21st Century Skills

In this webinar, the presenter talks about the 21st century skills in our workplaces and classes.  
 During this video, her objectives were:

• to identify and discuss skills that need to be included in workplace transitions programs--many of these skills have also been identified as important for academic transitioning as well.
• to describe what this means for general ESL classes. 
• identify transferable work skills that can be taught from beginning ESL levels.

She discussed these topics and focus on what we can do in our general ESL programs to prepare students for the workplace, to succeed in a job interview, to get promoted and manage the changes in the workplace.

Also, during the webinar, she asked the participants to think about two particular questions that are:

• What are the implications for ESL instructors? 
• How can we transfer what we are learning about transitioning from school to work in our classes?

With those two questions, she wants the participants too reflect and to give their opinion on the subject, on what they think we should do has future ESL teachers.

Moreover, She talks about the essential skills needed for a society's future workforce.  She called those the 7 C's and they are:

1. Critical thinking / problem solving
2. Communication
3. Collaboration
4. Creativity
5. Cross-cultural understanding
6. Computing
7. Career self-reliance (lifelong learning)

For each one of the 7C's, she gives examples and lists of skills included in each one of them.  They are important these days and she says that to connect school to work, we need to think about how we can integrate these 21st century skills in our classes.

Here is a quote used by Mrs. Price that makes a lot of sense if we look at the results of the research done byParrish and Johnson that shows that we should integrate academic and workplace readiness skills into every level of instruction, including ESL classes.

"A report from the National Center on Education and the Economy (2009) argues that adult education should be redesigned to promote postsecondary and work­place readiness for all learners. …This means that the skills that learners need in order to transition successfully to higher levels of education or employment should be integrated into every level of instruction, including ESL classes that are focused primarily on language instruction."(Parrish & Johnson, April 2010)

I really think that she does have a major point that is including workplace English to our education.  We have to say that English is the most important language in the world.  It is talked and used everywehere even in the most basic jobs.  We are the one, as future teachers, that can make a difference in the way our students will succeed in their future careers.  We all know that by improving their english it will provide them great tools for their job interviews and future probable promotion.  We have to say that the chances to get promotions are heighten by a lot when you have fluent English in your skills.  As Mrs. Price says, why don't we include usual workskills in our teaching by using tools used in some workplace like:

• Schedule reading
• Keeping daily logs
• Writing work orders
• Wrting E-mails
• Performance reviewing
• Using critical thinking to negociate
• Problem Solving

All those tools can and will be use in their future workplace, so why don't we make them deal with some of these situations and improve their knowledge of workplace English.

I am asking you my honorable reader, do you think that workplace English could improve our students future carreers?

Generation Z Project

As seen in the video http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-teachers-vicki-davis-video, the way that Mrs.Davis teaches with the use of technology is one that can bring a new wave to make sure students are interested. She uses digital technology to "learn them how to learn" and this looks quite effective. She uses wikis, blogs, podcasts, virtual worlds and other new media tools to connect students from her class with the world. She recommends the use of peer collaboration in her teaching. She chooses a team that will teach to peers every class. It involves student in a way that no other form of teaching would. It makes them more responsible and when they peer-teach, it makes the other students understand, sometimes, more clearly the topic discussed or taught. In this situation, we can say that she empowers the students. By letting them teach the class, it can give them a good chunk of insurance. It makes them responsible and sometimes, provides the teacher with interesting new information that she did not know.

For my point of view, even if I think it's a good and cool idea, I don't think it is important for the students to collaborate with others across the world.  For sure it can provide them a lot of different cultural background and some help from a native speaker, but don't we have already enough on our shoulders?  First of all, does school really have the budget to be equiped as they are?  I doubt that it would be easy to make it happen.  Also, I find that the peer-teaching is a wicked solution to ensure better responsability from our students.   Having students in front of the class can bring a whole new dynamism and can give new knowledge to the teacher also. 

As I was wondering how to use media tools to connect with the world, I googled some words and ended up founding this interesting page, where there is inspiring ways to use social media in the classroom.  If you read it you will see that lots of different ways to use media tools in a fun and interseting way can be done.

 http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2010/05/100-inspiring-ways-to-use-social-media-in-the-classroom/

 Enjoy your reading my precious readers.

Do No Harm...

As said by Mr. Henry Jenkins, the usage of technology is a must in the present days.  Expressions used by Mr. Jenkins really reflect the difference between students and teachers.  Those expressions are Digital Native and Digital Immigrant.  I really like those terms because they do apply in a perfect way at what the teachers and students are facing.  We must all agree that technologies are part of our everyday world and that with limiting the access to it.  By doing so, don’t we limit the access to knowledge too? 

The schools are limiting the kid’s access to digital tools by blocking some websites and by making sure the browser doesn’t recognize some words that are not proper to the learning situation.  For sure it can be seen as a good way to limit the students, but in another way, is YouTube so bad?  Don’t we find a lot of knowledge, experience and information that are relevant on this particular websites?  Yes, I think that we do have to limit access but to a certain point.  Let’s have faith and confidence in our students and let them explore the World Wide Web.  We, as teachers, will have to make the limit.

For the gap participation, we have to say that depending on the social deviation of the school, it will be forming a gap.  But these days with the technology being available for everyone, the gaps are almost not there anymore.   Even students who have had access to technology have had different experiences with it and have thus gained different skills, predilections, and comfort levels with different technologies.

I think a good way to share learning across generation is to have the older generations have some courses given by students that are at ease with the technology.  We could make this course a kind of reward for the students and an incentive too.  It would be rewarding for the kids for sure.

For sure schools are not ready to give up control to kids because schools like to have the controlled and to be structured.  It is normal because there is too much on the line.  At the same time, it is hard to control the work the students will do on the computers.  Being in a digital age, it is easy to plagiarise and we have to make sure the students are aware of the problem.

Beyond textbooks..... Collaborative Writers

Hello to all and glad that you are stopping by Marty's ICT corner.  First of all listen to the video that I am linking here:

http://www.edutopia.org/stw-differentiated-instruction-budget-resource-collaboration-video .

As per the video, the teachers are talking about collaborative writing. It's a group from the Vail District in Ariznoa that created a Wiki with different lesson plans, courses and stuff to teach about every subject possible.  I it a perfect way to help teachers that are don't always have ideas for planning a course.  The fact that teachers help teachers around the District is a really open minded situation.  They are making a huge step ahead in a lot of way.  Online collaborative writing for teachers will probably be a future trend and we will have to work with it.  You can find the web page of beyond textbooks: http://beyondtextbooks.org/ .

Also, you can read their last newsletter to plenty understand what their purpose is about.

http://beyondtextbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/BT-Partner-Newsletter-November-2011.pdf

I think we have to follow the trend of ICT in our teaching manners. Back in the days, having a computer in the school was a something big. Now, we have to teach in a way that technologies are involved. As per the conclusion of the experience of Kovavic, Bubas & Zlatovic, we do have have to agree with their results that use of a Wiki is a useful and innovative way of enriching the learning environment of students. We have to folow the trend and deal with the fact that we are living in a technological world and kids are really at ease with it.  Collaborating with a group of teacher can really open the teaching and reach another level.  We could obtain lesson plan that would exceed what we think is acceptable. 

What do you think about it???

Hope to read you soon.

Marty Mart

http://beyondtextbooks.org/

Youth and ICT's: Is it correctly used?

Hello everybody and welcome to Marty's ICT corner. For the first topic, we had to watch a video about digital youth from Mr. Howard Gardner(http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-howard-gardner-video) .  I specifically focused on the issues Mr. Gardner talked about.  These are the five issues:

·         Identity

·         Privacy

·         Ownership/authorship

·         Trustworthiness/credibility

·         Participation in community.

They are part of the everyday life and students do not really care about them.  We will mostly all going to be future teacher and will have to deal with those issues while using technologies with our students.  How can we make sure those won’t be issues in our classroom or environment?   We can use the technology but we should put a bigger effort on teaching the students how to properly use it.

I used to be a student that used a lot of technology to write papers in high school.  It was easy and only had to change the words and some expression.  After that, I had a text of my own.  I know it is called plagiarism, but as a teen, do you really think I did care?  We have to focus on the benefits that ICT usage can bring when used properly.  We will have to deal with ICT's in our everyday classes and have students work with them so let's keep in mind that we have to make sure those issues are discussed in a correct maner.

I am posting an intersting link on the issues.  They are explained in a better and more precised maner.  http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/full_pdfs/Young_People_Ethics_and_New_Digital_Media.pdf