Hello classmates! Please forgive my
looks as 3 of my 6 children currently have hand, foot, and mouth and I am a
little stressed out! I have really enjoyed Sheninger’s text so far. Sheninger
states, “Leaders today must establish a vision and implement a strategic
process that creates a teaching and learning culture that provides students
with essential skill sets- creativity, communication, collaboration, critical
thinking, problem solving, technological proficiency, and global awareness”
(Sheninger, xviii). Again the seven essential skill sets leaders should help
students achieve are: 1) Creativity, 2) Communication, 3) Collaboration, 4)
Critical Thinking, 5) Problem Solving, 6) Technological Proficiency, and 7)
Global Awareness. Let’s first discuss creativity. We all know that the brick
and mortar school that we have today was created in order to create workers.
These workers were greatly needed in the industrialized world of factories.
However today in America, we find ourselves building and making less and less
material goods but creating more and more digital goods and information.
Sheninger says that “if schools continue to follow an outdated educational
model…they run the risk of becoming irrelevant to our students and communities”
(pg. xix). You can see examples of this in your most communities around the
nation. With the increased access to online public schools, enrollment in
regular public school is down. Our educational system must overthrow their
reservations with technology and set up a system that allows student to create
and truly prepare for the digital jobs that lie ahead. The second skill,
communication, is vital and necessary while being one of the hardest.
Communication today is vastly different than even 20 years ago. Today one can
communicate through arrays of different ways. Email, Text, Blogs. Vlogs, Twitter,
Facebook, Facetime, Youtube, Skype, Snapchat, Instagram, Google Hangouts,
Google Classroom, etc, etc are only scratching the surface of available ways to
communicate with others. One’s voice today can literally be heard by millions
of people worldwide. Students must be allowed to utilize this remarkable advantage.
They should be taught the dangers, advantages, and disadvantages to sending one’s
voice out into the world. #3 is collaboration. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of
collaboration in order for someone to be successful today. I have a friend who
just started a business called “Wandering Families” via Instagram. She has
collaborated with local businesses that sell outdoors equipment to sponsor her
and her family’s hikes and outings. This takes a lot of collaboration on her
part. It also takes collaboration with leaders, teachers, students, and the
community in order to provide the schools and students with the funding, technology,
and support they need to be relevant today. #4) Critical Thinking- I personally
do not see much teaching of critical thinking. When I was in school, I was told
to just memorize the answers for the tests and not ask questions. That simply
does not and cannot work anymore. #5) Problem Solving- technology is all about
problem solving. Sheninger says leaders must be willing to change and
anticipate changes. They can do this by “engaging in fact finding and joint
problem solving, and carefully rather than rashly, diagnosing the situation”.
Stephen R. Covey says, “seek first to understand, second, to be understood.” One
must be able to find the problem and help solve it effectively. #6) is
technological proficiency. All I can say about that is here we are, in Master’s
programs, trying to figure out this technology thing. It is forever changing
and evolving and we must be willing and able to evolve too. Finally, the skill
set we must teach the future generation is global awareness. As I was typing
this, I got an alert on my phone about a terrorist attack in Nice, France. The
world is incredibly small thanks to technology. We must be aware of how that
does and can affect the entire world. On a brighter note, my church is holding
a global family indexing event (found here) this weekend in order to digitize old records
so that people can research their genealogy. What an amazing opportunity to
bring the world together!
Thank you and have a great week!
Reference
Sheninger, E (2014). Digital Leadership Changing Paradigms for Changing Times.
Corwin, SAGE publications.
Greetings Rebekah! Thanks for your thoughts this week. I was wondering who Stephen R. Covey is until it clicked with me about where I "know" him from. His comment sounds a lot like James 1:19 which states, "you must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger" (NRSV). So I thank you for introducing me to an American icon. Clearly I have not found time to read his bestseller, but have heard of it!
ReplyDeleteI was speaking to a mom on the sideline of a lacrosse practice recently and she remarked how education has changed for her as an adult learner. Much like you and I, she was encouraged to learn using a more Rote learning style. Now that her children are well established in school, she went back for her MBA, she was shocked at how relevant those 21st century skills Sheninger (2014) discusses. She was expecting independent work, and found every course to be completely driven by collaborative group projects. We were never really taught how to learn, or explore how we learn best. It was assumed that everyone could learn using a cookie cutter way. Teaching students how to think and how to learn is more valuable than the content in the curriculum. How will we shape the next generation of inventors if they struggle with problem solving or creativity. I pride myself on being "a do-er", and struggle with being inventive. It could be that my traditional schooling assisted in preparing me to "do", and as Sheninger (2014) commented we should be preparing students to live and learn in the information age. This requires a lot of outside the box thinking for the adults who were educated differently than our students are learning today. I know that I chose this particular program for various reasons, one of which being that I wanted experience a learning environment that is clearly forcing me to upgrade my technological proficiencies. After all, technology is making our ability to have greater global awareness that much more profound. Thanks again for your blog post! I hope your kiddos are on the mend!
Respectfully,
S. Wainwright
References
Sheninger, E. (2014). Digital leadership: Changing paradigms for changing times. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
(I cannot italicize the title of the book. I tried!)
Hello Rebekah! I thoroughly enjoyed listening to your blog this week. I also blogged about this same topic and after listening to your blog the word time kept running through my head. Times have certainly changed in the educational world, and technology has greatly impacted education today. One aspect that Sheninger mentions in the video on our reading tab this week is that educational leaders or "do-ers/ go-getters" make Time for change in order to be the change" I found his book and principal video thus far to be very motivating to me. I also agree with your statements about promoting more global awareness in education to day. Just think only a few years ago was is odd to do education via online programs. I remember hearing peoples apprehensions about obtaining schools via a computer rather a traditional classroom...and look where we are today! One thing that is true is that change takes time, yet over time things evolve however, education and technology is a very exciting way to further one's education, awareness to innovative idea and further prepare individuals to careers that may change the future!
ReplyDeleteReference
Sheninger, E. (2014). Digital leadership: Changing paradigms for changing times. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Rebekah:
ReplyDeleteYou have some interesting insights; thank you. I would like to add to some of your definitions to think about.
1. Creativity is needed in our schools, and their needs to be more creative and flexible teaching to reach all our students. Not all our students are going to be digital; we need to look at ways to merge building and tinkering with physical things and digital creation. An interesting issue that a friend has is when working on cars. The older cars are all analog and "easier" to repair, but newer cars have computers in them. The requirement to combine the diagnostic ability of the computers and the hands on experience of working with the mechanical is something that needs to be addressed. Many schools have lego robotics that fills that need. I am wondering how we could apply something like that for a fully online education?
2. Communication: The only thing I would add is teaching social media safety to students. Bravo in listing so many!
3. Critical thinking: I was just mentioning this on the discussion board in EDUC 672 (curriculum design). It seems that it has only been in this decade that the notion of teaching critical thinking skills has come to the forefront. I had the advantage of either taking advanced classes or having friends that were considered "honors" or "gifted" so I cannot speak from experience about a lack of critical thinking being taught in the past, since that was a staple of gifted classes.
Finally, Problem solving and Global awareness: Technology has brought us together as a world and still makes us feel alone. This is where I am grateful for apps such as Pokemon GO that uses technology to get people out and moving and forming a physical community of people that normally would ignore each other. The next generation of technology users will need to fix the gap between technology, society, and global problems by looking at ways to create a global community that works together to solve problems instead of tear each other apart. We are different all over the globe, and yet we are all the same.
Rebekah,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your in depth insight of Sheninger’s seven essential skills sets for the twenty first century students. I was so in tune reading your post because as a current fourth grade public school teacher, I would have to completely agree that our schools are not teaching our students essential skills to be successful in today’s world. For example, we have technology literally all around us. We use it for schoolwork, research, communication, organizing. Yet, our students are still taking the basic classes that have been offered for decades. I believe that the education that is offered to our students must change drastically with the times. Especially so that our students are more educated on the major aspects of our lives today. I do understand that students need the basics of math, science, and arithmetic to understand the essentials of today’s technology. However, some of the material that we are educating students with today do not benefit them as adults. Some adults, like myself, seem to even forget the irrelevant information taught as late as high school, if it does not relate to the work that I do in my daily life. In addition to these essential skills, I think that students should be exposed to more career and work options for them, especially ones that they may not be aware of. Yes, the exposure to the basics in education can be beneficial, but there should definitely be some changes there. As I stated in my post, I witness first hand that our public school students are severely lacking in many of the essential skills that Sheninger discussed in the reading. I think critical thinking is a major downfall, especially with all of the emphasis on standardized testing. Our students are like test taking robots, only being good at selecting multiple choice answers.
Have a blessed week!