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

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 * Module 1 Notes**
 * 1) What skills you think today's students will need to be able to live and work in the 21st Century? My initial answer to this question before doing any of the reading assignments were somewhat limited. I thought today's students needed to improve their problem-solving skills, interpret and communicate information using technology, and work collaboratively with others . I also thought it was important for our students to take concepts and apply it to real world applications such as project based learning.
 * 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? One of my main goals for teaching algebra is helping students to see that there is more than one way to solve a problem. I encourage my students to approach problems from different angles rather than the one or two ways that a textbook might encourage a student to solve this problem. I see it many times that our curriculum teach in such a linear way, it inhibits thinking outside of the box. That's why I enjoy Algebra so much - be flexible in your approach, but also logical. I also want my students to be better at communicating. I want my students to be able to summarize or put into their own words what they have learned to another student. After doing the reading, there are definitely areas that I had not thought about, which I should such as taking advantage of the whole multimedia technology we have available. Sometimes, it's easy for us me as an educator to dismiss the use of technology because not every student has the access to it. That notion has to change, otherwise I really am not preparing them.
 * 3) What is the difference between ’Foundation Skills" and "Functional Skills"? Foundational skills are basic, essential skills that everyone should have before they start any job. These skills can be reading, writing, oral communication, basic math skills, problem-solving, and working in groups. Functional skills are skills that someone may have that directly helps them perform tasks successfully to a specific job. These skills are particular to a trade, such as repairing or designing specific engine parts, or programming language.
 * 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 feel that our curriculum is somewhat limited in helping students acquire these skills. I also feel with our schools pacing as well as the weight of state testing, our responsibility has shifted to preparing students to take multple-choice test. I can't help but feel this pressure when I must make sacrifices hoping to cover all of the essential chapters in a book before the middle of April (our school year ends in June 1st). Because of that, I've had to really focus on what can I do to help our students acquire some of these skills. I have been more focused on student communication and collaboration more than anything. I know I need to give my students more time to work together in small groups and problem solve. This is an area that is lacking when we give our standardized tests.
 * 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 feel that we are always playing catch up when it comes to preparing our students for the emerging professions. I use to think powerpoint presentations are so ahead of its time when I taught my students to do their projects on. Now, they scoff at the idea when there are so many other ways to do presentation. I think for myself, trying to incorporate more writing in math has been the real challenge.
 * 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? I think my idea of what “skills in the 21st century” has changed after looking at the various resources. I thought that as educators we should be utilizing more of the technology aspects (powerpoint, lcd projectors, interactive whiteboards, internet) into our classrooms. Having done the readings and watched the videos, I realized how I may be advancing in my teaching career by becoming more familiar with what may improve my instructional presentations, but I've left my students behind from being able to utilize those same resources that I have been given. My list that I created in question one is very limited to what I could be doing in motivating my student to appreciate what is out there to help them become better prepared.


 * Module 2 Notes**
 * 1) How can we make personalized learning a part of our schools and classrooms? I think in the beginning of the school year, it's always good to get to know the students. Having them do a interest inventory or survey allows the teacher to see what their likes / dislikes are. It also give you an idea of how they best learn and what they are interested in. Some of this information can be aggregated into something that allows for project-based assignments. I also like the idea of pacing students learning based on ability. I've heard several people mentions Khan Academy. I like the idea of having students learn at their own pace. We so often punish those kids that get a concept by slowing it down for the rest of the students to catch up. I also appreciate the idea that students have accountability to set individual goals to reach on a regular basis.
 * 2) How do we help our students become real learners? Real learners find value in what they learn. They see how the information that is presented to them applies to their lives now and tomorrow. In order to create real learners, we need to help students see beyond the right answer to a problem. Students can benefit from learning about the process of determining the answer to a problem. We need to slow down and move away from the typical learning style of taking notes and "drill and kill" style learning. Let's give students more practical ways to show us their understanding by using problems applicable to their lives.
 * 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? The role of assessment is to provide ongoing data on student performance. Based on these results, teachers are able to adjust, modify or make accommodations to their lesson . Different assessments can be used for different purposes. The District requires that students be assessed on their proficiency to their grade-level content standards and the effectiveness of the current state-adopted curriculum. It gives the administrators a glimpse of what is really going on in the classroom. Teachers can also improve on their assessment practice by adopting other methods. Besides the closed response, we can also have more open response questions to help students articulate and summarize their understanding . This allows for more critical thinking skills to develop. We can also include more authentic assessments such as portfolios and long-term projects. These seem to be more relevant to real-world application as students are allowed to draw from their own experience and interests. Informal assessments allow us to see how students are quick ways for teachers to get a quick assessment of how our students are doing. They allow for us to make adjustments rather than waiting a week later for formal assessment results. Finally, we can also try to incorporate more self-reflective assignments to give students time to process their understanding of material. Journaling, exit cards, summarizing with another student can help pace the class so that it's not just information being constantly absorbed.
 * 4) What is the role of e-learning, and how will/isl this change(ing) the educational paradigm? I think the role of E-learning is to help supplement the role of the teacher. As teachers, we may cover a concept or skill in 50 minutes and hope that students are able to find additional support from a family member, notes, or textbook. With e-learning, students have the capability of hearing a concept / skill multiple times interpreted and visualized in multiple ways. E-learning can be more individualized. Students can learn from other students on Youtube. They can watch short clips explained in another way at the convenience of their own home. We can assign practice problems that they can play a game to online. I have heard how this shift is stretching learning beyond the four walls of our classroom. It's whether teachers such as myself our willing to embrace this change or continue to hold our students back.
 * 5) How do your students compare with the 21st Century learners described in Mark Prensky"s article on "The 21st Century Digital Learner"? I would say that my students are looking for opportunities to give more input and are ready to restructure the way teaching and learning goes on. My students are looking for more ways to give teachers input about how learning should go on. We are slowly trying to change, but at the students expense sometimes. I think I need to be more flexible in listening to my students input about how to conduct class and to incorporate more effective ways to engage my students in math. It's so easy to always think about the short term goals (passing a test, making sure they get a lesson before moving on tomorrow), I forget how to engage my students sometimes. It's so apparent that as a teacher, I am also still a learner and I need to be more willing to show that.
 * 6) 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? For myself, when I see this graphic, I see how I possess some of these qualities better than others. I am naturally more reflective and inquisitive, while I struggle with being creative and collaborative when it comes to learning. It's interesting to see that being reflective and and inquisitive fall into one area of concentration rather than two while the areas I struggle with fall into a combination of being an effective learner and effective communicator (collaborative). Looking at how I struggle with being collaborative, I did not feel that I was confident in being an effective communicator. If I have inadequacies with how my words come out, why would I want to collaborate? The areas that I have struggled with in school has been in becoming an effective collaborator and effective communicator, so it's no wonder that I find these areas are my weakest.
 * 7) To what extent are you, your children or your students Effective Learners, Effective Communicators, and Effective Global Collaborators.? I believe that I am an effective learner. I think being an effective learner doesn't require you to go beyond yourself. You become self-reliant on your own abilities and depend less on others. Even now, I can see how I am still constantly developing as an effective communicator and collaborator. As teachers, we talk a lot about self-efficacy and what that means in our teaching. Self-efficacy being the belief to see one achieve their goals or task. I believe that having a high self-efficacy makes you an effective 21st century learner.
 * 8) To what extent is your school (or your children's school) and classroom meeting these needs? I think our classroom is helping students to be more effective learners and effective collaborators. That seems to be where we are concentrating our efforts. Students that tend to be more reflective are able to process and retain information longer. We also try to help our students become more organized, teaching them how to use the textbook, study, organizing their binders and notes. In class, I realize that to help move to a more "student-centered" model of teaching, it helps to hear from my students more.
 * 9) 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? There are so many things that I can do better. I think one area of need for me is to better use my assessments. It is to focus on one or two ways of assessing our students that they don't benefit from its usefulness. I would love to do more projects that would center on research and being able to effectively articulate their findings in written form. I would also like to incorporate more use of e-learning such as wiki pages and blogs. Some of the barriers that I'm faced with is finding the time to implement this in a classroom.


 * 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:
 * the extent to which faculty at your school collaborate, share best practices and integrate 21st century skills into classroom practice Our math department meets every other week to discuss agendas, pacing guide, instructional strategies, and available resources as well as upcoming professional development courses. We also share ideas on how to integrate the computer lab and smart boards into our lessons. We've also have funding that allows our math department to be pulled out for release time. we've been provided support from the County office of education and have purchased several online resources.
 * students learn in relevant, real world 21st century contexts such as project-based and applied learning experiences Our school had our first Family Math this past year. We combined with the science department to bring families and their children together to enjoy different math and science activities outside of our textbook. We also had a career day inviting community based workers from a variety of positions.
 * students experience equitable access to quality learning tools, technologies and resources This is definitely a work in progress. We just got our first mobile laptop cart that allows our students to have a class set of computers accessing the internet via wifi. We are still trying to find the best way to implement this resource. We also have the basic resources to technology for all of our students but it's still a long ways away from what we've been reading about from this class.
 * to what extent architectural design of your classroom creates space for for group, team and individual learning My classroom is not designed for groupwork very well. I did have my desk paired up so that a students could do pair-share. Desk could then be grouped into fours by turning them around, but managment has always been difficult. This is definitely a work in progress.
 * 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 This goes back to the career day that we have every year to promote the different jobs available. We don't have any face to face online interaction with community members and experts, but this is something that I'd be interested in finding more information about.
 * to what extent does your school and classroom reflect the 21st Century Learning environment Our classroom is set up in a very traditional model. They are individual classrooms that lead outside set up in rows. Ideally, I would love to see classrooms that are enclosed set up in a way that is circular where students have equal access to a computer lab hub. It's always a hassle to walk the class to the computer lab seeing how much disruption and time it takes to get there. Our classes all have internet access, but no wifi. This has been an issue that our schools are currently working on. Cell phones are forbidden on campus and anyone caught with one must relinquish it to the main office where a parent must come to pick it up. Our district is Program Improvement Year 5 or beyond. Our sole purpose is to raise student achievement to meet the AYP, which means our curriculum and pacing is monitored by the district office to make sure we stay on task.


 * 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? This is a challenge already when we are talking about integrating 21st Century skills into the core curriculum. Our school / district is focused on the immediate needs, and that is to increase raise student achievement based on the results of test scores. Much of this puts pressure on a few of us who are hesitant to try new things, especially those that doesn't follow the traditional teaching setting. However, I am trying to increase their metacognitive skills through their writing. Often times, we'll have an exit card or sometimes a class discussion. I try to give them the big picture before introducing a concept. I also focused last year on encouraging my students to use academic language and vocabulary. This helped when we had our discussions or when I grouped them in pairs to share their work. 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? I do collaborate with the grade level science teacher to discuss about some of the projects that they do in there. We recently formed a STEM club where we were introducing concepts that are glossed over in science. We also wanted to emphasize how math plays a part in the physics of science. It especially comes in when their are discussions about mixture problems, measurments and proportions (scale). Again, creating a multidisciplinary project would mean that we would fall off pace in our math pacing guide, which the district has mandatory benchmark tests the students are to take every 2-3 months. I think one way to collaborate would be to do some science / math fair project. It gives students the opportunity to practice researching, working cooperatively, organization skills, data collecting, and presentation.
 * 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? I don't feel that our curriculum does this well enough. I think one area that we've been trying to do better at is how to problem solve word problems. Every year we have students who are apprehensive when it comes to word problems.
 * 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? (answer is from the same discussion question for this week). Last year, our school efforts have focused on two goals to help promote student success in grade level content standards: focus on higher order thinking skills and word problem solving. I think our population has been neglected in these areas for a long time. We've seen students who are taught without flexibility. They cannot see all of the angles that a problem can be approached. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a blank look on some of my students faces when I ask them, "How could you approach the problem another way?" It's as if I said something that was foreign to them. Honestly, I know I don't do enough project-based and problem based approaches in my class.
 * 4) How do you encourage the integration of community resources beyond school walls? Besides having career days and field trips to some of the local colleges, I think we lack ideas in this area.
 * 5) How can you better integrate 21st Century skills into your curriculum. There's been so much positive talk about Khan Academy and as reluctant as I am about trying it out, the benefits outweighs the negatives. I think this would give my students the opportunity to use the mobile cart and practice their skills on their own while I can monitor their progress. I know there are some schools that have adopted this as their main curriculum. I also want to have my students blog more, so that students can learn from one another and see how others are solving a problem. I've seen it time and time again where students have a difficult time articulating what they want to say when it comes to solving problems. Most often, they just want to give me the answer, but not the steps. Other times, they're too embarrassed in sharing how they came up with the answer. I think having an online forum would encourage more discussions. We have Schoolloop, but I don't think I've used the full resources that are available through it. I want to be careful about trying too many new things if we have something already in place where the students can actually still learn from it. I also want to work on the format of my lesson presentation. I've seen so many ways that lessons could be presented. What I've learned is to allow for more student input so that they feel a part of the class. I also realize it's important to look within if your students are misbehaving. It may not be their fault, but how engaging the lesson was. I admit, many times my lessons are really dry because I just have to get through the lesson or we've spent way too much time on something and we just need to kick it up a notch. We really do have to be flexible as teachers and expect the unexpected if we are to help our students prepare.

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?
 * 2) What strategies can teachers use to assure their students are acquiring the 21st Century skills necessary for their future?


 * Module 6 Notes**
 * 1) What aspects of Finland's educational model work in the United States? One aspect that I really appreciate from Finland's educational model is allowing teachers to collaborate with each other and given the freedom to create their own curriculum. Sometimes, we are given professional development courses that tries to change the way we know how to teach. I like to see more opportunities where teachers have more input and structure their own curriculum to accommodate their own needs. I also appreciate the use of technology into their classrooms. I also believe we can give our students more autonomy and creativity rather than removing those fundamental aspects to help our students stay motivated in school. We can also benefit from having to cover so many standards in a school year. There is this need that we need to cram so much into our students whether they get it or not in order to prepare for standardized tests. I like these ideas that give our students and teachers more freedom in what they teach and how to teach it to them.
 * 2) How can we best reshape education so that all students gain the skills they need to live and work in the 21st Century? As educators we have to think differently on what we are trying to educate for the 21st Century. Information is no longer only found in the textbook or answered by teachers alone. We have the ability to access information on the internet or other resources. As educators we can help become a facilitator to our students to help them gain understanding by providing them with the tools to be able to answer those questions or problems they have. I realize that I need to do a better job in preparing my students to be able to find help when I am not present. Students need to know that help isn't just found in three places anymore (textbook, another student, teacher), but a long list of where they can look. We can build better problem solvers by asking more questions rather than answering them.