Outfitting 21st Century Classrooms with 21st Century Teachers
What does a 21st century classroom look like? Is there a interactive whiteboard at the front of the room instead of a blackboard? Are students busily manipulating iPad screens rather than laboring with pencil and paper? Do students tweet their questions rather than raise their hands?
When we talk about giving students a 21st century education the focus is often on technology. Let’s get new computers in the classroom. Let’s open up broadband networks so that every school has high-speed Internet access. Let’s fund the latest software packages and encourage students to collaborate using social media. Yes, let’s do all those things, but let’s also remember that 21st century classrooms need 21st century teachers.
In one month, educators and administrators from around the world will convene in Denver for ISTE 2010 for five days of communication and collaboration. This will be my third trip to the annual conference and each year I return excited to start incorporating some of the many things I learned in my own classroom. Yet somehow I end each school year (this one is no exception) feeling like I often paired new technologies with outmoded teaching techniques, rather than changing my teaching program to best utilize the resources.
The wiki site educational origami published an interesting piece describing the characteristics of a 21st century educator. The graphic below, pulled from the article, shows the many hats a forward thinking teacher must wear to prepare students who often seem light years ahead of us when it comes to using new media.
I’d like to hear what the ISTE Connects community thinks a 21st century educator looks like? How do they teach? Is technology necessary to give students a 21st century education, and what role does the teacher play in the next generation classroom?
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12 Comments
lwiegel
Tuesday, 25th May 2010 at 12:08 pm
A 21st century educator has the confidence to use technology as a tool to enhance what they are already doing with curriculum. Using these tools to help reach out beyond their classroom walls to broaden the lessons they are teaching across the globe. Helping build confidence in their students to do the same.
douglas
Tuesday, 25th May 2010 at 12:29 pm
must align key life/work skills, learning, intel w real world living and earning living.
cook, health, personal finance, nutritian, exercise, redefine what’s primal life support skills before other intelligence
what good education if can’t work and be healthy.
DM grad schl Inst design
JohnM
Wednesday, 26th May 2010 at 2:25 pm
They must willing to learn from their students. There is no way a 30-something or middle-aged educator can compete with students who have never known a world without semi-ubiquitous computing. I’m 43 and my students show me better ways to do things all the time. “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” – Alvin Toffle
Diana Hyland
Thursday, 27th May 2010 at 7:23 pm
It’s not about access to technology or even technology in the classroom, but how you incorporate technology into the the curriculum — making it seamless and fluid the way technology is now used in the workplace. Teachers can help students prepare for work and life by integrating technology to enhance collaboration, communication, and critical thinking — core competencies for many employers.
–Diana Hyland, CompassLearning
Stephanie
Monday, 31st May 2010 at 6:43 am
Great visual! A 21st century educatoe must adapt and change. So much of what goes on in schools is the same as it was 20-30 years ago. As an educator we should expect nothingless that what we expect everyday for our students: to be a learner, take risks, work toward excellence and do our best every day. We need to use tech tools as a means to an end, integrate these daily into eveything we do so our students see them as a way to accomplish tasks and solve problems, open up the global community to our students, to expand and enrich our curriculum, and to allow for collaboration. We need to hold ourselves to a very high standard and continue to learn, even if it means on your own time and beyond the school day, so we can educate our students to be successful in the 21st century.
Melissa Edwards
Monday, 31st May 2010 at 8:40 am
Just because all kinds of 21st Century technology pieces of equipment are put in a classroom does not necessarily mean that will become a 21st Century Classroom. The teacher in a classroom plays a vital role in the type of environment that will be created in the classroom regardless of what new pieces of equipment are in there.
In my mind, a 21st Century Teacher is one who works to build critical and creative thinking skills, as well as encouraging collaboration and communication, in his or her students using whatever resources (technology or not) that are available to reach that goal. You could have a classroom full of technology,, but if the teacher in that classroom is not willing to figure out ways to try to use those pieces of equipment to help students, then all that seems to be wasted.
As one of the earlier comments says, “It’s not about access to technology or even technology in the classroom, but how you incorporate technology into the the curriculum.”
Simon Crook
Tuesday, 8th June 2010 at 9:05 pm
You may be interested in this paper I wrote on 21st Century Science Labs – http://www.scribd.com/doc/17707335/Science-Centres-for-21st-Century-Schools
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