Re: How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century

There were several points in the article that I think ring true. Wallace believes that to move forward into the 21st century educators need to:

• teach information literacy.
• work through content in depth instead of breadth.
• foster student's ability to leap across disciplines.
• emphasize and give opportunities to develop critical thinking skills.
• create learning opportunities that develop students skills to research, formulate ideas and defend their own views.

Wallis also noted that teachers feel great pressure to bring their content and teaching in alignment with what is going on in the real world, by creating authentic learning experiences in the classroom. The short narrative of the father showing the son an online animation of electricity from a welder education site is a great example, and one that connects to my next point.

I have noticed that school systems often put teachers in an even more difficult position, that the system is so worried about the effects of the 21st century technologies that they are preventing teachers from creating 21st lessons and an authentic 21st classroom why simultaneously asking them to do so.

What do I mean by this? Many schools have such strict internet protocols that much of the available online content is blocked and not available for teachers to use in the classroom. The electricity animation highlighted in the article as authentic 21st century learning would likely be blocked where I am interning. Additionally many of the resources that I would like to use will not be allowed at the school that I will be student teaching at - they do not allow teachers to access these sites, in the name of protecting the students.

If we are to teach our kids about interdisciplinary 21st century content, much of which we cannot find in textbooks, we must be able to access the information online, or we are relegated back to the 19th century chalkboard, 2b pencil, paper and antiquated textbooks.