The new 21st century learners must master more than the core curriculum to succeed in secondary and postsecondary institutions, as well as in the workplace. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a national organization advocating for 21st century readiness for every student, explains the outcomes of this transformation as fusing the traditional three R’s with four C’s: critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration.
As students develop the four C’s, we have discovered that effective application of these vital skills in a technology-infused life and workplace requires acquiring them in a technology-infused learning environment. This environment calls for two elements: We must increasingly put technology into the hands of students and must trust them with more progressive technology use.
It is no longer sufficient for students to have less access to technological tools than the teacher, nor is it enough for any one suite of software to serve as the zenith for technology mastery. For student performance to approximate student potential, students need access to a constantly evolving array of technological tools and activities that demand problem-solving, decision-making, teamwork, and innovation. The four C’s are at the heart of the International Society for Technology in Education’s National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Students, providing a substantial framework for defining the focus of technology objectives for K-12 students. For example, in implementing these standards we have found that even our youngest 21st century learners are capable of independently creating digital storybooks, artwork, presentations, and movies.
This website has everything from worksheets, to lesson plans, to what's new in Technology and how you can use it your classroom. It's a perfect site for teachers because they could not only use it to see how to use certain kinds of technology in the classroom, but to also get a variety of things that will be helpful to them in the classroom. Hence why it's called The Educator's Best Friend!
This site would be useful for my students when I get my own classroom of students with special needs because it gives you many examples of different kinds and examples of technologies and tools that you can consider using. Another reason it will be useful because for all of the softwares, it gives you reviews, which will help save time so you can just read them, instead of using the softwares and finding out their weaknesses. Technologies is a huge way that students with special needs can get the most out of the learning in their classroom.
