21st Century Education Skills - Weebly



21st Century Education SkillsFrank J. Ball Sr.AET 531February 10, 2014Professor Lenora Spicer21st Century Education Skills21st Century skills include more digital awareness, literacy, communication skills, and collaboration. We are no longer solo independent communities thriving on domestic based economies; we have become a global economy which depends on goods and services from around the planet. Being college and career ready means being able to think critically and independently and having the knowledge, skills, and strategies to keep learning. Educators must be prepared to bring these skills to their students along with instilling non-cognitive factors such as motivation, persistence, and confidence so that their students will survive in the future college pathways and career choices.Educators at every level need to be prepared to raise the bar, keep students on track, and prepare their graduates for a dynamic global economy. With the 2007/2008 housing market collapse, the recession that followed, and the resulting unemployment with people finding that they could not secure positions and finding themselves on unemployment for longer periods; colleges and universities, both physical campuses and online campuses, saw a surge in enrollment. With this surge these colleges and universities saw their demographics change from the high school senior applying to people from various age groups with varying degrees of learning styles and diversity. Programs had to be readjusted to fit for the digital native, the digital immigrant, and the digital fugitive so that all students could feel welcomed and become successful within the programs of choice. Even today, just seven years after the market collapse we see many people from various age groups enrolling and attending undergraduate programs; educators still need to work to identify key college and career readiness skills, lay out routes for success, measure the student’s progress, and devise effective ways to keep them heading on the correct path. Good teaching is critical for preparing students for future success. Understanding three important factors will help the educator enhance the student’s experience. Understanding how the student learns will help the educator provide the best quality in education and resources to develop critical thinking skills and performance. Understanding technology innovations, incorporating them into the classroom and using digital technologies with useful feedback will develop the student and their learning. Rounding off how all of this plays into globalization will continuously improve the impact on student learning. When the three factors combine and have a meeting point in the middle that is where you have 21st Century learning. When we offer our students the resources, information, and feedback to become self-reliant and take ownership of their education to have self-direction, provide the information and technology literacy, global awareness, allow them to be creative and innovative, develop critical thinking and problem solving skills, good communication skills, and team oriented collaborative projects we will have provided the well rounded education that will give them the skills necessary to survive in the 21st Century and beyond. Technology is developing at a rapidly changing pace and what is the newest and best today maybe outdate within three months. Learning will become a never-ending process and we will need to also instill that in our students so that what we teach them today will not become stagnate in five years. They must become ever evolving creatures always seeking out the new technology and self-learning after their education has formally ended.At the Complete College Georgia seminar last September, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, stated that by 2020, 60 to almost 70 percent of all jobs here in Georgia will require something more than a high school degree, a certificate, technical diploma, associate’s degree, or a bachelor’s degree. At the present time only 41 percent of Georgia’s young adults meet that criteria and if things do not change that number is not expected to rise much. Georgia needs to continue to graduate the same amount of students and increase by another 250,000 by the 2020 deadline. Competition like Canada has numbers of 67 percent and Japan had 52 percent as of date, and these countries will not be satisfied with those results. They will continue to try and increase those numbers. Since the 2007/2008 recession employers of the 21st century require more and if they do not have a workforce pool that they will be able to draw from that meet the educational requirements, they will take their economic opportunities elsewhere that do have a workforce pool that meets their needs. No matter what incentives a state or local government offers in tax breaks or infrastructure, if it does not have the educated personnel needs that the employer requires they will search in other places. Education will need to ensure that they are meeting the demands of the current employers and look ahead to the future needs; especially in the areas of research and development in science, computers, robotics, environmental, health and many others. Technology will play a major role in all of these fields as we can see with the advancements and gains we have accomplished in just the last ten years. The future is ours to claim but we need to ensure that we have prepared our students for the 21st Century and beyond. References:Pearson Education (2013) what-we-do/readiness; Accessed February 9, 2014Digital Skills (2012) educatorstechnology.edu; Accessed February 9, 2014Kay, K; A Leaders Guide (2012) ; Accessed February 9, 2014Complete College Georgia (2013) ; Accessed February 9, 2014 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download