21st Century Skills and Twitter

Technology is Best

21st century skills are certainly critical and necessary for teachers to practice and preach, and yes, to teach.  However, while Hogue (2011) cites statistics that 99% of schools have a 5:1 computer to student ratio, I find these facts hard to believe due to my short-lived experience in the classroom.  However, it is the hope that schools, districts, states, and hopefully our national system will issue proclamations and ultimately funding to provide every student the opportunity to use a computer/IPad/Tablet for everyday use in their classrooms. 

A Lens into the Future (hopefully)

Hogue (2011) argues for the importance of using technology within the classroom framework.  Using computers allows for differentiation and a diverse approach to teaching.  Students can engage technology and the software that is out there for just about every type of learning and creating.  Students can utilize inquiry skills to access the Internet to find digital histories, perform research, and easily make connections to find new and invaluable information with the click of a button.  However, as a future middle grades social studies teacher, I realize that I will have to teach my students the process of research as well.  Just throwing students into the abyss of the Internet can quickly turn into a downspiral of confusion and misleading avenues.  One must teach students the proper investigative and analytical skills necessary to filter through topics with ease.  Yet, once the basics are ingrained into our students, the possibilities are endless.  Hogue (2011) gave one example of a class that utilized technology to harness the creative power of the students themselves, all the while developing students who excelled at teamwork, cohesion, collaboration, and created a finished product critqued by their peers.  Students "In a government class students were assigned a groupproject that required them to create an election campaign for a presidential candidate. They used a MacBook application called Pages to design a brochure for their candidate. They used iMovie to edit and produce an election campaign advertisement. Students in other classes read their materials, viewed the videos, and cast the deciding votes" (p. 4469).  Like I said, the possibilities are endless.  Plus, unlike using traditional formats of construction paper and pencil (students can create these if they want to), the electronic creations can be digitized and made public through blogs, class wikis, or another form of web-based group functions and structures.  I envy some of the schools that have a 1:1 computing initiative; yet, I know wherever I get my first job, I will implement using technology in the classroom, even if that means hogging the Media Center for as long as possibly allowed!

Technology and Rubrics

Another article that linked technology in the classroom to assessment, was a piece by Quinlan (2011).  While technology is being used in colleges and schools throughout the country, many teachers do not know or have little experience creating grading schemas to assess their student's products.  The article referenced blogs, forums, online classes, and products created through technology and how to properly assess them.  It gave some great information on how some students categorize performance, quality, style, and content within the technology-in-the-classroom domain.  Hopefully, teachers (many already have) will begin to catch up and realize the full potential of rubrics.  Rubrics provide a great outline and reference for the teacher as well as the student.  Teachers can grade with relative ease and far less subjectivity when using rubrics, while students can use the rubrics and models of excellence to know exactly what they are supposed to do or what criterion needs to be fulfilled in order to get the grade or achieve the quality of a finished product that is to their liking.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

Finally, I was introduced to the art of Twittering this week.  My professor assigned my class the task of creating a Twitter account this week.  We had to post every day until this blog post, with emphasis on following those that were education-centric.  At first, I was opposed to the thought of another social network "scheme." (I 'deleted' my Facebook quite a while ago after reading a provoking aricle about suicidemachine.org and the growing trend to separate oneself from entities who control your internet identity).  However, upon tweeting, following, and being followed, my group of cohorts grew to include people just as passionate about change, new ways of teaching, and essentially everything about education.  I realized that I can use this database to easily find out new trends in teaching, topics that interest me, and piggyback on the ideas and thoughts of others to create new meaning and knowledge for myself.  All-in-all, the process was and continues to be great.  I consider myself a lifelong learner, and Twitter is certainly a new literacy for me.  I can only hope I will gain as much knowledge and insight into the world as my tweeting expertise hightens to new levels of insaneness!!!

References

Hogue, G. (2011). 21st Century Social Studies Education. In M. Koehler & P. Mishra (Eds.), Society for   Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2011 (pp. 4468-4471). Nashville, Tennessee, USA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/37037.

Quinlan, A. (2011). Creating Scoring  Rubrics to Assess Online Activities. In M. Koehler & P. Mishra (Eds.), Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2011 (pp. 669-673). Nashville, Tennessee, USA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/36349.