In the course of many years’ worth of reading on educational reform and the inadequacies of the U.S. K-12 system I have encountered numerous articles and reports advocating for a new type of 21st century education. A recent article on Edutopia’s website captures the essence of what folks from business, government and education are saying. As anyone in K-12 understands, NCLB legislation has profoundly impacted what and how we teach. I loved this comment in the article:
“Let's assume the No Child Left Behind Act works fine and that by 2014 every student meets the targeted standards and passes his or her state's exit exam. Will those students be successful as citizens and workers in the twenty-first century?– Not a chance!
The reality from my perspective and based on a lot of reading on the subject is that students are growing up in a globalized world that demands a new type of education that is radically different than the dominant 20th century model structured by the belief that knowledge is largely transmitted to students by teachers and texts. In fact the idea that knowledge can be transmitted is in fact a dubious notion. Advocates for a new paradigm of education stress the importance of students becoming critical thinkers, collaborators, communicators and problem solvers. In the landmark book, How People Learn, (2000) the authors emphasize the importance of what they term “active learning” to support students in the development of these 21st century competencies. The authors stress the need for people to take control of their learning by engaging in a generative process of self evaluation and articulated reflection to recognize what they currently know, where knowledge gaps exist, how they can develop strategies to assess the validity of information and knowledge sources and ultimately how they can construct their own meaning as they encounter those sources. It strikes me that this take on what is known about learning supports the types of project based learning activities where the sorts of tools and curriculum that Autodesk provides is absolutely on target.
What I'd like to see more of are case studeis where we not only showcase student work but where we can take a close look at how students are thinking- What connections are they making between their clasroom work and the outside world? How are they assessnig what they know in order to devise strategies to fill in the gaps and advance their learning? How are they engaing in collaborations; how successful are those collaborations; how do they use technology to facilitate colaborations?
I invite educators to share their reactions to these ideas and to invite students to share their personal stories about learning by postng to this blog.
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The brain research is clear when you tap into modalities, the different ways students learn, educators are truly differentiating instruction as the great Carol Ann Tomlinson avocates. Most the of the reason students do not meet these standards is because of low performance on non-fiction technical reading and ability to perform geometric calculations. When we give students the tutorials we make them read about how to solve geometric problems thus addressing both skill deficit areas. Students must find purpose to allow the activated learning to occur, which must come from the teacher to demonstrate how these software pieces are used to make things we use everyday.
Mr. Eric LeBlanc
Chair of Applied Technology
National Board Certified Teacher
James B. Conant High School
www.conantcougars.com
Posted by: Eric LeBlanc | March 01, 2009 at 03:54 PM