"Investigating in Education and providing 21st Century Skills for students and fundamental components to the Nations continued growth and prosperity"

Practicing Teachers Criteria 4, 8 

FOCUS FOR TODAY:
Digital 21st Century Skills
Leadership: Reflective practice and Key competencies in leadership.



"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore" -Mark Twain- (On reflective blogging)

The meaning behind this quote is that blog reflections are a part of our learning and reflection. When we make mistakes we reflect and learn and grow from them. We ask ourselves questions as to "Why did this happen, what can we do/change to make things better". We are life long learners. Self reflections are a part of everyday life.

21st Century Skills

We also talked about "What is 21st century Skills". Some of the points that came through discussion were:

• Collaboration- Where more than one person is able to collaborate using e.g: presentation, google doc etc. 
• Networking-With other Schools.
• Being a global citizen. 
• Use of up to date technologies. 

What do you think are the most important skills of the 21st century? 

These are the skills that ITL decided were the MOST important for 21st Century Skills. 

• Collaboration-Where more than one person can work together on a document or presentation.
• Problem solving. 
• Knowledge construction.
• Self regulation
• Real world problems/innovations. 
• ICT for learning 
• Skilled communication. 

We then were given a group challenge. This task has been noted below. 

Group Challenge

Goal: Revealing the power of a good 21st Century learning activity by making a short movie about it. 

ITL (innovative teaching and learning) introduction Video was used to introduce the collaborative task to the group to give us a background on what ITL was. 

These are some of the points that came up in this video which I thought was really good.

• Connection between innovative teaching and what it does for the students. 
• Collaboration with other children Globally. 
• Guiding education reform. 
• Engagement in 21st century skills.
• Building Problem solving skills for student. 
• Giving the teacher the tools they need to bring about Change in education for student's.
• Evidence based learning.

Below I have included a screenshot of the different aspects of the ITL Rubric. These are:

• Collaboration
• Knowledge Construction
• Self regulation.
• Real world problem solving. 
• Use of ICT for learning. 
• Skilled communication. 

(reference: http://etec.ctlt.ubc.ca/510wiki/ITL_Research_-_Leap21C)

We were asked to get into groups and choose a reading in regards to 21st CLD Learning Activity Rubrics. Our team chose "Real-world problem solving and Innovation".
 As a group we first read the article and then we collaborated our thinking and ideas. We sat together and talked about what the article meant to us and we planned how we were going to show this in our movie. We then filmed and edited our movie on what "Real-world Problem solving and Innovation.

Here is our video on "Real-world Problem solving and Innovation".

I was very impressed with the collaboration and team work of our team. Well done team, big thumbs up to us all! Though it was challenging I must say because we had a certain amount of time to get the task completed in, it really gave me a better understanding of how this can lead to frustration, panic etc in terms of the students in my classroom. When they are given allocated tasks, with a time frame, this can lead to pressure and many other feelings. It can lead to confusion too. If the student for example does not understand the task, this can lead to not having the task completed or even started. Also, it is very important for each member participate and contribute equally and have their presence in the task. The task needed to be planned properly for it to be effective. So again, in terms of the classroom context, if the planning is not done well, then the outcome will also not be well.

Leadership

Firstly, we discussed in our group what "Key competencies" mean to us.
Some thoughts that came through were:

• Keys to life
• Preparing students for the future. 

Differences/Similarities

We looked at 21st Century skills and the Key competencies and how they are linked and what were the similarities  and differences.


How well do we model KC as leaders?
We had really good conversation and discussion amongst the group about this question. All of us came with different views of this in terms of our classroom context. In  reflection on my teaching and  and my classroom context and being a School that is part of the Manaiakalani cluster of school, the key competencies are embedded  in our whole philosophy of teaching and learning not only for the students but also us teachers.

We talked about Teacher leadership and how we should see teachers as leaders in a classroom context. "Teacher agency is central to School improvement" It is about shared discussion making, team work and community building.

Overall, I really found todays session very informative and I am looking forward to next Saturdays session on virtual Reality and am also very excited about our homework on making the Google cardboard. This is a picture of a Google cardboard if you do not know what this is.