Into the Driver's Seat

Education may be the passport to the future, but for all the good teaching out there, it would seem that schools are failing to impart some of the most important life skills, according to one educational expert.

Dr. Tony Wagner, co-director of Harvard's Change Leadership Group, argues that today’s school children are facing a “global achievement gap”, which is the gap between what even the best schools are teaching and the skills young people need to learn.

This has been exacerbated by two colliding trends: firstly, the global shift from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy, and secondly, the way in which today’s school children – brought up with the internet – are motivated to learn.

In his book The Global Achievement Gap, Wagner identifies seven core competencies every child needs in order to survive in the coming world of work.

1. Critical thinking and problem-solving

Preparing a child for the world that doesn’t yet exist is not an easy task for any teacher. Step back and look at that picture from a broad perspective. What are the critical 21st-century skills every learner needs to survive and succeed in our world? What abilities and traits will serve them in a time that’s changing and developing so rapidly?

They want to be challenged and inspired in their learning. They want to collaborate and work with their peers. They want to incorporate the technology they love into their classroom experiences as much as they can. In short, they have just as high a set of expectations of their educators as their educators have of them.

How Are Educators Responding?

The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, (ACARA), have identified the following as the General Capabilities they see as essential for learners:

Critical and creative thinking

Personal and social capability

Ethical understanding

Intercultural understanding

Information and communication technology capability

Literacy

Numeracy

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=modern-education

What does your ideal classroom look like?   I asked a district leader a while back what his ideal classroom looked like and he responded, “It's hard to put my finger on it but I know it when I see it.” This response is more common than not. Think about that for a minute. If…

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching?tag=Critical-Thinking

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=PBL

Big idea: Teaching kids to ask smart questions on their own

A four-year-old asks on average about 400 questions per day, and an adult hardly asks any. Our school system is structured around rewards for regurgitating the right answer, and not asking smart questions – in fact, it discourages asking questions. With the result that as we grow older, we stop asking questions. Yet asking good questions is essential to find and develop solutions, and an important skill in innovation, strategy, and leadership. So why do we stop asking questions – and more importantly, why don’t we train each other, and our future leaders, to ask the right questions starting from early on?"

Learn more:

- http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching?tag=Critical-Thinking

I agree with the fact that recently,students have been 'trained' to give the correct and not ask smart questions.In school ,teachers usually ask us questions and if we answer that correctly, we get praised.For subjects sciences and humanities require a lot of questioning and thinking in order to understand and to learn  more quickly.In my opinion, i think that teachers should give students a chance to ask questions that they have and not go through a topic blindly.If the students is shy to ask, the teacher could create a website so that the whole class can ask questions whenever they feel like and both the teachers and students themselves can answer the questions.This would enable the student to think out of the box to ask and answer questions by themselves 

dice student

What a great discussion starter for kids.  Lots of opportunities for classroom teachers as tool for writing prompts, class meetings or evaluating information.

writing prompts? discussion starters? debates or research?

Article: Exploring Curation as a core competency in digital and media literacy education.

In today’s hypermedia landscape, youth and young adults are increasingly using social media platforms, online aggregators and mobile applications for daily information use. Communication educators, armed with a host of free, easy-to-use online tools, have the ability to create dynamic approaches to teaching and learning about information and communication flow online.

In this paper we explore the concept of curation as a student- and creation-driven pedagogical tool to enhance digital and media literacy education. We present a theoretical justification for curation and present six key ways that curation can be used to teach about critical thinking, analysis and expression online.

We utilize a case study of the digital curation platform Storify to explore how curation works in the classroom, and present a framework that integrates curation pedagogy into core media literacy education learning outcomes.

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https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/learn-every-day-a-bit-with-curation/

http://blog.scoop.it/2011/11/30/lord-of-curation-series-gust-mees/

https://globaleducationandsocialmedia.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/pkm-personal-professional-knowledge-management/

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Curation

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/andragogy-adult-teaching-how-to-teach-ict/

This concept is new to me, although I have practiced this in different forms. It seems logical to utilize this pedagogical approach to curation for students, parents, and teachers alike. We are all learners in today's rapid pace in technological changes.

Check out these 10 great ideas for critical thinking activities and see how you can use them with your own modern learners.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching?tag=Critical-Thinking

Check out these 10 great ideas for critical thinking activities and see how you can use them with your own modern learners.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching?tag=Critical-Thinking

Check out these 10 great ideas for critical thinking activities and see how you can use them with your own modern learners.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching?tag=Critical-Thinking