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Voice of the Educator Guest Blogger 3 ways to infuse 21st-century skills into instruction By Sandy Merz on February 8th, 2016 | Comments (0) 10 inShare Pixabay SmartBlog on Education this month is exploring 21st-century teaching and learning. Join us for original content in which experts explore the trends and highlight best practices that can help prepare students for their future worlds of work and living. All teachers seek to prepare students for life after high school. These days that means equipping them with the skills it will take to survive in the 21st century workplace, while also covering other curriculum requirements. What concrete examples of 21st century workplace skills like communication, self-management, collaboration, motivation and inquiry do you focus on in your classroom? As an interesting parallel, how do your examples compare with these actual comments from employees and their supervisors who participated in the Arizona K12 Center's Lesson2Life professional development?

"One of my favorite education books is The Courage to Teach. In that text, Parker Palmer explores teaching as a daily exercise in vulnerability. As teachers, we expose ourselves, and often the content we love, to an at-times unforgiving world. Difficult students, dud lessons, doubting colleagues, short-sighted initiatives, all exacerbated by the challenges of our lives outside the classroom, can eventually harden a teacher. And that skepticism can make it a lot harder to take the risks necessary to get better."

"SMART is an acronym that often stands for goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. They're written by many organizations to set actionable goals commensurate with the group's vision and mission. While these types of goals have saturated staff meetings around the country enough to make the term a little cringe-worthy among adults, my third graders loved dissecting the acronym, and I found them more highly engaged in writing goal/resolutions than I can remember in recent years. This week, I'm happy to share with you how my students got started writing their new year's resolutions this week. "

" Gen Z is also very entrepreneurial - almost 13 percent already have their own business, and an additional 22 percent plan to own a business in the future. The Internet plays a major role in this aspirational shift, breaking down the walls of possibilities for young students to create and sustain their own businesses. The study found that these teens have a sincere love of learning. They thrive when they are challenged and allowed to be engaged in their education - more than half of the students learn best by doing. Empowered by the Internet, they are remarkably independent and self-reliant, and are comfortable researching, discovering and self-educating through YouTube DIY videos and online learning platforms like Skillshare and Udemy."

"The meaningful and careful use of technology is one of the most significant conversations in education today. When educators offer students greater access to knowledge through technology, and encourage them to use that knowledge to inquire about the world around them and beyond, they are providing students a chance to succeed in even the toughest conditions. "

" Home News Local News 'Math with (Mrs.) Buhrman' Story Comments Image (2) ShareShare Print Create a hardcopy of this page Font Size: Default font size Larger font size Previous Next Mobile math Barrett Stinson Math students in Danielle Buhrman's classes at Grand Island Senior High -- including (from left) Evelyn Dominguez, Kimberly Ruiz and Austin Ryan -- are encouraged to use their cellphones and other mobile devices in class to access the "Math With Buhrman" website, which features videos of Buhrman working on problems from their curriculum. Students can also use the website when they get stuck on a problem while doing homework. (Independent/Barrett Stinson) Posted: Saturday, December 8, 2012 11:45 pm | Updated: 11:24 am, Mon Dec 10, 2012. By Harold Reutter harold.reutter@theindependent.com | 0 comments Posted on December 8, 2012 Harold Reutter by Harold Reutter S"

"Sunnyside Unified School District, a self-proclaimed "tech-savvy school district" in Tucson, AZ, has completed the introduction of a 1-to-1 program for the 2012-2013 school year for students in grades 4 through 9. As part of that initiative, the district, with about 18,000 students, implemented a new learning environment with digital curriculum aligning with the Common Core State Standards for core subject areas, encompassing math, language arts, social studies, and science."

"'We must reimagine middle school science and math not as a way to prepare students for high school, but as a place where students are inventors, scientists, and mathematicians today.' So say Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager in this exciting guest article about the Maker Movement and its implications for kids, schools and STEM studies. Martinez and Stager are the authors of a must-read book, Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom. In this informative post, they encourage STEM educators, school leaders and teachers across the curriculum to transform our classrooms into centers of innovative thinking and experimenting. ~ Anne Jolly"

"Alan November's "Digital Learning Farm" was the inspiration for my classroom jobs. The idea couldn't be more simple: people are empowered through meaningful work. Children used to be, in the times of farming, useful and necessary contributors to their families' farms and other livelihoods. Once children's work became going to school full-time, that feeling of usefulness and importance faded. Most teachers understand the importance of giving kids jobs to do, and many traditional classrooms do designate roles such as "line leader" and "pencil sharpener"to fulfill these needs. Digital tools offer the possibility of exciting upgrades to these jobs, allowing students to learn through doing while making authentic contributions to their communities."

"In its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, Facebook lists a minimum age requirement of 13, which means that more and more students in high school and college are signing up for the social network. As a teacher, what should you do if a student sends you a friend request? Does age play a factor? Should you be careful about what you post, even if it's from your private account? "

"In response, we asked her if she was willing to send us her argument-writing unit so we could share it with other teachers. We're pleased to publish it below, including all of her handouts and recommended videos embedded. And, of course, all students age 13 to 19 can find this year's contest here."

"With the abundance of media messages in our society, it's important to ensure students are media literate. The Oscars provide a great opportunity to use the year's best films to teach students about media and film literacy. Not to mention, films can also be an engaging teaching tool for piquing interest in a variety of subjects and issues. In this compilation, you'll find classroom resources from around the web that cover many of this year's nominated films, as well as general resources for using film as a teaching tool."

"The students work, huddled in pairs, jotting down ideas in notebooks. The classroom buzzes with collaboration, punctuated by giggles and laughter. Students are excited to be writing as we start our annual celebration of Script Frenzy! "

"Today's math curriculum is teaching students to expect -- and excel at -- paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. At TEDxNYED, Dan Meyer shows classroom-tested math exercises that prompt students to stop and think. Dan Meyer is exploring the way we teach teachers to teach kids"

"Social studies supervisors and teachers across the country are revising their unit plans to meet their state's content standards, as well as, the Common Core State Standards for Literacy in History and Social Studies. Simultaneously, many states are implementing new evaluation and observation frameworks. The performance ratings employed by the most popular evaluation models encourage a shift away from teacher-led direct instruction to more student-centered activities incorporating inquiry and synthesis. In social studies, primary source document analysis goes hand in hand with the 9-12 Common Core reading and writing standards. Here are five top resources to align your curricula to the Common Core with student driven lessons. "

"How to Get Students There ... The new online assessments will challenge educators to ensure that students not only have learned certain things, but also can demonstrate their knowledge using technology and apply their learning to a variety of tasks-all without the direction of the teacher."

"Education has to focus on learning how to learn - metacognition. School will still be important, but not to impart what happened during the Revolutionary War or to teach the quadratic formula. School, he said, should focus on teaching young people the intangibles, the things that make humans unique: relationships, flexibility, humanity, how to make discriminating decisions, resilience, innovation, adaptability, wisdom, ethics, curiosity, how to ask good questions, synthesizing and integrating information, and of course, creating. "

"Do you wish your students could better understand and critique the images that saturate their waking life? That's the purpose of visual literacy (VL), to explicitly teach a collection of competencies that will help students think through, think about and think with pictures."

"If education is viewed as a relationship with students, families, and the community, then good communication should be a priority. Communication skills are critically important in education. Teachers and administrators communicate with parents/guardians, community leaders, co-workers, and other stakeholders. A principal can be successful if he understands curriculum design and knows how to support teachers. However, if his communication skills are weak he will not last long as a school administrator. In a world where most people use a SmartPhone for coupons, Twitter, Facebook, alerts from the pharmacy, seeking information, and driving directions, families expect to receive real time communication from school staff. While it is important to focus on curriculum development, assessment, healthy school lunches, exercise, and student safety, some schools could benefit from focusing on how well educators are communicating. Educators could begin by asking, "Are we communicating?" "

"A performance task is any learning activity or assessment that asks students to perform to demonstrate their knowledge, understanding and proficiency. Performance tasks yield a tangible product and/or performance that serve as evidence of learning. Unlike a selected-response item (e.g., multiple-choice or matching) that asks students to select from given alternatives, a performance task presents a situation that calls for learners to apply their learning in context. Performance tasks are routinely used in certain disciplines, such as visual and performing arts, physical education, and career-technology where performance is the natural focus of instruction. However, such tasks can (and should) be used in every subject area and at all grade levels."