The 10 Skills Modern Teachers Must Have The above image is 8.5×11″ so you can print it out. PDF is available here . There’s been a lot of talk about 21st century learners, 21st century teachers, and connected classrooms. There’s a daily influx of new technology into your inbox and your classroom feels woefully behind the times even if you’re flipping your 1:1 iPad classroom that’s already online and part of a MOOC . What are modern teachers to do with all this jargon and techno-babble being thrown at them all day long? Simple. In my experience, I’ve seen teachers attempt to integrate 30 iPads into their classroom by handing them out and then trying to figure out which apps are worth using. In order to do this, you’ll need skills modern teachers must have. 1) Build Your PLN Whether you call it a ‘personal learning network’ or a ‘professional learning network’ is not important. 2) Establish Real Relationships Whether it’s online or offline, the ability to establish real relationships is critical to any modern teacher. 7) Slow Down
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
36 Things Every 21st Century Teacher Should Be Able To Do What should every teacher in the 21st century know and be able to do? That’s an interesting question. After just now seeing this excellent post on educatorstechnology.com, I thought I’d contribute to the conversation. I added the twist of ranking them from least complex to most complex, so novices can start at the bottom, and you veterans out there can skip right to 36. 36 Things Every 21st Century Teacher Should Be Able To Do 1. Whether you choose a text message, email, social media message, Skype session, or a Google+ Hangouts depends on who you need to communicate with and why—purpose and audience. 2. Email won’t always work. 3. Hit the Print Screen button near your number pad on a keyboard on Windows. 4. Know what it means to be Rick Roll’d, the difference between a fail and an epic fail, why Steve is a scumbag, and who sad Keannu is. 5. Not everyone loves technology. An RT as an olive branch. 6. 7. Tone is lost when you type. 8. This is dead-simple, but you never know. 9. 10. 11. 12.
5 Traits of High Quality Professional Development For the past seven years a large part of my job has been focused on providing professional development for K-12 educators. Specifically, professional development centered around technology in education. Over the years I have paid close attention to things I felt could help me improve my teaching of teachers. Here is what I have learned:Professional Development needs to have a clear focus and purpose. (just like when teachers teach students)Professional Development needs to have obtainable goals. (just like when teachers teach students)Professional Development needs to be relevant to the learner. In my experience, when I share these thoughts with administrators I get a hugh round of agreement. Many people find it easier to sit and listen than to actively participate in a training. So what do we do? Another option is to send some staff members to a conference or training and have them teach the others in the school. Online professional development is a great option for some.
Flipped Classroom A New Learning Revolution There has been a growing buzz around a recently coined phrase " Flipped Classroom". This term starts to take root in education as more and more educators are discovering it. So what is this all about and what are its advantages in learning and teaching? Flipped Classroom is an inverted method of instruction where teaching and learning take place online outside of the class while homework is done in the classroom. Flipped Classroom shifts the learning responsibility and ownership from the teacher's hands into the students'. Flipped Classroom depends a lot on educational technology and web 2.0 tools such as podcasting and screencasting applications. "In most Flipped Classrooms, there is an active and intentional transfer of some of the information delivery to outside of the classroom with the goal of freeing up time to make better use of the face-to-face interaction in school. A direct and concrete example of Flipped Classroom concept is the popular Khan Academy.
OER Commons Mind-Sets and Equitable Education Much talk about equity in education is about bricks and mortar—about having equal facilities and equal resources. Those factors, although extremely important, are relatively easy to quantify. What may be harder to capture are the beliefs that administrators, teachers, and students hold—beliefs that can have a striking impact on students’ achievement. In my research, I have identified two sets of beliefs that people can have about students’ intelligence (and that students can have about their own intelligence). Recent research has shown that students’ mind-sets have a direct influence on their grades and that teaching students to have a growth mind-set raises their grades and achievement test scores significantly (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, &Dweck, 2007; Good, Aronson, &Inzlicht, 2003). Students’ Mind-Sets Because they believed that their intellect could be developed, students with a growth mind-set focused on learning, believed in effort, and were resilient in the face of setbacks.
The 21st century pedagogy teachers should be aware of Interpersonal learning , personalized learning, second life learning , 3d learning, collaborative learning and virtual learning , these are just some of the few buzz words you would be be reading so often in today’s educational literature. Things have changed , old methods and pedagogies are no longer relevant. The teacher-controlled learning where pre-constructed information is presented in a formal and standardized classroom settings becomes very obsolete. The urgent questions we should , as educators , ask ourselves are : what are the driving factors behind this huge transformation in learning ? and Do we need a new pedagogy to better enhance learning ? Advancements in technology and particularly social networking technologies are changing the whole educational framework . It is evident now that we are in front of two different versions of learner one is labeleed the the 20th century learning and the second is called the 21st century learning. 20th century and 21st century teachers
Corwin: Home What does it mean to be literate in 2012? | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional As it currently stands, the school ICT and computing curriculum does little, if anything, to stimulate an interest in these key subject areas. From key stage 3 upwards, the focus tends to be on spreadsheets and databases, and an overuse of Word and PowerPoint, geared as it is to enabling pupils to pass the national curriculum and coursework requirements. You would have to be a very keen enthusiast to get to the end of your key stage 4 course and still want to learn more about computers and technology as the curriculum currently defines it. Even if you did, the key stage 5 qualifications are unlikely to help you study a very technical degree in university as they are no longer "fit for purpose", covering much less complicated areas such as programming, but requiring mountains of coursework to complete the course. One of the main problems facing teachers in these subject areas, is the gap between what pupils know and do at home, compared with what they know and do at school.
Allan's Blog “The new version of the Padagogy Wheel tackles a major question that is lurking in the back of everyone’s mind. If it’s not … it should be. It’s about the problem of motivation in education. How do we motivate students, teachers, parents, and everyone else to get excited about learning? How do you stay motivated? Jeff Dunn: Editor Edudemic Blog Post:Updated Padagogy Wheel Tackles The Problem Of Motivation in Education In this third podcast episode with Ken Spero, a Senior Strategist with The Regis Company, in Philadelphia, USA we talk about how the pedagogy of Immersive Learning is ideal to tackle the problem of motivation and hits the bullseye at the core of The Padagogy Wheel. Ken introduces Engagement into the equation and how it drives motivation for learning. I asked Ken if he thought Immersive learning would help teachers work with mutually agreed graduate attributes and capabilities, helping the students embed them in their lives. Bullseye! Getting Started Podcast Episode:
Learning Is Different Than Education “…all our problems tend to gather under two questions about knowledge: Having the ability and desire to know, how and what should we learn? And, having learned, how and for what should we use what we know?” Wendell Berry, likely America’s greatest living writer and certainly its most compelling essayist, succinctly captures the challenge of education in this excerpt on an essay from a (mostly) unrelated topic from “People, Land, and Community.” But in the quote, Berry (whose ideas we’ve used to reflect on learning before, including this Inside-Out School Learning Model) has given us the ingredients for any authentic system of learning. The challenge of the ability and the desire to know is well enough established. While education as a system has (for the most part) moved long past concepts of “intelligence” and ability on the surface, academic progress and proficiency are literal linchpins for all education reform, at least in the United States. Learning:Education::Work:Career.