21st Century Skills are so last century! The new mantra, the next big thing, among educators who need a serious sounding phrase to rattle around in reports is ‘21st Century Skills’. I hear it often, almost always in some overlong, text-heavy, Powerpoint presentation at an educational conference, where collaboration, creativity and communication skills are in short supply. Thank god for wifi! But does this idee fixe bear scrutiny? Collaboration & sharing Young people communicate and collaborate every few minutes – it’s an obsession. Communication Again, we live in the age of abundant communication. Problem solving Problem solving is a complex skill and there are serious techniques that you can learn to problem solve such as breakdown, root-cause analysis etc. Creativity Beware of big, abstract nouns. Critical thinking Digital literacy Across the Arab world young people have collaborated on Blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube to bring down entire regimes. Conclusion
The 21st century skills teachers should have Technology advancements have touched every facet of life including education. This latter has been radically transformed and teachers who do not use social media and educational technology in their teaching no longer fit in the new system.That’s why every educator and teacher should reconsider certain values and principles . Today I am sharing with you two short videos that will hopefully change what some think about teaching. The following videos are among the top educative videos online . Watch this first one minute 40 seconds video to see the negative side of some teachers. Negative version of when i become a teacher So if you want to fit in the system and develop professionally then this is how to do it . watch this short video to learn more. positive version of when i become a teacher The 21st century teachers are characterized by certain holistic and student centered features , some of them are summarized below . The risk taker : The Collaborator : The model : The leader : The visionary :
The 20% Leadership Challenge Google engineers, for some time now, have been apportioned 20% of their time to focus on things they are passionate about. Google even makes mention of it in their job descriptions. It’s time for leaders, particularly senior leaders, to introduce this concept into their leadership workflow. But, there is a slight twist. I’m not proposing leaders spend 20% of their time to focus on things they are passionate about. No, that would be too easy. The 20% Leadership Challenge … spend twenty percent of your time on a weekly basis coaching, mentoring, listening, collaborating with and helping members of your direct team as well as their direct reports. Not in team meetings, operational check-ups or strategy sessions, but in 1-1 personal discussions. It doesn’t have to be everybody every week. But it has to be 20% of your time. It’s my personal thesis that this is one of the easiest methods in which to drive engagement, which drives performance, which then drives customer satisfaction.
Five Tips for a Successful Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Training Program by Thomas Michael “ERP systems constantly change due to upgrades, additional features, or addition of new functionalities. In addition, knowledge leakage due to employee attrition can be as high as 25% in any given year. Consequently, ERP training is an ongoing business requirement and not a one-time event.” As if designing and deploying a comprehensive software training program isn’t challenging enough, creating such a program for an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system implementation provides its own unique and additional problems. We have worked with some of the most successful companies in the world and have created hundreds of training programs. Based on our experience we have compiled this list of five tips to make your job of creating an ERP training program a bit easier. Don’t let training be an after-thought Implementing and operating an ERP system can easily cost millions of dollars. Deploy various training delivery methods Review training materials ahead of time Monitor progress closely
Learning in the 21st Century Means Adapting to Change Businesses talk about adapting to change quickly, but they don’t take advantage of it. When a practice is not producing results, it’s time to unlearn it. Organizations that don’t embrace new ways of operating and radically different approaches to corporate learning will not survive for three reasons: 1. 2. 3. Companies that fail to take these things into account are headed for the scrap heap. Change rips people out of their comfort zones, and the inertia that often follows is huge. Today’s prime directive is sharing control among all stakeholders — discern the underlying pattern and take action. Time cards were once a mainstay of industrial life. A quarter century ago, Stan Davis wrote in Future Perfect that the fundamentals of the universe, and therefore business, are time, space and matter. Leaders talk about speed but they don’t take advantage of it. Businesses must also focus on increasing the value of relationships with customers and partners.
Why Is Teacher Development Important?: Because Students Deserve the Best Teacher-preparation programs provide educators-to-be with the tools, mentors, and hands-on experience they'll need once they begin their career. Great teachers help create great students. In fact, research shows that an inspiring and informed teacher is the most important school-related factor influencing student achievement, so it is critical to pay close attention to how we train and support both new and experienced educators. VIDEO: Teacher-Preparation Overview: A Survey of Top Programs Running Time: 9 min. Teacher Preparation The best teacher-preparation programs emphasize subject-matter mastery and provide many opportunities for student teachers to spend time in real classrooms under the supervision of an experienced mentor. Teacher-Induction Programs Support for beginning teachers is often uneven and inadequate. Mentoring and coaching from veteran colleagues is critical to the successful development of a new teacher. Ongoing Professional Development
10 Strategies for Integrating Learning and Work (part 1) | gram consulting The goal of learning in the workplace is performance–individual and organizational. If we’ve learned nothing else in recent years, we’ve learned that learning is most effective when it is integrated with real work. Learning pundits encourage the this integration but don’t always offer practical strategies that busy learning professionals can to use to make it happen. How can we begin to truly reduce the number courses and catalogs in enterprise training and find ways to bring learning to the job? In a series of following posts I’ll share some practices and approaches that have worked for me. 1. Each of the 10 strategies on the list in the highlight box on the right, have helped me to improve performance through learning without pulling people way from the job for formal (classroom or e-learning) training. In this post I’ll discuss practices 1 through 3. 1. If your going to integrate learning with work you had better understand the work. 2. 3. Part 1: Part 2: Part 3: Part 4: Part 5:
10 Strategies for Integrating Learning and Work (part 2) | gram consulting In my last post I listed ten strategies for integrating learning with work. They are a combination of concepts and methods that build knowledge and bring learning into day to day activities and workflow. I discussed the first three strategies in Part 1. In this post I describe strategies 4, 5 (which fit nicely together). Both can improve informal learning without pulling people way from the job for formal (classroom or e-learning) training. 1. 4. I’m a fan of Communities of Practice (CoP). CoP’s have been around for as long as human beings have learned and worked together. Communities among practitioners create a direct link between learning and performance, because the same people participate in communities of practice and in teams and business units. “Designing” Communities of Practice Can CoPs be “designed” or do they simply “emerge” from participants as they work together? Here is a CoP Design Guide I’ve found useful. Keeping Communities of Practice Alive 5. Ah, social media. Part 1: