EARCOS 2008: Session 5 Dennis Harter 21st Century Skills

I.T Curriculum 2.0

Technology offers new opportunities in education

What do we do about it?  How can we change schools when schools are very good at not changing?

What do students need to  do or to be able to do to be successful?

  • communicate
  • learn independently
  • create
  • understand information
  • values?
  • speak another language
  • collaborate

What are the obstacles to a successful embedded IT curriculum?

  • teachers resistance to change
  • teachers too busy to plan
  • teachers have a full plate
  • tech changes too fast
  • tech is not reliable or dependable
  • it is overwhelming to try to do it all
  • putting stuff out there on the web (wiki and blogs) is dangerous in terms of inappropriate content and spamming

Firstly, we must accept that the way IT integration is done right now is not working.  Having an IT curriculum is not working.  IT and student skills are advancing faster than we can write a skills-based curriculum.

Why can’t they learn IT the way they live IT?

You learn IT when you need it.

Students, digital natives, know how to entertain themselves, but they are not good educating themselves online.

What are the enduring understandings?  They are not PowerPoint or Word.  So what are the essential questions for 21st century literacy?

New Literacy Wikispace

Rubrics for evaluating these enduring understandings are included on the wiki.

Do teachers have the skillset to teach the enduring understandings?

Co-teaching helps embed the IT into the classroom.

IT needs to be infused into school and not just done once in grade 3 and checked off as complete.

The big challenge is to help teachers build rich units and lessons that embed technology naturally and relevantly.

Making it happen:

    1. development of framework and essential questions
    2. curriculum office involvement and refinement
    3. leadership team buy-in
    4. teacher buy-in and PD

    Layers:

    1. ISB has created a vision of what 21st century learner looks like.
    2. Enduring understandings
    3. Essential questions

    Much of this has been the focus of library curriculum for the past decade.  But why has it not made it into the classroom?  Librarians have not had the mandate to collaborate and co-teach to the same degree as IT integration specialists.

    Assessment?

    if IT is truly embedded then good rubrics and content area assessments will take care of it.

    My thoughts: if IT is truly embedded in the curriculum, then students can not graduate without IT skills?  Teachers can not teach, they can not successfully deliver their curriculum without the technology.  IT must be built into the curriculum.