Comments on21st Century Skills Week 2

My interpretation of Jay Matthew's columns is that teaching 21st Century Skills is just a fad. Technology companies are cashing in on school's insisting that parents put out the money for expensive technology requirements and that teachers have been teaching current-century skills for centuries. This is nothing new.

Yes, A) I think Jay Matthew's column headline, "The Latest Doomed Pedagogical Fad", definitly got people's attention and yes, B) I believe he has a valid point and yes, C) I also believe he is missing the point.

A) The headline is bold and confrontational; who wouldn't want to read it?
B) He has a valid point in that technology companies can sell an idea and if everyone doesn't think about how they could do it more inexpensively, too much money is spent.
C) He could be missing the point in that technology could give students different tools that would allow them to learn in the way they learn the best if teachers knew to suggest the opportunities.

My view of 21st-century skills before Tuesday was that I was all for utilizing technology in the classroom ASAP. So, I tried using it Tuesday and I feel like I failed. Granted, part of the issue was a language barrier; my students mother tongue is Chinese (Mandarin) and they are at my school learning to speak English. Many of them did not have the Google Toolbar with Google Translator downloaded on their computers, so they couldn't just translate the website from English to Chinese. So, the activity I had planned for them went belly up and I felt embarrassed. Next time I will have to take some time to ensure that everyone has the toolbar downloaded before I try to do an activity.

In my ESL class, I attempted cooperative learning that required people to work together and collaborate thoughts. I divided them into groups of three and they had to find definitions to the vocab words I gave. Each group had 7 words; the next day, they had to present the words and definitions and write them on the board. The first presentation along with writing on the board took so long that many of the students lost interest and I had to take control again.

I think that integrating these ideas is important, but I need to figure out how to do it successfully before I fail again. I need to figure out the stepping stones from the ground up and then teach.

Another thing holding me back from plowing forward with implementing 21st century skills is that I don't know how to use all the tools that the kids are adept at. I understand most things about cell phones, PDAs, and laptops; but dictionaries, ipods and MP3 players are foreign to me, so I'll need to learn about all their features and how to work them prior to asking the students to do anything with them. What other gadgets am I unaware of?

Twenty-first century skills have to be taught, but they'll be pointless if our students can't read, write, spell, and do math. So, teach the basics through cooperative learning and collaboration and critical thinking, etc. while using the technology to cement the knowledge into their brains. Knowledge is a form of power and if the Internet--a source of knowledge--is down, the people who know how to find the information will be clueless as to the answers and thus will have little power.