21st Century Skills

This summer I was able to take one of my final Masters classes: Planning and Managing Educational Technology. It was one of those classes that keeps you thinking, even after class is over. For me, this class really addressed an interest of mine in which the last two summers at the Red Cedar Writing Project Summer Institute have addressed: 21^st century skills. What skills are necessary to be a successful 21^st century citizen?

I’ve read several books regarding 21^st century skills, including David Warlick’s book, Raw Materials for the Mind. In this book, Warlick three important categories: collaboration, rich media resources, and contributive expression. In his book, he suggests different ways to address these categories, and different types of tools that work well, but nowhere in his book does he say anything like, “You should use Twitter because Twitter is important for kids to know. It’s the future.” Now Twitter may be an effective tool right now to facilitate collaboration or contributive expression, but Twitter for the sake of using Twitter is not a good reason.

Which leads me to the cliché, “We need to use it because it’s a 21^st century skill,” or “It’s meeting the kids where they are.” As an example, a few years back during a math training, the trainer was using an online whiteboard website in which you could draw polygons. The objective of the math lesson he was trying to show was rotation of polygons. In a complicated and confusing sequence of events, he demonstrated how he would scan an image as a pdf file, convert it to a jpg file, crop it, import it to the site, and demonstrated the trick for rotating the image. When one teacher asked, wouldn’t it be easier to do on a piece of construction paper on the chalkboard, his answer was, “This is a 21^st century skill. This is how kids learn, and we need to meet them where they are.” Really?

During the final presentations in my class, there was a presentation on the potential for using Blackberry smartphones in the classroom as a 1:1 initiative.

During the presentation, he continued using the phrase, “Kids are gaining skills to be 21^st century citizens,” and “it’s meeting kids where they are.” He continued on giving examples for usage, such as using the calculator on the device, reading online textbooks, and checking grades. One of my colleagues recently informed me that I am a tech snob. I guess it’s true. And I guess using technology to accommodate what we already do in the classroom is fine. It’s great. But the voice in the back of my head is still asking, "Is using a cell phone calculator and checking grades online really a 21st century skill?"

If we are truly trying to prepare our students to be successful 21^st century citizens, shouldn’t we strive for transformative uses of technologies- thinking about how we can help learners collaborate locally and globally, how to effectively and ethically use rich media resources, and develop contributive expression with an awareness of audience and purpose? And if a tool helps you do that, that’s great. But at least use it for the right reason.