What Do Parents Want?

Before Nov 23, Please read the article "Parents: Focus more on 21st-century skills Schools must do more to prepare students for information-age careers, say respondents to a national ed-tech survey"   at http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=61504

In your blog comment address the following questions.
Were you surprised with the survey and article?
What is one way you can learn what your students' parents are expecting?
Of course you can add anything else you wish and you are encouraged to read and comment on your colleagues' comments.

Assignment for October 6, 2009

Using Internet in our classrooms is our next topic.

Visit the Kathy Schrock site at http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/

Choose one of the links and in your comments to this post give a short review of that link. Please read your colleague's reviews (comments) first and then choose a link that has not been reviewed.

Please remember to comment to this post and do not make a new post.

Thank you.
Dr. Topp

Teaching Strategies in the Most Current Century

------------Becoming smarter about new sources of information. In an age of overflowing information and proliferating media, kids need to rapidly process what's coming at them and distinguish between what's reliable and what isn't. "It's important that students know how to manage it, interpret it, validate it, and how to act on it," says Dell executive Karen Bruett, who serves on the board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a group of corporate and education leaders focused on upgrading American education.
Developing good people skills. EQ, or emotional intelligence, is as important as IQ for success in today's workplace. "Most innovations today involve large teams of people," says former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. "We have to emphasize communication skills, the ability to work in teams and with people from different cultures."----------

Above is what found to be the most important topic in the article. Similiar to vocational learning in schools all students can not be lawyers, engineers, and doctors and must learn other skills. It is the responsibility of teachers to cement these ideas into the minds of students. A complete person, one with a little bit of everything mentioned above - not just one with a high IQ or exceptional athletic prowess - can be successful in the current society.


J...P...Nowaczyk

21st Century Schools

Technology has always played a part in education. Sometimes it may have taken a little longer than at other times. Technology will continue to be used and just like with anything else, its use in the classroom will become more effective as we use it more. Practice makes perfect....

Skills in the 21st Century

I've been thinking a lot about this and my current thinking is that our education system is roughly in sync with what our society needs in terms of a work force. We talk about how in the 1950s, the emphasis was on rote learning, memorization, and other similar skills. The jobs that were available then emphasized these skills (working at an office or in a blue collar factory). We are in a transition time right now, with the technological tools kind of outpacing the skills high schools and colleges are training students in. I think this results in a disconnect of sorts, in that we sometimes feel that our teaching methods and curriculum are not what students need. That is why curriculum that is more nebulous (using Twitter for instance) are probably fairly necessary to help our students achieve competence when out in the business world. However, this does not excuse teachers from having their students master basics (in my field, English, that would include things like thesis statements) because these skills are important as well. I am wondering, for anyone else, how aesthetic teaching (those things we teach that are important to make them well rounded like art or literature) is affected by technology.

from Carol

Education is dead last?! Wow! Really agreed with the part of synchronizing our efforts to leverage technology. In all this new technology we can't forget the "thinking" skills. Technology is a very, very important "tool", but not a core subject area (like Math).