Group items tagged

"My official title at school is "21st Century Learning Specialist". My work focuses on bringing 21st Century skills and literacies to educators and students. I know…I know… many of you don't like the term "21st Century Something"."

" An Update to the Upgraded KWL for the 21st Century June 12, 2015 - Featured Carousel, Information, Learning, Modern Learning - 4 comments In 2011, I wrote a blog post, titled Upgrade your KWL Chart to the 21st Century. It described how I learned about a new version of the traditional KWL (What do I Know, What do I Want to know and what have I Learned) via Chic Foote as it snuck in an "H"(How will I find out). That "H" seemed to make the increased importance of the information literacy visible. I ended up on Maggie Hos-McGrane's blog, which, according to John Barell's book Why are School Buses always Yellow?, added yet two other abbreviations ("A"- What action will I take and "Q"-What further Questions do I have?) to make up a KWHLAQ acronym."

"The job title "21st Century Learning Specialist" does not give the same clear picture to many people as the title of 2nd grade , Librarian or Spanish teacher might. I get many blank looks when I answer the innocent question of "So, what do you do?"

"I found the following video in my Reader today from The Innovative Educator. I will be saving the video for future PD opportunities."

"I have been dying to share this project with all of you, but I have been holding off until we have completed the unit (well almost…). There seem to be more and more opportunities popping up for our 5th grader to continue learning and connecting their knowledge about Christopher Columbus… Take a listen to the students' "CC Newscast" video and then read on about the "upgrade" process from textbook to globally connected learning!"

" Part I of Using Social Bookmarking in Schools and with your Students attempted to point out the skills and literacies involved and required when using social bookmarking tools to its full potential. I looked at the revised Bloom's Taxonomy as well as 21st century skills to see where social bookmarking fit in."

"At the beginning of most calendar years, especially at the beginning of a new decade, century or millennium, we tend to take a closer look at our past and future than perhaps at other times. In the past few weeks I came across the following two articles:"

"To keep our parents in the loop about Social Media use in the classroom, we have posted the following Twitter Policy and Rationale on the school's 21st Century Learning blog."

"My children (16, 18, 20) are writing more and more. Their friends do too… Probably not in the way some of you can imagine… nor think of as writing…but nonetheless they are writing. They are texting… 8000 texts (per month) sent and received… Can you imagine probably 5-10 words on average per text…40,000 -80,000 words per month: A collaborative monthly story of their lives in WRITING!"

One of the leading 21st Century Consultants and Trainers who specializes in aiding teachers and students in upgrading and expanding curriculum and instructional practices

"Getting an entire school on board with a digital communication platform aka classroom blog is a PROCESS. A (baby) step by (baby) step process… As the interaction between teachers, school, students, parent and global community increases, so does the need for other "little" pieces of 21st century literacies. "

"We (Head of school,Jon Mitzmacher, 5th Grade Classroom teacher, Shelly Zavon, Middle School Language Arts teacher, Mrs. Reppert, Technology Director & 21st Century Learning Specialist,Andrea Hernandez and two of our students, Sabrina & Hannah) were interviewed by Alan November for his NL Podcast Series about the use of student jobs in the classroom!"

"I have been working with 5th grade for several weeks to upgrade "The American Revolution", a unit in their Social Studies curriculum. Along the Way I blogged about individual lessons. Bringing in Experts. Transformative Teaching & Learning? The Official Scribe: It's All About Learning Styles & Collaboration"

"Helping students become quality Tutorial Designers has been on my mind and agenda lately. The reasons are plentiful, from the train of thought "if you can teach it, you know it", being a vital skill in the 21st century, Alan November's work "Who owns the Learning?"/ "Digital Learning Farm" to tutorials being an important piece in the self-motivated and self-directed learning of our times."

"he Upgrade and Amplification Exercise slide deck below grew out of the need for companion slides to "21st Century Critical Literacies- Is Traditional Reading and Writing Enough?"

"I can die happy now :) I have seen learning in the 21st Century modern classroom! The learning just oozes through the cracks of the physical classroom walls. Learning is amplified by the amount of people who are collaborating, participating, communicating and creating. The learning is NOT about the technology tools, but what students can DO with them to learn in new ways. The learning is about an authentic tasks, that allows students to contribute in a individualized and personalized manner to make them realize that their work matters in the real world. It all started out with a conversation between Mike Fisher and me. He had written over 40 children poems and was in the process of wondering what to do with them? I was looking for an authentic task for 9-11 year old students. We felt we had a perfect match! How about getting the students Language Arts and Art teacher involved? The initial idea was to make a unit of poetry come alive, study Mike's poems and visualize the poems by creating illustrations."

"I believe we are on our way of taking a modern classroom learning opportunity and upgrading assessment forms to match new skills and new literacies while not forgetting traditionally assessed ones. We took a classroom Twitter feed (Part One) , looked at the conversation skills students exhibited during the Skype call (Part Two) and now are moving on to looking at "blog post writing" as assessment. Keeping a previously created blogging rubric in mind, we took a closer look at the blog posts written by the 4th and 5th graders during the actual skype call and edited and formatted after the call had ended."

"I am borrowing the notion of the Leitmotif, a recurring theme, and applying it to learning in the 21st century. For me it always seems to come back to a red thread of self-motivated and self-directed learning that connects all."

"Our second grade teacher, Ms.S., was ready to "upgrade" a traditionally taught unit on reptiles. We met to discuss how she could incorporate the 5 C's of 21st century skills as well as support new emerging literacies. The basic idea was to upgrade a typical report, using books from the library to research and fill out a "research" template on a piece of paper."

"There is a lot of thoughts and ideas about what learning in the 21st century is supposed to look like. Most likely you are constantly bombarded with books, workshops, keynote presentations, webinars and good old lectures (yes, even on the topic of modern learning…) that remind you that it is time to upgrade traditional teaching and learning."