"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"."
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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 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!"
"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."
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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."
"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."
"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!"
"No lesson, no event and no learning should stand alone. We connect what we learn with our experiences of the past and store newly acquired skills, facts and experience to be retrieved in the future. Previously, I wrote about framing a field trip with Google Earth. I try to make the case of the importance to allowing students to learn to make connections, to not just expose them to a learning experience without pre-knowledge activation and reflection "to put things in perspective" to follow."
"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."
"A Personal Learning Network (PLN) is a group of people you count on to:
* guide you in your learning
* be your source of advice and resources
* make you aware of learning opportunities
* share their best practices
* point you to answers and support"
One of the leading 21st Century Consultants and Trainers who specializes in aiding teachers and students in upgrading and expanding curriculum and instructional practices
"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."
"Humanities teacher, Shannon Hancock, at Graded, the American School of São Paulo, read and worked through The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo with her 8th grade students. Not only did they read the text, learn about literary elements, but also learned to articulate and discuss in a professional manner the text with their peers. Shannon chose to use the Socratic Method, specifically a Socratic Seminar (Inner/Outer Circle Fishbowl) to hand the learning over to her students. She stressed to them: " Educators don't need to have all the answers, it is about asking the right questions.""
"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."
"Alan November talks about the importance of making students contributors to their own learning. I have been following his work for years (seen him present in person a couple of times too). I have been especially paying attention to his thoughts about how, over the years, it seems that we have taken away the reason/relevance for learning of our children."
"As I discussed in a previous post What is…will be obsolete in Second Grade?, I am taking a closer look at student jobs and responsibilities in the classroom in relationship to 21st century skills, literacies and "The Digital Learning Farm", a term coined by Alan November."
"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:"