Week 11: Teaching 21st Century Students

Week 11: My Views on 21st Century Teaching & This Course

Traits of a 21st Century Teacher 
(http://blog.whooosreading.org/8-undeniable-traits-of-the-21st-century-teacher/)

Reflection on 21st century skills article:

The article I choose to reflect on is 15 Characteristics of a 21st-Century Teacher. This article basically just shares the 15 characteristics of being a 21-st century teacher and goes into detail as to why teachers need to have them in order make an impact with their students of this generation/age.

The 15 characteristics discussed in this article are...

1) Learner-Centered Classroom & Personalized Instruction

2) Students as Producers

3) Learn New Technologies

4) Go Global

5) Be Smart and Use Smart Phones

6) Blog

7) Go Digital 

8) Collaborate

9) Use Twitter Chat

10) Connect

11) Project-Based Learning

12) Build Your Positive Footprint

13) Code

14) Innovate

15) Keep Learning 

I actually really enjoyed reading this article because I felt like these are all different pieces that we have been taught so far in our course journey to having our masters in educational technology. I feel throughout the courses I have taken to far, this course and future courses I have started to have more of these characteristics and I will continue to add on more and strengthen the ones I have already started to take in. For example, I didn't even know what a "twitter chat" was until I took this course and it's one of the characteristics listed because it is "the cheapest and most efficient way to organize one's own PD, share research and ideas, and stay current with issues and updates in the field". I am taking the coding elective class that is being offered through NLU this summer and I am excited to learn more about how to implement it into my classrooms next year. I would like to introduce my students to coding, explain how it relates with math and help some student spark interests in it to evolve into future careers or job skills. Overall, I just thought this article was rewarding to read to see how much I have been learning through my courses and how now it is about picking and choosing some of these characteristics to focus on strengthening and making them useful in my teaching to help my students be prepared for the real-world. 

Reflection on this course:

I actually really enjoyed this course! I really liked the way it was organized and setup with weekly blogs and projects/other assignments thrown in every other week. I enjoyed the mini-videos at the beginning that really allowed me to hear the instruction and any other insights the instructor had in order to make the directions more clear. I loved that we used multiple different websites/apps/etc in this class and that we were always given additional ones to explore on our own at the end of each lesson overview. I really truly got a lot out of this course including participating in my first blog and twitter chat and I can see how these can be very powerful tools for teachers and students alike. 

I think this class really opened my mind to thinking about how important those 21st century skills are to our students and to us teachers so we can properly teach, model and implement them into our lessons. We need to make sure our students are not only learning content that will help their knowledge base to get though school and into the work force, but also think about the skills and attitudes our students need to be prepared for college and be marketable for their future careers. Sometimes I feel like it is so easy to get wrapped into just worrying about teaching our students the content and making sure they are hitting those CCSS to be prepared for the standardized tests that we forget about how important it is to teach life and 21st century skills in our classroom too! I think that my biggest focus next year is going to be to really focus on how to teach the content with technology and ensuring that my students are building these skills through my lessons. I would also like to try and focus on having my students be more reflective so they can learn from their own mistakes and see for themselves what material and skills are their strengths and/or weaknesses.