Hardy,+Molly


 * Use the course materials to help you respond to these questions for each Module.**


 * Module 1 Notes**
 * 1) What skills you think today's students will need to be able to live and work in the 21st Century? I believe that all of the skills listed in the readings are necessary. I found it interesting in one of the videos they talk about how America has become more of an innovative nation rather than a labor nation. If we want to continue to be at the top of innovation we need to offer students these skills.
 * 2) How you are preparing your students to gain these skills? If you are not currently teaching: How are educators preparing students to gain these skills? I have a lot to incorporate into my lessons next year, but I feel as though I am teaching some of these skills such as the basic foundational skills, problem-solving techniques, and communicating skills. I prepare my students with these skills by offering problem based learning, where students need to come to a certain conclusion. Along the way they are able to communicate with their peers, and in the end result they have to communicate their thinking and justify their reasoning.
 * 3) What is the difference between ’Foundation Skills" and "Functional Skills"? Foundation skills is what you bring to the job, and the functional skills are skills specific to your career.
 * 4) How well your curriculum and current instructional strategies are helping your students acquire these skill? If your are not currently teaching how well do you think our schools are using instructional strategies to help students acquire these skills? I am really focusing on have my students participate in more problem solving activities with the goal of communicating their responses to their classmates and myself.
 * 5) Think about today's students and the potential professions they might go into. Which of these skills might each student need? How can we make sure that all students are prepared with the skills necessary to enter the 21st Century Job Market? I found it interesting that in one of the videos they stated that the top ten in-demand jobs did not exist in 2004. No one knows what the future holds, let alone what type of jobs and careers will be needed. All we can do is best prepare our students for the future, and the future is being all to have all these 21st Century Skills. I think that if we can help students practice these skills and offer them the opportunity to learn them in a caring environment they will have tools that can help them in the future for whatever path they choose.
 * 6) What patterns are beginning to emerge between the various resources you’ve been exploring? How do these skills compare with the list you made in question 1? The list I made in question one was pretty similar to the skills I have seem in the various readings and videos provided. I'm starting to see a pattern of skills such as basic, personal, technical and thinking.


 * Module 2 Notes**
 * 1) How can we make personalized learning a part of our schools and classrooms? Personalized learning is with one student, it connects passion and interests, learner has a choice and option, learner selects technology, assessment AS learning, set goals, monitor progress, reflection on learning from summative assessments. We can make this a part of our schools if we break away from lectures and teacher based lessons that do not allow interaction.
 * 2) How do we help our students become real learners? We can help students become real learners by sparking their interest and asking questions that make them think and want to know more about.
 * 3) What is/should be the role of assessment in student learning? How can we improve upon our assessment practices in order to really help all students be engaged, life-long learners? Assessment is typically the end result, students study a topic or concept and get tested on it at the end. Generally with no room for revision. Assessment can be that, but students need to be given feedback before the end assessment. Assessment can be a project that students have created or worked on that shows their understanding of concepts.
 * 4) What is the role of e-learning, and how will/is this change(ing) the educational paradigm? It will allow teachers to become more of facilities. I do not think that e-learning will take away the job of the teacher, but it will allow students to work at their own pace and offer differentiated instruction. It really calls the to student to become responsible for gaining information, and not having a teacher feed it to them.
 * 5) How do your students compare with the 21st Century learners described in Mark Prensky"s article on "The 21st Century Digital Learner"? I think that my students are more than likely very comparable to the learners in the article. I bet students feel as though they do not have much control over their learning. Sure, I have the occasional poll of which day to have the assessment, or allowing them to make an iMovie, Digital book or paper for their end of the year project but nothing beyond that. I also know that when I lecture, kids are zoned out. I do my best to bring in humor as much as possible, but that will only take me so far. I need to offer my students the chance to learn on their own in my classroom and be more of a facilitator.
 * 6) HotChalk’s article on 21st Century Learners? If you are not a teacher: How do you as a student or your children compare with the 21 Century learners described in this article? I know my students can appreciate and talk "text" all day! I really like the story about the student creating a video game with people all over the world and never meeting them. I would love to offer this to my students, but I'm not sure what type of big time project I could have my students meet with people from all over the world.
 * 7) To what extent to you see your students (or your children, or yourself as a student) possessing the qualities shown on thegraphic on the wiki for the International School in Bangkok? If you see any gaps, what do you consider the reason for these gaps, and how might educators help students gain these skills and qualities?
 * 8) Creative- There are about two project a year I allow my students to create something on either iMovie, Digital Books or power point. I would like to incorporate more opportunities for students to show their creativity.
 * 9) Inquisitive- I can incorporate more problem solving activities that spark my students interest and make them ask more questions. I did a probability activity with Starburst and started off by showing a quick movie of someone opening a pack of two starburst. At the end of the video I asked the kids "what do you think we are going to be doing today", and someone answered "finding the probability of getting certain starburst colors in a pack of two." Then I asked the class what type of information they needed in order to answer the question.
 * 10) Open-Minded- I model how to be open-minded to my students when they are working within a group. I do this a lot in my honors Geometry class. This class is mainly proofs and there are endless ways to do a proof for one problem. We do a lot of peer editing and peer reflecting and the kids really need to have an open mind about one may solve a problem differently then they did
 * 11) Tenacious- I think this is a characteristic that isn't displayed in my own classroom.
 * 12) Flexible- I do my best to be flexible with my kids. I know I cannot teach to one level and that every child has different needs. If I start to incorporate the flipped classroom next year this will allow for a lot of flexibility with my students and their needs. I also want to set up my students to work with Khan Academy, so again they can go at their own pace.
 * 13) Collaborative- I have my students work in group, sometimes with whomever they choose and sometimes I put them in groups based on who I think will work well together.
 * 14) Efficient- I could be better at this with my classroom, I could teach/model to my students how to efficiently and effectively look up materials they need. Whether it is in their textbook, notes, or the internet.
 * 15) Reflective- This is a big one in my class! Anytime I give an assessment my students always need to fix all the mistakes they make. They also need to make a note as to what they did wrong. It gives the students more of a focus then just looking at their test and saying "oh I got a C..." I also allow revisions of certain work that they had in. If a student chooses to do corrections they did to explain their mistake and show work for their new answer.
 * 16) To what extent are you, your children or your students Effective Learners, Effective Communicators, and Effective Global Collaborators.?
 * 17) Effective learners: My students are reflecting on their work a lot within my classroom, and I know in other teachers classrooms as well. I think my students need more modeling or coaching on how to effectively search for, analyze, and interpret what they find on the internet. My school has decided to incorporate Common Sense Media into our curriculum next year. We chose 7 lessons to be taught throughout the year, and each teacher is responsible for teaching these lessons. I am very excited for this opportunity!
 * 18) Effective communicators: My students can be great communicators. They know how to interact with their peers on a multitude of different platforms. However, for some students it is hard to let go of that informal communication and talk to adults. I have many students who will email me questions late at night without any capitalization or grammer. And the best part is, when I see them in class they won't ask me the question they emailed me.
 * 19) Effective global collaborators: This one I am not sure how my students are. Reading the article about how one mans son was able to create a game without even meeting the other people is just astounding! I'm sure a lot of interaction is making digital with my students at home that I do not know about.
 * 20) To what extent is your school (or your children's school) and classroom meeting these needs
 * 21) Effective learners: This maybe the one I enforce the most. Like I stated above I have my students constantly reflect and revise their work.
 * 22) Effective communicators: This is one that I start with in the beginning of the year and it is always an on going process. Within my math classroom I have my students write a lot. I am lucky enough to have the iPads and use Open Classroom which is a platform that has a way for students to submit work electronically. In the beginning of the year I give my students a problem and ask them to write out what they did to solve it. A lot of students really struggle with this! All they want to do is just write the answer. To get students use to this, I have them work with a partner and tell them how to solve it. While the partner listens they type out what their neighbor is saying. I would like to give my students to opportunity to start using other platforms and choose which they would think would be the most effective way to communicate their thinking.
 * 23) Effective global collaborators: This is not going on within my classroom. My students communicate with each other and myself, but not with others outside the classroom. Perhaps I could get together with another teacher at a different school and have our students work on the project together via social media or another form of communication.
 * 24) How might you rethink your classroom to make it a 21st Century classroom? What are the barriers you face to making your class a 21st Century learning environment? If you are not currently teaching how should classrooms be re-thought? Right now I have access to a class set of iPads which is amazing. I am glad my eyes are being opened to the possibility of having my students use some of the OER. As always, one of my barriers is time. I have so many standards to cover in such a short amount of time, I need to really plan out some of these lessons so my students can have an opportunity to learn the essential 21st century learning skills. I know when Common Core finally comes into play we will have less standards and will be able to actually go deeper into material, rather then just skim the topic and move onto the next.


 * Module 3 Notes**
 * 1) List how your school and classroom environments support 21st Century learning outcomes. If you are not teaching, think about your school experience of the your children's school. Consider: In my classroom I am supporting 21st Century learning by having access to a class set of iPads. I am having my students create online portfolios in google doc that will be used to track their progress, reflect on work, and set goals. As a school Miller is incorporating a lot of new technology in classrooms and our computer lab. Many teachers have access to laptop carts and are using them in their classrooms. As a whole, my school does not have an over arching 21st Century goal, I would like to see that change for next year!
 * the extent to which faculty at your school collaborate, share best practices and integrate 21st century skills into classroom practice There are a few teachers that I collaborate with about 21st century skills. I work with two of our Language Arts teachers a lot on how to incorporate technology into our classrooms. We currently use Open Classroom at our school, the site provides wikis, assignments, quizzes, and discussion forums all on one platform. I am also a part of my districts technology team where our goal is to educate teachers on various ways to bring technology into the classroom.
 * students learn in relevant, real world 21st century contexts such as project-based and applied learning experiences
 * students experience equitable access to quality learning tools, technologies and resources
 * to what extent architectural design of your classroom creates space for for group, team and individual learning
 * to what extent you provide opportunities for both face to face and online interaction with community members and experts in their field for your students I do not provide opportunities for my students to interact online or face to face with community members. I saw ePals on one of the reading lists and will definitely be looking into that for my classroom next year.
 * to what extent does your school and classroom reflect the 21st Century Learning environment. I would say as a whole my school is leaning more towards the 20th century model of a classroom. However, I do believe that a lot of teachers are working on making the transition to a 21st century model.


 * Module 4 Notes**
 * 1) In what ways are your assuring that the 21st century skills taught discretely in the context of core subjects Is your curriculum interdisciplinary? If you are a middle or high school teacher how can you or do you collaborate with teachers in other departments to create multidisciplinary projects? Some of my lessons and activities in my classroom cross into health, for examples students need to find meals that have 1/3 of the daily amount of sodium they need. I have activities that cross into science and I do a lot of writing so it crosses into Language Arts as well. I am a middle school teacher and at my school we do not have our students on teams, so the kids I have do not all have the same science teacher or social studies teacher. That makes it difficult to create lessons that can start in my room and end in another core subject's classroom.
 * 2) How does your curriculum focus on providing opportunities for applying 21st century skills across content areas and for a competency-based approach to learning? Right now I have my students working on Khan Academy and using digital books to show their understanding of various topics. I would like to see more project based learning happening in my classroom that cross various core subjects. I am searching the web for examples.
 * 3) What instructional strategies do you use to enable innovative learning methods that integrate the use of supportive technologies such as inquiry-based, project-based and problem-based approaches as well as promote higher order thinking skill? Last year I did not do as much as I could. Last year I implemented a problem of the week, where students had a week to work on problem solving activities and I had a week to grade them. I would discuss with the class the various results I saw and students could take a few days to do revisions if they choose too. I think I can start having these problem solving activities be the basis of my lessons.
 * 4) How do you encourage the integration of community resources beyond school walls? We can offer computer hours at school sites, and start doing lessons that require students to interact with other students on secure teacher approved sites.
 * 5) How can you better integrate 21st Century skills into your curriculum. What will help me better integrate 21st Century skills is being shown examples of inquiry-based and project-based learning that requires my students to interact, research and problem solve. I need to do less lectures and put the learning in the hands of my students.

IF you are not currently teaching answer this from the point of view of your children's school or your experience as a college student.


 * Module 5 Notes**
 * 1) What are the best uses of technology to promote student learning in a 21st Century Classroom? Students should be familiar with various forms of technology and be taught methods to find information effectively and efficiently. If technology is going to be in the classroom students need to know what to use it for.
 * 2) What strategies can teachers use to assure their students are acquiring the 21st Century skills necessary for their future? By incorporating various forms of assessment such as formative and summative feedback. Allow students time to create goals and reflec t upon them. Allow students to present information in the best way they see fit.


 * Module 6 Notes**
 * 1) What aspects of Finland's educational model work in the United States? It's interesting that they have no testing, and how teachers have so much freedom in their classroom.
 * 2) How can we best reshape education so that all students gain the skills they need to live and work in the 21st Century? I think we need to start with teachers, and really have everyone buy into the fact that these skills are necessary! Teachers need a place and time for collaboration on projects that can be integrated between subjects. For an individual stand point I will be allowing a lot more collaboration in my classroom, and more freedom on how to present information. <range type="comment" id="611737">I will be having students work on more problem based learning that has differentiation built in.