21st Century Skills

Hi everybody, my name is Ben Bergen today,

I'm gonna help you guys take a look at 21st century skills,

we're gonna go through a couple of different questions,

we're gonna look at what are they,

We're going to think about why they're important,

We're going to think about how we can use core subjects

to teach 21st century skills.

We're also going to look at how can

technology facilitate the development of these new skills.

We're gonna take a look at what great learning looks like.

And then lastly how technology can support great

learning and can support these 21st century skills.

So a good place to start

Is going to be with the question

of what are these 21st century skills that I'm even talking about?

For starters they're going to be broken down into three categories.

First it's going to be learning skills,

so with these learning skills that includes critical thinking,

includes creative thinking,

collaboration as well as communication.

So these are all really focus on um the ability of

the learner to think and then the ability of the learner to

work with others and communicate those ideas so that each learner can

synthesize that information and learn from those encounters with each other.

2nd set of skills is going to be literacy skills.

Um this can be in media and technology um or any other real

piece of information but it's especially important now in the 21st century that

students were able to read, understand and decode the

the hidden meanings and read between the lines so to

speak um in these new media outlets and new technology,

um, just so that they're able to know what they're getting into, um,

and be able to read the messages that aren't explicitly written out all the time.

Third lastly, um,

these are life skills that are considered 21st

century skills and these can be argued that,

um,

these are kind of timeless skills that aren't

necessarily um just confined to the 21st century.

You could argue that these are very useful throughout history and throughout, um,

you know,

our current time past and even into the

future that these skills will be very relevant,

but

versus flexibility

after that would be initiative,

being social, having good social skills and being able to relate to other people.

Um, productivity is one of them

as well as leadership.

So, these skills all focus on fundamental aspects of life

that are necessary for students to learn before they get out into the real world.

So, to review, we had three types of 21st century skills.

We had learning skills, we had literacy skills, and lastly, we had life skills.

So, those are the three categories of skills that we have to work with.

Okay, now, the next question should center on why are they important?

Why do kids need to learn these 21st century skills? Right.

I think that's a pretty fair question to ask

and an answer to that is that the world has gone

through and is continuing to go through such a rapid change

right? The world around us now is

is very much different from the world when most of these kids,

teachers were in high school or college or when they were young themselves.

So the world has changed rapidly and with that jobs are changing rapidly.

Um There's a statistic out there that, you know,

x amount of students will have jobs now that are in high school,

that the jobs didn't exist at the time, they were in high school.

So a big issue is being able to prepare students for jobs

that don't currently exist, and

21st century skills are an attempt to bridge that gap.

And you know, if even if we don't know exactly what we're preparing a student for,

um we're giving them skills that are gonna be

applicable to a wide range of different outcomes.

So that is the first part of why I would say these 21st century skills are important.

Um And second

is workforce demand. So like

going along with that rapid change,

the workforce has changed a lot.

So the education system currently is set up

in a way um that most of you are probably familiar with them,

students are expected to follow rules, sitting straight rows of desks, um

behave in an orderly fashion line up the right way, follow orders.

And the truth of the matter is that most of today's

students won't be working jobs where that's a super valuable skill,

the current system of education was set up to,

you know, it was designed

to prepare kids for industrial type jobs or

trade style jobs um where it was really important

to be able to follow step by step instructions and do things in a very linear,

straight line fashion with clear answers at the end,

Today's workforce isn't exactly like that anymore. Um

it's much less linear.

There are problems that need to be solved that don't have step by step instructions.

Um So,

if students are only used to or have practice in

solving these one dimensional single line problems,

um Oftentimes we're not gonna be preparing them for the most success

that we could possibly give them in the future in these,

in these workforce environments that that aren't

going to be catered to linear solutions.

Um so that's a big reason why these are important.

So there's been a lot of rapid change

um in our world and in the job market,

and um we need to match that in the educational sphere to prepare students to

be able to go into those jobs and jobs that don't even exist yet,

Um and be successful in those,

and that's what these 21st century skills are trying to do.

Um and also problem solving,

critical thinking and collaboration innovation especially are all

very much in demand in today's workforce.

Um people are always going to need to know how to be adaptable, to be flexible,

um to communicate well with others and to lead others effectively.

So like I said, um it's it's incredibly important that

Students are able to learn these life skills because these

life skills are applicable not only in the 21st century,

but moving forward as well,

um

and they're kind of timeless,

timeless things that

will never go out of style

in relation to how these fit into core subjects,

Um or how we can use these core subjects to teach 21st century skills.

I think there are many ways that these skills fit in.

Um one way right away would be inquiry based units,

so that could help out a lot with the flexibility and

the initiative skills that we're trying to teach as well as

the critical thinking and creative thinking

to solve a problem

in inquiry based unit.

Um students come up with questions that they're curious about,

so they're finding a problem that they don't know the answer to,

They use their critical thinking

to find out what the problem is and how we might be able to solve it

and they use their creative thinking

um

to find creative solutions to that problem,

or they use their critical thinking skills to um research something or find an

expert opinion out there that helps them solve that problem that they've found.

Um So incubation, it's are a great starting point

For looking into how we can integrate 21st

century skills into the into the core subjects.

Another one would be encouraging collaboration.

21st century skills have a lot of emphasis on communication, collaboration,

social skills, leadership.

Um so really inviting and allowing students to work

in groups or pairs as much as possible.

Um is a good way to encourage creating these 21st century skills.

Um and the teacher can facilitate these groups and

use their knowledge of their students and their class to to set students up

in groups that they're going to be most successful in,

but it's really important for students to have that opportunity to work with

each other um to work in groups to develop those social skills um

and for those leaders to emerge as well,

and I think teaching leadership is a part that

can be fit into these core subjects as well.

But when you encourage this collaboration and group work,

I think leaders are going to kind of

um make themselves known and you're you're gonna see who those leaders are,

and then you can encourage those who kind of sit in the back and um

Don't lead as much, you can encourage them to kind of take some initiative as well.

Um so the encouraging collaboration is a really good,

really good way to teach some of those 21st century skills.

Um and then encouraging creativity by allowing failure, I think is a huge, huge um

unlock for this for these 21st century skills. If you allow students to fail,

they're going to be able to be a lot more creative, right? If you,

if you just stamp

multiple choice tests down on their desk and say

you have to get this many right to pass.

Um you know, there's no room to be creative there, right?

And if if students fail and they see a bad grade and they see um you know,

a lot of red marks on their paper, that's gonna kind of discourage them from

wanting to take risks and allow failure into their life. You know,

And in the real world, there's there's not a lot of multiple choice tests, right?

There's not a lot of um times where you just fail at

one thing and then you move on and never return to it.

So I think it's really important that

we model that in schools, where,

you know, if you fail something or you get a bad grade, you don't do super well,

we don't have to just move on right away.

Like

I might take a little extra work on the student's part,

but we're going to be able to continue to move forward

um while also still refining those skills that they missed on,

allowing failure is a big part of that because if we allow failure in our class

that lets students be more creative and lets them be themselves more.

Another question would be how does technology facilitate the development of 21st

century skills and I think it's pretty obvious for the most part,

um in the 21st century it's going to be really important that students know

how to communicate and collaborate online and

to develop these 21st century skills,

we can use things like web based applications

um

to do things like zoom or google docs or anything like that,

that allows students to connect and work with peers um

either in their own school or these applications can be

used um with anyone across the world really to allow

students to branch out and learn some of those skills of

effective communication and collaboration

and everything like that, um

to develop those skills that we're looking for,

getting close to the end here. But what does Great learning look like?

And to me,

great learning looks like a student or students who

are intentionally engaged on a task that really interests them

and they're being facilitated and helped along when necessary

by a competent teacher.

Great learning isn't sitting and getting information thrown at you all day.

Great learning is also not letting kids do whatever

they want without any supervision or anything like that,

but I think it's really important

to allow students to work on things that interest them,

because in the end, that's what we want them to do,

we want them to get really good

at

figuring things out and solving problems and doing things

in the area that they're really interested in,

that's what we're trying to get them ready to do once they leave school.

Um

so anything we can do to get them intentional and to get

them engaged and working on a task that they're really passionate about,

I think is something that is incredibly important now.

It's hard to do.

Some kids don't like math, some kids don't like english, some kids hate history,

but allowing them the choice as much as possible to do what they want

is a really important thing for for great learning to take place.

And lastly here, how can technology support great learning?

Um

I think this is a great question

and I think that technology can support great learning

first of all by helping learners find what they're interested in.

Um

it's easy to see, you know, a quick google search, can,

can find those kids

100 different topics on in your subject that could interest them or

um I just,

I think there's a lot of opportunities out there

for students to find what they're interested in online.

It can also provide them with resources to learn about those things. So databases

or websites or blogs or Youtube videos

or stuff that can help push them in the right

direction once they do find something they're interested in.

And lastly

technology can support great learning by giving

them creative avenues to express their learning

in the past in education, expressing your learning has kind of been about

recalling information and being able to write it down

on a multiple choice test or maybe writing an essay

or a short answer question on a quiz.

But

Now with these 21st century skills and with

technology we can allow students to be creative and

we can allow students to display their learning in ways that are more fit for them.

Doesn't have to be a test, it doesn't have to be a quiz,

it doesn't have to be a five paragraph essay, You know,

it can be whatever they feel passionate about.

If a student really loves graphic design

and there's an assignment about,

they'll make a poster, you know,

to display your learning. Students,

if they are really passionate about graphic design

can take

the

ideas they get from their group and they can turn them into

amazing creations online that

will show their learning um and show their passion for that learning

more than a test or a quiz or anything like that could.

So I think those three um are huge ways that technology can support great learning

by helping them find what they're interested in

giving them resources to learn about those things

and then lastly giving them that creative freedom um

and the multiple avenues to express their learning.

Um

So that's what I've got for you today on 21st century skills.

Um I hope it was worth your time, Hope you learned a little bit today

and thank you guys for watching

21st Century Skills

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated