Educating thinkers and learners for the 21st century
21st Century Learners
We so often expect for ‘me to win someone has to loose’ For so long Karen argues that has been the case in Education. Its about time we took a serious look at that. With the new possiblities through the new curriculum in New Zealand we have a opportunity to address this imbalance and make education a ‘win-win’ situation.
Technology is changing, REALLY fast now. Karen challenges us and asks: Are we keeping up? Are you? Am I?
Interactive Whiteboard are good and a step in the right direction but the kids very quickly ask, ‘yep…now what?” “What’s next?”
So what skills are they going to need for the 21st century? We need to turn them into thinkers and Learners for the 21st century.
Think of it: Wikipedia is the first port of call for information, youtube, iTunes two billion tunes available off the web. Gone are the days of “ooooo, I just bought my first stereo,/walkman.”
, access to the world…. TradeMe is fast becoming the first not the last port of call for purchases.
Everything is happening too fast.
There are six pionts that Ted McCain points to, to help us in developing the 21st century citizen:
Resist the temptation to tell
Kids are different to in our day.. Opening the door through education is no longer required because now they have access. We need to teach them to inter-relate and use the information effectively. Why are we labelling kids so early when the brain matures at such a vastly different time from student to student. Educational milestones; reading this well aged 6,7,8 NUMP level 3,4,5 by such and such. They should be a guide and we rather than saying “They are not developing” we should rather scaffold their learning with the view to them ‘maturing’ in their learnnig later. (Karen said that bit better than I typed it but I hope you get the idea)
Back on track….. With Apollo 11 being only 3% ‘on target’ for its mission to the moon so our kids need to be, we as teacher spending 97% of our time on ‘course correction’.
Let them experience life and learning they have to do it for themselves; how does a child learn about ‘hot’ you can tell them off all you like be until they touch hot they won’t full understand the concept- My boy was like this, at 18 months he touched the bulb of the beside light when it had been on a couple of minutes, Now when I say ‘That’ll be hot’ he understands more fully- there is pain and discomfort involoved that he does not want to experience again.
Stop teaching decontextualised information
We need to give them a real world context. Dr David Sousa states that we needs to learning to:
1 make sense
2 have meaning
How do we get them to buy into learning?
Stop giving the final product of our thinking.
- Enpower them to do it.
Why are they still dependant at Y13?
75% of tasks we do in the classroom kids should be doing. Sure we need to scaffold you can’t just expect them to that on Monday morning– Who decides what is important to learn in your classroom? You, the government or the kids! Who should decide?
Problems first teaching second-
Getting the children empowered through ‘role play’ Please see Edcast one or my example of Ian Jukes’ talk
Progressively withdraw from helping.
ICT stands for the progression towards independence : Independent , Collaborative, Teacher. Progress through the year. They become dependent and less reliant on teacher input
Re-evaluate evaluation.
Have we missed something. Is the written test enough??
Looking below the surface- what is it we are about- what is the best for their futures?
Teacher make every other profession possible- 21st Century.
Ian Jukes “We are doing a great job in educating our kids for the 1970’s”
Recommended reading:
“The tipping point” by Malcolm Gladwell.
“The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman.
“A whole new Mind” by Daniel Pink
“The singularity is near” Ray Kurzweil
‘Teaching for Tomorrow’ by Ted McCain
“The necessity of experience” by Edward Reed
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Thanks for sharing your notes Simon.
Chapter three on problem solving is the best part of the book. I have a review of McCain’s book available online…