21st century skills and technology in the classroom
I am going to have to straddle the fence on this debate over implementing and instruction of 21st century skills and technology in the classroom and the average classroom environment today. Being skeptical by nature, I was able to understand Jay Matthews opposition to 21st century skills in his article, The Latest Doomed Pedagogical Fad; however I do not agree with his attitude. It seems pretty clear that Matthew’s pessimistic attitude has limited his ability to see things from the other perspective. The issue for me is not so much against the idea of marketing the concept or promotional materials related to 21st centruy skills, but rather taking this new pedagogical approach as if it was “the” answer to preparing our students to compete globally. There are a lot of variables and the reason America is facing greater challenges today and is fighting to “keep up” with the rest of the world goes well beyond the issue of having to transform the classroom into a 21st century skills based classroom. Educators and policymakers need to understand that without the teacher-student interaction and relationship and the expectations and responsiblities of both the teacher and the student, a 21st century skills based classroom will not make a bit of a difference. Technology is simply a medium and instrument, in another words technology does not run us but rather it is we who run technology; we need to understand that with or without technology, we must learn and be able to learn. Teachers are responsible and expected to teach with or without technology and students likewise are responsible to learn with or without technology.
Nonetheless, because we run technology in nearly every part of our lives, we can see how beneficial it is. Teachers can certainly use technology and should in fact take the 21st century tools to the classroom. I believe that it can coexist with basic content materials, and there is no doubt in my mind that it can be used to motivate children and even to the extent of keeping children from wanting to leave school, but the issue still remains, how do we know for sure, how do we measure its success, and how do we keep teachers and students accountable if there is not standard assessment for checking.
06/29/2010 at 9:05 pm
That whole “what gets measured, gets taught” piece is really problematic here. Can you measure creativity? How do you do that? What does innovation look like in the classroom? It’s really messy and really difficult.
07/02/2010 at 2:02 pm
I guess that is problematic because we are so driven by facts and are constantly measuring the value of everything we do. Creativity would be very hard to measure and may be impossible in terms of standard; there would inevitably be a lack of consistency unless we define creativity for individual projects or expectations. Innovation in the classroom would allow opportunities for student reflection and would depend on the population. The Ron Clark method for example may work well with the african american community, but may or may not with an all anglo population.