What do 21st Century Students look like?

You have seen them walking down the street in any town, big or small, with pockets full of gadgets and talking on their cell phones. All that technology that we adults can't even identify.  These are the 21st Century students.  These are the next generation of earners, families, and voters in the United States.  As I was reading the article Syncing Up With the iKid: Connecting to the Twenty-First-Century Student by Josh McHugh in Edutopia, I was thinking about when I was a kid and boom-boxes were a hot item.  Everyone had one and they were all shapes and sizes.  But it was a little embarrassing on those Saturday nights when my parents would bring out the record albums to torture us with this outdated technology, not to mention the polka music they were playing.  Thankfully, the Walkman came along and I could listen to what I wanted, when I wanted.  That meant, no more polkas for me!  It also meant that I missed out on the family time together and the opportunity to let my parents know that I didn't like their music.  In reminiscing, I realized that is probably what today's kids think of the adults in their lives.  They want the latest and greatest technology for reason's they aren't sure about; they want it personalized; of course, they want to be able to tell you that you are old and out of touch with the world; and they still want to be accepted and part of the family.

A group called Partnership for 21st Century Skills developed a vision of 21st century student success.  Nine states have taken part in this initiative.  Nebraska's Department of Education has been in talks about it as well.  The skills, knowledge, and expertise students should master to succeed in work and life are outlined on their site.

• Core Subjects & 21st Century Themes - The core subjects they have included are English, reading or language arts, world languages, arts, math, economics, science, geography, history government and civics.  They also include that interdisciplinary themes of global awareness; financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy; civic literacy; and health literacy.
• Learning and Innovation Skills - These skills include creativity & innovation; critical thinking and problem solving; and communication and collaboration.
  
• Information, Media and Technology Skills - Because of an abundant amount of information the skills students will need are information literacy, media literacy, and ICT literacy (Information, Communication and Technology)
• Life and Career Skills - Employers will be looking for these skills in any area and in all their employees.  They are looking for flexibility & adaptability; initiative & self-direction; social & cross-cultural skills; productivity & accountability; leadership & responsibility.
  

In order for us to get students to succeed with these skills, four things must be in place.  First, standards and assessments are critical; that's not a problem in Nebraska.  Second, curriculum and instruction should support these 21st century skills.  Third, teachers need to be provided adequate professional development in these areas.  And lastly, where students learn affects what they learn so learning environments which support 21st century skills is the final critical piece of the puzzle. Statistics say that students of today will have fourteen different jobs by the time they are 38 years old.  It is vital that our students have these skills in place before they leave our schools. Did You Know 2.0  and A Vision of Students Today are great video representations of many statistics like these.

What do 21st Century Teachers look like?

Why upgrade to color televisions if the black and white worked just fine?  Why get a cassette tape player when your eight-track player did the job? Well, ok, the eight-track may be a bad example. I bet you can come up with a few of your own examples.  The world has upgraded in every way, shape, and form.  21st Century Teachers are going to look different as well.  We must upgrade to provide a quality education for our students. 

International Society of Technology Education (ISTE) created standards for educational technology for students and teachers.  In June of 2007, ISTE unveiled the NETS-National Educational Technology Standards for Students.  This last June, ISTE released the NETS for Teachers.  In June of 2009, ISTE will complete the NETS for Admininstrators.  You are probably thinking, "More standards?  I'm going to scream!" Before you do that, let's think about what these standards are really asking us as teachers to do for our students.  Here are some explanations and ideas you can try in your classroom to promote 21st century learning in your students.

• Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity - Many of you already do this every day with kids.  The word facilitate is really a tough one to truly put into action. How do we let go of the reigns in our classroom and still control the behavior, student interaction, and learning while they are there?  My kids always want to be responsible for the big stuff like mowing the yard instead of just doing the dishes. The same applies to students in the classroom. If you want kids to do something, they need to know it is important enough and that you trust them enough to be in charge of it.   Allow students to be in charge of their own learning!  Give them guidance so they know how to do the research and let them find all the resources they can.  Let them create their own visual model of their understanding so you can see it too.  You will be surprised at how deep the learning will be!  If you don't know how to use the technology, ask someone to help you or be willing to let the kids figure it out on their own. Letting go of the reigns is an exhilarating feeling for you and your students!
• Design & develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments - For weekend work, have students take pictures that represent your current vocabulary words and share those pictures with the whole class.  Think they don't all have cameras?  They will take the pictures with their cell phone or will borrow a camera. Have you ever had your students make a movie for your class?  If you aren't ready for Final Cut Pro, have students use their digital cameras to take enough pictures to create a movie (kind of like making a cartoon).  If you want to dive in a little deeper, try out Movie Maker on Windows or iMovie on the Mac to have students create commercials, public service announcements, or summary videos of classroom events.  
• Model digital-age work and learning - Most schools now have some sort of information system such as Power School so many of you are using that for keeping grades.  Try adding one new tool to your repertoire this next school year.  If you get stuck, ask a student!  They will be glad to help you, and it is a great way to build that trusting relationship with students.  Keep your bookmarks on Delicious or Diigo and then share them with your students.  Take pictures of your class and post them on Flickr or Picasa.  Save your Power Point slides as .jpg or .png and post them to Picasa so students can access them anytime. 
  
• Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility - Talk to kids in every class about internet behavior.  Preteaching is the best!  Tell them ahead of time what they can expect on an assignment and then, how you expect them to complete it and how it will look.  If they are doing research, teach students how to do responsible research on the internet.  Take the next step and  talk to them about the difficult stuff.  Talk about the internet, social networks, and what might be out in the world.  This is no different than talking about drugs, alcohol, or relationships.  Even if kids hear it from their parents and then hear it again from you, keep talking!
• Engage in professional growth and leadership - Going to workshops is always a good thing but we here at ESU 10 are very aware of the obstacles you face when trying to take time for professional development.  What can you do then, if you are unable to take those days?  For starters, find a small group of people you trust. They don't have to teach in the same curricular area that you do or even the same grade level.  Gather your group frequently for short sharing sessions even if it is only 10 minutes a week maybe in the morning or after school.  Start by sharing your favorite web sites, next teach each other how to use a web tool.  Finally try longer training sessions for instructional strategies or applications.  You might even try learning a new tool together with the help of online training such as Lynda.com. or Atomic Learning. Your new group (PLN - Personal Learning Network) will keep you going through the school year.  ESU 10 also offers many workshops in Kearney.  Those trainings can be brought to you and your school by our trainers at ESU 10!  Please call or email if you are interested.  We will also be implementing a new training delivery method in the form of a webinar.  We have four planned for October and November covering Google tools.  They are one-hour sessions after school.  We hope this new technology will make it easier for you to get the training you need, when you need it.  Additionally, there are online communities just for teachers!  From the makers of ODIE, ESU 10 is developing communities for workshop participants and member schools.  (More communities are in the works!) These communities will be used for  collaboration, sharing resources & lessons. There are also web sites such as Classroom 2.0, a Ning site where teachers gather to collaborate and share.  If you are really ready to dig in, try Twitter!  Twitter is a microblogging site where you follow and are followed only by the people you give permission to.  Read more about Twitter and how it is being used in a new article on Edutopia!  Professional development is viral so pass it on and cheer each other on!
  

If you are wondering where you stand with your technology integration, ISTE has created a classroom observation tool that can be downloaded.  You will need to sign up for a free account.  Use this tool when making lesson plans or observing teachers.  The last two pages of the .pdf might trigger some other great lesson ideas for your classes. 

21st century kids may look a little different than we did at that age but they didn't get there by themselves on purpose.  They are the result of a changing society.  America and the world will continue to change, grow, and develop new technology.  For our students to be ready for that change, ready to be proper citizens, run a government of which we can be proud, we must be willing to work toward these skills for ourselves first.