Skills for the 21st Century

The central focus of public education since the 18th Century has been the Three R’s: reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic. These skills are no less relevant today. Students need these vital building blocks to advance their studies to other areas.

Because we value the three subject areas, we test students to ensure they are on track. Where we go wrong is assuming that one single test could ever accurately measure every student in every school in every town around the world. What experienced teachers know is that one test cannot even accurately measure all students in a single class.

There is nothing wrong with testing. Where we make our mistake is in over-emphasizing the outcomes. Then we get to where we are now where the fundamentals become the be-all and end-all of public education. And we all know that schools must be so much more.

Ultimately, schools prepare our kids to be productive citizens and workers when they become adults. First and foremost, we need for our kids to become thoughtful, discerning voters. Our republic form of government depends on it.

Next, we need our students to be ready to enter the workforce. They all one day must assume a role in ensuring that our economy thrives.

Unfortunately, schools are not preparing students for the modern work world when our only focus becomes the three basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

A scholar by the name of Tony Wagner studied what employers currently want in their employees. Yes, they want employees with the basic skills, but they need much more. He wrote these skills in his book The Global Achievement Gap and called them the Seven Survival Skills as defined by business leaders in their own words.

Today’s employers want employees who are good at critical thinking and problem solving. They want employees who can collaborate across networks and lead by influence. They need employees to have agility and adaptability. They need employees to take initiative, and they want them to have effective oral and written communication. Employees need to be able to access and analyze information. Finally, they need curiosity and imagination.

Do these skills sound familiar and make sense?

So the good schools with foresight are embracing these skills as what we truly need to do to prepare our kids for the future. We call them the Four C’s:

• Critical thinking (problem solving),
• Communication,
• Collaboration, and
• Creativity.

We also call them 21st Century Skills.

You may have noticed that technology was not listed among these four essential skills. Technology skills are important in the 21st Century, but we need to teach our students how to use the technology to achieve the aims of the Four C’s.

Tools are what we use to do our jobs, and the future of the workplace is to use technology tools to creatively solve problems, communicate, and collaborate.

Finding a New Vision for 21st Century Learning

Educators need to recognize that education is changing . . . schools are changing. We need to find a new model of education for the 21^st Century.

There was a time when schools served the students of their school district. District lines were drawn, and students were required to attend the school within their district. Schools set their expectations, and students had little choice but to meet the expectations of the school. In those days, if schools had competition, it was probably the local parochial school. The other option was for students to simply drop out, and many did.

Then in the 1980’s, schools opened their boundaries due to open enrollment. Competition was suddenly the neighboring districts. Schools had to be as good or better than their neighbors to prosper or even survive.

But here in the  21^st  Century the game has changed again and dramatically. With online learning, our competition is state-wide, it’s nation-wide, it’s world-wide. And to look at the evidence, a person cannot say these online schools are not offering quality. They are. But they are also doing something more. They are custom tailoring the education programs to each individual student. They are using a business model and providing exceptional service to their customers.

To compete in the 21^st Century, schools will need to emulate, and even surpass, this model.

The best schools now are challenging their students with active learning where the students are the center of the classroom. The teacher is no longer the holder of knowledge. Facts today are but a click away. Students today need to become independent learners and critical thinkers. The classroom must then be a place where students research, find their own answers, work together to solve problems, create new knowledge, and teach each other. The role of the teacher is then changed to a facilitator of learning, i.e. a guide, a problem presenter, a questioner, a librarian, and a collaborator.

The best schools are also utilizing technology tools to facilitate this higher order thinking and learning. And please understand that we should not buy technology because it is cool, or because other schools are investing in it. We need to use it because it is necessary to fully implement our vision of  21^st  Century learning.

If you are not yet there, this is the year we all need to find our vision.

The above was part of my address to faculty and staff as part of our back-to-school workshop.

Where to Go with 1-to-1 Laptop Learning

"It is not about the machines; it is about teaching and learning." I have heard this so often when discussing one-to-one laptop learning, I wonder if it bears repeating. I hope this fact is becoming common knowledge.

Sioux Central School District in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, just completed its second year as a one-to-one laptop learning school for grades 3 through 12. The school has enjoyed great success in grades 6 through 12, so that it upgraded laptops and infrastructure this year for grades 4 and 5 and added laptops to grade 3 as well. With the year ended, I use this blog post to reflect on where we should be heading for the future of our school and its students.

There is another prolific statement I hear when discussing technology for the classroom. When someone asks the questions, "Laptops or tablets?" or "PC or Mac?" I hear the reply, "Well it all depends on what you plan to do with the technology." Although it is an accurate response, it is also a little smug. It leaves unexplained what schools should be doing with the technology

Simply put, our aim should be high-order thinking skills. We want our students to be creators of knowledge, not simply consumers. Using Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy, we want our students involved in project-based learning where they are evaluating their sources. We also want them re-teaching, so they are breaking down the information and reassembling it into a new whole.

I get very excited about what is happening in our classrooms when I visit and I see students highly engaged in non-traditional instruction. They are using their laptops, but they are relating personally to each other. They are working in groups, arguing what is relevant and how they should present their findings back to the rest of the class. Now that is a worthy goal for any classroom.

One-to-one laptops are allowing students to learn and retain at higher levels. The difference can be explained using the Learning Pyramid from the National Training Laboratories in Bethel, Maine. The pyramid reveals how content retention is related to the methodology used by the teacher:

Average Retention Rates

5% - Lecture

10% --- Reading

20% - Audio-Visual

30% --- Demonstration

50% --- Group Discussion

75% ------- Practice by Doing

90% ----------- Teaching Others

Laptop learning changes the classroom dynamic from more traditional passive learning, i.e., lecture, reading, and audio-visuals, to the active learning of practice by doing and teaching others.

Preparing Future Leaders

I recently wrote a blog post on the importance of training our next generation of political leaders. I suggested there are no standardized tests that measure how effectively we are preparing our students to be prudent and discerning voters and citizens eager to assume the mantle of leadership in any of the multiple layers of our participatory republic. So we need to ask ourselves how do we know our schools are doing what they should to prepare citizens for the democracy that is the United States?

Yes, reading, writing, and the other basics are imperative. The premise of public education was that it would serve as the bulwark of our democracy by preparing a literate electorate. But fundamental to this as well should be preparing our students to understand propaganda. Remember, the two nations with the highest literacy rates of the 1930's were Germany and Japan. Our youth must be educated to be critical thinkers, to recognize the ploys of advertising, and to think about how their own beliefs and consciences are reflected in the alternative that are offered to them.

Next, citizenship preparation is not just a civics class and a couple of history classes. Schools need to be modeling our republic form of government. Student council should be part of every secondary school. It should not be a superficial body where the popular kids are elected to get together and chat about what themes they want for the upcoming school dance. This should be a program that needs the serious attention and support of the school administration. The student council members need to be required to regularly solicit feedback from their constituents. They must involve the student body in serious issues regarding school governance. Finally, the faculty can recognize many students who will one day be leaders in our society. Leadership should be an essential component to every talented and gifted program. Get those students involved. Don't let their leadership training fall by the wayside simply because they cannot win the popular vote . . . today.

Although some of our political leaders today myopically cannot see this important function that schools serve, we must recognized this need and serve our students to provide for the future leadership of us all.

Are You an Evangelist for 21st Century Learning?

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results." We are not sure who first said this, but we agree it makes sense.

We are guilty of this in education. Our calendar is based upon the agrarian cycle of the 1700's, and our secondary school structure is based on the industrial model of the 1800's. The students sit in the desks facing and listening to the teacher for nine months. And if they follow this process and all the rules for 13 straight years, the students get a high school diploma. The length of the days remains the same. The length of the year remains the same. Then some reformers decide that taking some time from this process for some more testing or spreading salary dollars around will make the difference.

But now in the year 2012, we stand at the opportunity for a new era to begin. We can retain what has been largely successful over the years and apply the power of modern technology to change what is happening in our classrooms on a daily basis. Students can use technology tools to connect to resources around the world. They can seek out their own knowledge and guide their own discovery. We need only to create the student-centered instructional model and give our students the technology tools to realize this vision for our future, focusing on the 21st Century skills of critical thinking, communication, creativity, and collaboration.

Among my concerns, the readers of this blog will likely be the people I communicate with regularly and who see this vision for a better future. But now we need to take this message main stream. Are you an evangelist for this movement?

Some call my dear friend and colleague John Carver (@johnccarver) an evangelist because he is out front leading the call. We, the people who "get it" and are reading this message, need to get the word out. Make this vision part of our professional discussion when we have meetings. Take the time to attend the seminars and read the resources on the networks. Connect with your colleagues. Bring back what you learn and pass on this concept you believe in.

This is no longer a separate add-on to education. This is the future. Be a part of the change we seek for our children.

1:1 Laptops are not about Increased Test Scores

"If we implement one-to-one computing, will our standardized test scores go up?" said many school board members when their respective schools were considering a laptop initiative for their students.

Unfortunately, the data is inconclusive. There are some studies that show gains, but some of these studies are minor or narrow. Meanwhile some other studies show no difference. The brightest hope for increased standardized test achievement is in student writing skills. Unfortunately, many writing assessments are subjective. And most national tests do not truly assess writing; it simply does not fit the bubble sheet answer format.

Our school is now in its second year of using one-to-one laptops in grades 4 through 12. I am convinced that laptops can grow standardized test scores. However, I do not believe this is the proper use for them. There are a number of quality software programs that provide students with extra practice that could increase their assessment scores. If a school was to use their laptops for intensive basic skills practice on a daily basis, I am of the opinion that test scores will improve significantly.

But there is a larger question: is this really the best use of expensive laptop computers? Can't the same aim be met if we simply immerse our students in reams of worksheets?

One-to-one laptops are about 21st Century Learning. We use them to promote research and critical thinking to increase higher order thinking skills among our students. We are trying to get our students collaborating with classmates and with students around the world. We want our students using creativity to solve problems. This is education that will prepare our students for the world ahead of them, and this is the way to use a valuable learning tool such as a laptop for each and every student.