Views of Three (3) Digital Natives

One requirement for my Walden University course – Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society – is to create a podcast profiling the students of today. Podcasting is a new technology that I am participating in and plan to use in my classroom for the upcoming school year.

According to Prensky (2001), digital natives are children born in the technological age. “These students are native speakers of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet” (Prensky, 2001). Persons who acquire the digital language are referred to as digital immigrants. For this pod cast, I interviewed three (3) students from the high school to obtain their views on the use of technology in and out of school.

At the end of the survey with these students I realized that more need to be done in the school to better equip and train students for the 21st century.

Click here to listen to podcast: http://podcastmachine.com/podcasts/13920/episodes/71954

References

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5).

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. Part II: Do they really think differently? On the Horizon, 9(6)

Review of Partnership for 21st-century skills website

As technology continues to drive the work environment, more emphasis is being place on incorporating 21st-century skills in the classrooms to adequately prepare students for the jobs of the future. However, a closer look at our classrooms today reveal that there is a wide disconnect between the technology available in the classroom and what students are expected to use in the workplace. To try to bridge this gap one organization came into existence – the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.  This week I visited and spent some time exploring this website and provide the following review.

Partnership for 21st-Century Skills or P21 is a public-private organization that consists of leaders in the education and business sectors who came together in 2002 to create a model of learning for the millennium and help schools address the educational needs of the 21st century (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, (n. d.)). The website is very user friendly and is without distracting advertisements. The site has a wealth of resources and information to assist educators to embark on implementing not only the 3Rs but the 4Cs – (Critical thinking and problem-solving, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity and Innovation) in the classrooms.

Educators can find a great wealth of resources on the site as well as interesting articles on the P21 blog page. Each month two (2) prominent educators respond to questions about 21st century skills, policy and best practices. The site also provides resources for parents and the communities. Not only does the site provide these resources and information, they also provide speakers for speaking engagements, workshops, and seminars which are helpful for those educators who wish to infuse 21st century skills in their schools/classrooms.

With the wealth of information available on the P21 website, I will be better able to incorporate the 4Cs as well as more project based activities in planning my lessons and integrates knowledge and skills which would help to prepare my students to function in the 21st century workplace. I will be a better advocate for the implementation of 21st century skills in my school as well as become influential in getting my coworkers and administrators on board.

It is a great challenge for schools to embrace 21st century skills in face of economic challenges, however, the need for these skills in the workplace will continue to increase due to the “acceleration of technology, rapidly accumulating knowledge, and increase global competition” (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, (n. d.)).  I have no doubt in recommending the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website to educators, administrators, parents, and community leaders seeking knowledge and understanding on the 21st century skills for the work environment.

References

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (n. d.). A report and mile guide for 21st century skills. Washington DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/images/stories/otherdocs/p21up_Report.pdf

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2011). The partnership for 21^st century skills. [Website]. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/.

Introduction of Blogs to my classroom

The use of weblog in my year 11 business studies class will be a new experience for not just my students but for me as well. The main aim for the use of weblog in my classroom is to enhance and deepen students learning as well as provide students with an outlet where they will be able to participate in class discussions without feeling intimidated – some students are shy to voice their thoughts in class and as most students are used to texting, this will be a comfortable medium for them to use. I also hope that the use of the blog would serve to build a community where students will collaborate to increase their learning.

To begin the introduction of the use of blog I will allow students to visit and read blogs from a selected list for them to have a model to follow. Next I will post a unit topic and objectives, in doing so students will be able to keep abreast with the areas of study to be undertaken and may wish to do reading ahead of the class. Students will also be asked to introduce themselves by posting to the class blog as well as responding to their classmates’ postings. This will give students training in accessing, posting, and responding to post independently. This will be done in one of the four (4) lessons allotted for the course. In using a lesson to facilitate my students to use weblog will assist those students without a computer or internet access at home.

Once I deemed that students are comfortable in navigating the class blog they will be provided with a rubric outlining the class expectations. At this point content related questions will be posted and students will be required analyze the questions and then post a response to the original questions. Along with content questions business related current events will also be used to get students to apply their business knowledge in real life situations. Along with posting responses to the original post students will be required to reply to three (3) of their classmates postings. According to Richardson (2010) when students realize that their work no longer ends at the classroom door but is assessable to the world at large they will be motivated to learn.

Reference

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.