Partnership for 21st Century Skills

My initial reaction to the 21st century website was actually one of intrigue.  Before this week's assingments, I had never even heard of the 21st century skills concept.  Even more to my surprise was the fact that Ohio, the state in which I live, is listed on the site as being one of the 21st century states.  I certainly make an effort to keep up with current trends in education, but all of this was new to me.

I must say that there is really nothing on the website that caught me by tremendous surprise.   The skills and framework laid out on the site are things that I already strive to put into my classroom.  However, having a resource like this really helps to clarify things in my mind.  It also reenforces why I do what I do in my classroom.  The site provides me a checklist of sorts of the skills that I need to be developing in my students.  Because I teach Spanish, it is also refreshing to see that world languages are now being included into the list of core subjects. 

I searched long and hard to find something on the site with which I disagree.  However, I could not do so.  As I said earlier, the skills developed in 21st century education are things in which I wholeheartedly believe.  As the Skills White Paper describes, we live in a new type of society - one in which educational styles and outcomes must change and adapt to meet the new type of students that are part of that society.

The implications for me as a teacher are that I must continue to evolve as an educator.  Teaching 21st century skills is not something one can locate in a textbook.  It requires time, effort, and probably a lot of mistakes and learning on my part in the process.  It also requires that I teach my students a new way to learn.  I would consider myself to be one of the more progressive educators in my high school.  I am sure that a lot of teachers will not buy into the 21st century skills idea.  That means that more of the burden falls on those of us that do to expedite the process so that students are as prepared as possible.  In terms of the students, they are also facing an adjustment.  Education and the way in which students are expected to learn and produce has changed tremendously from even five years ago.  In essence, just like I am learning to be a different educator, they are learning to be different learners.  And because the 21st century idea is not one that has inundated entire schools or educational systems, it might even be confusing students.  Should they memorize information or learn to process and deal with information?   Should they learn a formula to solve a story problem, or should they apply that to new and real life situations?  These are questions facing educators and students today and it is my responsibility as an educator to meet these questions head on an prepare my students to be effective 21st century learners.

Utilizing Blogs in the Classroom

I teach high school Spanish and I can see a number of benefits of using a blog in the classroom.  I think it can be used as a type of discussion forum, a platform to showcase student work, or simply a writing practice tool.  For me, perhaps the most intriguing part of using a blog is that students are interacting with the target language outside of the classroom.  Because I live in a part of the country with a very small Spanish-speaking population, the opportunities for my students to use language outside of the classroom are minimal.  By implementing a blog, however, students will interact with the target language much like they would their first language.  Students are constantly posting things on the internet in their personal lives, so why not harness that interest and use it in the classroom.  By doing so, they will be using the language in a more natural setting than in the 50 minutes of classroom time. 

My idea for using a blog is simply to post a prompt weekly to which the students must respond.  By doing this I can focus on certain skills or areas upon which the students need to improve.  It would function as an extension of the topics being covered in class.  For example, if we are studying a certain verb tense in class, I could post a prompt that would require students to respond using that structure.  Or if I see that students are lacking in vocabulary, I can post a prompt that will be aimed at developing vocabulary about a certain topic. 

As the year unfolded and students became more proficient at responding to my posts, I believe that I would also have them respond to their peers' prompts.   This may be the most powerful use of blogging in my opinion.  Students have a tremendous way of challenging one another's thinking and bringing out the best in their classmates.  I think that blogging among peers would assist in developing interactive communication skills that are difficult to fully develop in the foreign language classroom.