Four absolutely necessary skills and five vital ‘soft skills’

A A Juliani published a paper yesterday entitled ‘21st Century Skills Have Always Been “Needed” Skills, But Now We Need Them More Than Ever’. He points out that these vital skills are not the focus of standardised testing yet so many educational decisions lie on the results of these tests.  He points out that : If schools are meant to prepare students for the real world. Then why doesn’t school look more like the real world?”

These are the skills we focus on at Broughton when many of our classes, both Primary and Secondary, take part in units of work using Guided Inquiry.

However, A A Juliani goes on to discuss the work of Seth Godin

Let’s Stop Calling Them Soft Skills“, in which he describes five categories of skills that we all look for in colleagues, employees, and students–yet, don’t seem to value over other content and standardized skills.

The five skills Seth describes (from http://ajjuliani.com/are-we-waiting-too-long-to-give-students-a-choice-in-their-learning/) are:

Self Control — Once you’ve decided that something is important, are you able to persist in doing it, without letting distractions or bad habits get in the way? Doing things for the long run that you might not feel like doing in the short run.

Productivity — Are you skilled with your instrument? Are you able to use your insights and your commitment to actually move things forward? Getting non-vocational tasks done.

Wisdom — Have you learned things that are difficult to glean from a textbook or a manual? Experience is how we become adults.

Perception — Do you have the experience and the practice to see the world clearly? Seeing things before others have to point them out.

Influence — Have you developed the skills needed to persuade others to take action? Charisma is just one form of this skill.

There is plenty of food for thought here as we plan another year of activities and learning experiences for the children in our care. The content is not all we must teach!

 

Projects versus Learning through Projects

Terry Heick‘s visual comparison of traditional projects versus how current projects can assist in deeper learning is helpful for understanding the changes to pedagogy in our schools today. Screen Shot 2015-03-18 at 11.14.18 am

Completing ‘Projects’ and using the Guided Inquiry Design Process do have similarities but Guided Inquiry has built in scaffolding for support throughout the process of personalised inquiry. It also takes into account the affective domain of students at various stages of an inquiry.
GI_DesignProcess2

Flipped Classroom explained

Educational Technology and Mobile Learning have posted a graphic and two videos to explain what in entailed in ‘flipping’ your classroom. It is one of the best explanations I have seen. As personal technology use expands in our school with the implementation of BYOD, Flipped Classroom is now a possibility.

“Flipped classroom or flipped learning is a methodology, an approach to learning in which technology is employed to reverse the traditional role of classroom time. If in the past, classroom time is spent at lecturing to students , now in a flipped model, this time is utilized to encourage individualized learning and provide one-on-one help to students.”
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Learning through Social Networks

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Many educators use PLNs (personal learning networks) for personal learning and networking. But what about students?

Paul Moss, edmerger.com in his post Students Need Professional Learning Networks, Too discusses the benefits of students engaging in learning networks

The creation of an independent learner, a learner who can adapt to changing contexts by engaging their network, a learner who can confidently navigate through the jungle of the Internet. But let’s not make students wait while teachers themselves come to terms with the power of the PLN. Students already have a very solid prior knowledge of the power and functionality of networks. They enthusiastically engage with them everyday for social and entertainment purposes. The skilled teacher is the one who can take that prior knowledge and enthusiasm and teach students to leverage it to their learning advantage.

Bloom’s Taxonomy in action

The following video illustrates activities at each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy in a classroom setting – activities and instruction. Theory and more ideas (including digital support) can be found at these sites – thanks for the links goes to Jennie Bales
Bloom’s Taxonomy Blooms Digitally
Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy Resources

Our Year 10 students will be incorporating this theory into their Guided Inquiry unit of work this term. It will assist them to construct a deep question for their research, analyse their findings and create solutions to selected issues. Bloom’s taxonomy can also be used by teachers as a tool for differentiation and assessment.

21Century Skills Framework for Project Based Learning

The Buck Institute for Education (BIE) is dedicated to improving 21st Century teaching and learning throughout the world by creating and disseminating products, practices and knowledge for effective Project Based Learning (PBL).

This skills framework contains definitions for each skill and sets them against the focus for which it needs to be developed. Project based learning has much in common with the Guided Inquiry approach we follow at Broughton and these definitions assist in making some of the 21C skills ‘jargon’ clear as more teachers learn new pedagogues.

Teaching and Learning with JISC Digital Media

There is so much to think about and to learn about digital media on the JISC site linked below – and all in one place!
A framework called DiAL-e is described and the best part about this framework is that it:

encourages consideration of context, learners’ roles, content, learning outcomes, activity, feedback and re-usability – focusing on what the learner does with an artefact rather than giving priority to its subject or discipline content.

Eight core learning designs and six core learning spaces are described and then digital media to assist in transforming learning is placed into the equation.

As Australia looks at implementing a new national Curriculum, courses are being developed and programs rewritten it would be a great time for a rethink of how Digital Media can play an important role in encouraging the learner to use their ‘product’.

21C Skills for teachers and students

The following link to the blog post from Educational Technology and Mobile Learning provides access to various tools for 33 different skills. It is wonderful to have such a varied and pertinent list including the tools needed to succeed in each skill all in one place. Both teachers and students shoud be aware of skills they need to keep up with digital learning in the 21Century. Here is a great place to start!

The 33 Digital Skills every 21st Century teacher should have

Educators: Social Networking sites for your PLN

So much change in so many areas makes it hard to keep abreast with educational research and developments. A well connected teacher has access to many people and new ideas with similar interests to their own.
This site offers access to selected social networks so that teachers can link to stay informed or to share their own expertise in an area of education.
This is Part 2 in a series. The Comprehesive Guide to The Use of Social Networking in Education Part 1 gives a clear explanation of social networking as it applies to education but this site – Part 2 – delves deeper

Some of the principal benefits of these networks is that they help you grow professionally and expand your knowledge base to include new ideas and concepts. To be a successful educator, we need to constantly engage in discussions and participate in the various communities of practice and PLNs available online.

Independent learners – it’s all in the ‘search’

Critical thinking skills are extremely important in order for students to be able to search and find relevant information to meet their research needs. This video clip  states that there is now a new digital divide – “those that are able to search and those that are not able to search.” Google provides online tools, webinars and lesson plans to help teach students search skills.

Many students go straight to the search box without noticing the many extra tools that help to narrow the search field down to relevant information.
AND…Don’t forget that our school library offers Teacher Librarian support and seminars to improve information and digital literacy.

 

E-Portfolios for reflection and goal setting

Traditionally schools have collected student work samples to store physical examples of accomplishment and compare individual achievement over a period of time. E-Portfolios have so much more potential. They can be used to “help students find purpose and passion through reflection and goal-setting” as they develop their own record of learning. Dr Helen Barrett explains how it is possible to incorporate the use of digital tools in learning to achieve this goal.

21st Century Information Transliteracy

Dr Gail Bush from the National Louis University speaks about the way we need to view and use information when it is available in abundance from many sources. She says that in the 20th Century we used valid information to “answer the question” but now there are so many sources of information we must “question the answer”.

Dr Bush says we can’t trust every information source so we need to think critically when assessing information. Students need to be challenged to be open to changing perspectives under valid opinion. Students need to learn to question the validity of sources and look for perspectives and bias.
Read more here: http://www.nl.edu/news/informationtransliteracy.cfm

Agents of change – ‘Play’ in education

Northern Beaches Christian school is leading the way in changing the model of education. Common learning spaces and student selected activities support curricular work. Videos of the Principal’s vision, students at work and teacher’s perspectives can be seen in this link from the playDUcation blog.