and levels of expectation communicated daily to the students.


 * 21st Century Themes**

//Global Awareness// In one of the language stations, students were conducing ePals exchanges with another kindergarten classroom in Germany as a way of learning about other countries and cultures as well as improving their word recognition and sentence formation skills.

The critical question is how or why do we allow students to move away from 21st Century learning and back to 19th Century pedagogy with its emphasis on didactic teaching, lower cognitive processing, and sequential learning activities as they matriculate through the intermediate, middle school, and high school levels of schooling? Many educational practitioners blame NCLB and high stakes testing as the culprits. But is it really the NCLB legislation or our own perceptions as the best way for students to retain short-term information. The long-term question facing all stakeholders is: Are we truly preparing students for their successful matriculation into a 21st Century society? If not, what steps are we taking to ensure that 21st Century Skills, Themes, and Content are being successfully integrated into the curriculum. Think about the following possibilities:


 * Use alternative assessment schemes such as 21st Century Performance Assessments to complement existing traditional measures of student assessment of content and process skills in the classroom
 * Embed 21st Century Performance Assessments into each grade level/content area pacing guide
 * Modify existing curriculum guides to incorporate 21st Century Skills and Themes
 * Create 21st Century tasks as differentiated anchor activities in the classroom
 * Use 21st Century Skills and Themes to develop model lesson plans aligned to the core content standards

May the LoTi be with you Always!

Chris Moersch