Digital badges could help measure 21st-century skills

TopCoder, an adviser for the MacArthur Foundation’s competition, currently has a badge system for its community members that validates skills and competencies.

How can schools accurately measure and categorize a student’s 21st-century skills? The MacArthur Foundation hopes to solve this problem with a new competition that calls on participants to create what is known as a “digital badge.”

Digital badges and the digital badge system would, advocates say, help define the skills and knowledge students pick up in an informal way, such as through internships, online courses, open courseware, competitions, and much more.

Mozilla, which is partnering with the MacArthur Foundation to announce the $2 million Digital Media and Learning Competition, said the badge system “will let you gather badges from any site on the internet, combining them into a story about what you know and what you’ve achieved. … This sort of badge collection may eventually become a central part of [one’s] online reputation, helping you get a job, find collaborators, and build prestige.”…Read More

Five characteristics of an effective 21st-century educator

"The effective 21st-century teacher will need to be adept in judging the educative and non-educative use of technologies," said one reader.

Today’s educators are constantly evaluating the skills students need to compete in the global economy. But what are the characteristics or skills needed to be an effective 21st-century educator?

We recently asked readers: “What are the qualities of an effective 21st-century educator?” Here are our readers’ top responses.

You might have heard that an effective 21st-century educator should be a “guide on the side,” not a “sage on the stage,” but according to readers, there’s much more to it than that.…Read More

Education groups applaud new ed-tech legislation

A new bill advocates for wider technology access and use in education.

Educational technology stakeholders are applauding the U.S. Senate’s introduction of a bill called the Achievement Through Technology and Innovation (ATTAIN) Act and note that, if passed, the legislation will work to bolster technology literacy and will increase access to educational opportunities through online learning.

“The ATTAIN Act recognizes that technology literacy is an essential skill our children need to be college and career ready and prepared to navigate and succeed in the competitive 21st-century environment,” said 11 leading education and ed-tech organizations in a joint statement.

The bill was introduced by Sens. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. The measure directs federal funds to train teachers, purchase educational technology hardware and software, and support student technological literacy.  It authorizes up to $1 billion in annual funding for educational technology and teacher training nationwide.…Read More

School librarians targeted in budget crunch

Los Angeles school librarians must prove they are qualified to teach students if they want to save their jobs.

How will students learn key information literacy skills, and how will teachers get help with integrating digital resources into their instruction, without a full-time media specialist in their school?

That’s the question a national school library group has asked the nation’s second largest school system as it prepares to cut dozens of school librarians in a high-profile example of a trend that is occurring nationwide.

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has issued an open letter to the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) urging the district to avoid cutting school media specialist positions, which would leave thousands of students and teachers without guidance on digital content, reading lists, and research options, the organization says.…Read More

Survey reveals school leaders’ opinions on 21st-century skills

Digital content and access is essential to 21st century skill-building, educators say.
Access to digital content is essential to building 21st-century skills, district leaders say.

As school district leaders increasingly incorporate so-called 21st-century skills into their instructional strategies, many believe the federal government should support the development of new school assessment models that effectively measure those skills, a new survey suggests.

Thirty-five percent of respondents in the survey, conducted by the National School Boards Association, listed “assessing 21st-century skills” as the top educational technology priority that Congress and the Obama administration should address. NSBA released the results of its survey during the organization’s annual educational technology conference in Phoenix.

More than 43 percent of survey respondents said their district already has created new school assessment measures to incorporate such skills as problem solving, teamwork, and critical thinking.…Read More

Education in a social world

jigsawresized-150x150Prior to the industrialization of education, the education model was centered around a single-room school house consisting of one teacher with many students throughout many grades. The teacher was a facilitator of an instructional design that had students teaching each other. The younger students benefited from the knowledge of the older students and the older students benefited by reinforcing what they had learned, encouraging their mastery of a subject.

As populations moved from rural to urban communities during the Industrial Revolution, the education system also became industrialized–which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Schools were turned into factories and teachers began disseminating the knowledge. In fact, the new instructional design was purposely modeled after the factory to streamline learning. In the new factory model, students moved along from grade to grade and were imprinted with the required learning from the books and teacher of that grade. Let’s fast forward 100 years to today.

Today’s educational landscape…Read More

New internet tools create class collaboration

In Alison Saylor’s technology class, she teaches her students more than just computers: In fact, she says they’re learning things that just might revolutionize the classroom, 9news.com reports. “It’s a fun way to do it, and they really get into it. They’re very engaged,” said Saylor, computer and technology teacher at Everitt Middle School in Wheat Ridge, Colo. Saylor is using Google Apps for Education to create a virtual domain for her students. They can use word processors, spreadsheets, and graphic tools to create projects that are done entirely online. For example, eighth-grader Alex Brown created his own imaginary company. His project included conceptual graphic designs, a business plan, an architectural layout, and a spreadsheet containing a payroll outline for the employees. Google Apps for Education allowed Alex to put this all together in an online portfolio. Saylor says it helps her trick students into learning. Right now, she has students creating their own superheroes. “That’s a writing assignment. But you’d never know it, because we dress it up so much and they get graphic skills, they get outline skills,” she said, noting that when students are doing projects about things they’re passionate about, they are more willing take on math problems or essays. “I see it as expanding the walls of the classroom,” said Dan Brooks, education technology specialist for Jefferson County Schools. “The kids can share with a teacher, the kids can share with another student, or they can share with a small group if they’re working together.” Students and teachers can control access to their projects; Brooks says it’s like having their own personal internet with little to no security concerns. “This kind of system is not something we could create on our own,” he said…

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Groups urge updates to teacher preparation programs

Teachers equipped with digital-age skills will best serve today's students.
Teachers equipped with digital-age skills and teaching strategies will best serve today's students, a new paper argues.

The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) are calling on teacher education programs to update their curricula to better prepare future teachers to integrate 21st-century skills into their instruction.

The groups released a paper on Sept. 23 seeking to establish a shared vision for infusing digital-age knowledge and skills into teacher preparation programs and spark a meaningful discussion among higher-education leaders about how to implement this vision.

“New teacher candidates must be equipped with 21st-century knowledge and skills and learn how to integrate them into their classroom practice for our nation to realize its goal of successfully meeting the challenges of this century,” said Sharon P. Robinson, AACTE president, and Ken Kay, P21 president, in the paper’s introduction.…Read More

The best college course ever?

UC Berkeley also offered a StarCraft course in 2009.
UC Berkeley also offered a StarCraft course in 2009.

Playing the real-time strategy video game StarCraft isn’t just for frittering away afternoons in students’ dorm rooms. It’s now for college credit, too.

University of Florida (UF) education technology doctoral student Nathaniel Poling is teaching the eight-week, two-credit class, “21st Century Skills in StarCraft,” this fall, using the internationally beloved computer game to hone students’ on-the-go decision making skills, resource management skills, and penchant to analyze ever-changing scenarios in the complex game’s platform.

Poling’s course will be conducted entirely online and is limited to 20 students who have, at the very least, “basic knowledge” of StarCraft, a game that pits three species battling for supremacy in the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy.…Read More

Report: ‘Top-third’ teachers essential to U.S. success

Research has revealed that skilled teachers are essential to student success.
Skilled teachers are essential to student success.

Improving teacher effectiveness has risen to the top of national education priorities, but the key to attracting, training, and retaining truly effective teachers might lie in the “top-third” concept, which seeks to recruit students who perform in the top third of their academic discipline into the teaching profession.

Closing the talent gap: Attracting and retaining top-third graduates to careers in teaching,” by Byron Auguste, Paul Kihn, and Matt Miller of McKinsey and Co., examines teaching programs and strategies in some of the world’s best-performing nations and seeks to outline how adapting those strategies for practice in the United States might reap enormous benefits for the U.S. economy.

While the world’s top school systems have dedicated approaches to attracting, retaining, and supporting teachers, “the U.S. does not take a strategic or systematic approach to nurturing teacher talent,” the authors state. “We have failed to attract, develop, reward, or retain outstanding professional teaching talent on a consistent basis.”…Read More

Obama: Education is essential for success in 21st century

President Barack Obama is taking to the nation’s airwaves once again, this time to tell America’s schoolchildren that nothing is beyond their reach as long as they dream big, work hard, and focus on learning, reports the Associated Press. Obama will make that point Sept. 14 at a Philadelphia school when he delivers his second back-to-school pep talk. “Nobody gets to write your destiny but you,” Obama says in the speech, which the White House released a day early so people could read the remarks beforehand and judge the contents for themselves. After the White House announced last year’s speech, some conservatives accused Obama of trying to foist a political agenda on children. A similar outcry is largely missing this year. In his speech, the president urges students to stay in school, study hard, and take responsibility for their education. Obama long has said an educated work force will help the U.S. compete globally in the 21st century. He’ll hit that note again, telling students that nothing will affect their success in life as much as their education. “The kinds of opportunities that are open to you will be determined by how far you go in school,” Obama says. “In other words, the farther you go in school, the farther you’ll go in life.”

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Teacher innovation gets royal treatment

Seventeen teams of educators gathered in Washington, D.C., for Microsoft's 2010 Innovative Educators Forum.
Seventeen teams of educators gathered in Washington, D.C., for Microsoft's 2010 Innovative Educators Forum.

In what could be called a 21st-century teachers’ fair, Microsoft chose a select group of educators to participate in the company’s annual Innovative Education Forum (IEF)—a showcase of the best teacher-created projects that incorporate 21st-century skills and effective uses of education technology.

Now in its sixth year, the IEF was held in Washington, D.C., last week and hosted 17 teacher teams from 10 states.

In an ironic twist from the usual student-centered fair, teachers were the ones who lined the walls of a room crawling with judges, standing anxiously by their billboards, scotch-taped visuals, and laptop screens.…Read More