After reading Wagner's The Global Achievement Gap, I have to agree with his seven survival skills are ones that our students and schools will need:
Skill 1 - Critical Thinking and Problem Solving: Students need to be able to think critically about everything that they are learning. The time of memorizing facts and using tests to measure how much you have memorized is over. With the proliferation of the internet, students, workers, and people in general no longer have to go to library and read through tomes of books to get a few simple facts. New information, new facts, new date is generated daily at a rapid pace and information can be outdated in a matter of weeks. Students need to be able to gather data, analyze it, and think about how they can use it to solve the problem that they are working on. They need to generate solutions to novel problems by using the information that they research.
Skill 2 - Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence: People are already working from home, in different countries, and at the office at the same time. Tomorrow's workers will need to know how to plan and coordinate with the different types of people they will encounter at their work place and work with them successfully no matter the location. Not only that, but they will have to be leaders themselves. The will have to learn how to become those leaders despite the fact that they may not be able to interact with the other person in the same room but rather through a computer or other form of communication.
Skill 3 - Agility and Adaptability: Technology has hit a point where knowing how to use the newest programs and operating systems is not feasible. Instead, we must learn how to rapidly adapt to continuously updated software efficiently. Students and workers will have to develop the skills necessary to troubleshoot and adapt to new programs and obstacles efficiently. One way to teach students this skill is through discovery learning, where they set their goals and reach a solution through their own means.
Skill 4 - Initiative and Entrepreneurialism: Students have to learn how to initiate their own projects and their own learning, just as they will have to initiate projects in the workplace and execute them.
Skill 5 - Effective Oral Written Communication: Knowing how to communicate is just as essential now as it has been in the past. The advancement of human knowledge has always been dependent on ideas being communicated properly. It is no different in the workplace, if workers cannot communicate effectively they may cause miscommunication issues. Amazing projects may never be approved if the creator cannot communicate his/her ideas properly.
Skill 6 - Accessing and Analyzing Information: With the vast amount of information available to us in the internet age, being able to collect and evaluate information is a much needed skill. Students and workers need to know how to separate information that is meaningless or incorrect from the information that is useful and peer reviewed. This way, misinformation is not spread.
Skill 7 - Curiosity and Imagination: Students/Workers need to always be curious, they need to want to learn new things, seek out new solutions, and use their imagination to find those solutions.
Incorporating some/all of these skills in my school does not have to be difficult. Project based learning is one way to incorporate most of these skills into the classroom. Teachers can create assignments where the topic that needs to be learned is done so through week long projects where students choose what they want to learn (within the topic of the assignment) and then go on to create a meaningful project that they have to present to the class. This can be done individually or in small groups, depending on the skills that the teacher wants to promote.
In my classroom I do plan on using some shorter term projects where students can choose what they want to learn, create something that reflects what they learned, and then present it to the class. I have not decided on what specifically, but it is something that I plan on doing. In order to measure if the students were successful in their learning, I will be judge their final products and their presentations within the guidelines/rubrics that I set out for them at the beginning of the project.
If the students enjoy the learning and are engaged with what they are learning, then I will consider the project to be successful. They must create meaningful products of what they learned, whether it is a poster, film, or audio recording, as long it conveys what they learned then it will be successful.
Skill 1 - Critical Thinking and Problem Solving: Students need to be able to think critically about everything that they are learning. The time of memorizing facts and using tests to measure how much you have memorized is over. With the proliferation of the internet, students, workers, and people in general no longer have to go to library and read through tomes of books to get a few simple facts. New information, new facts, new date is generated daily at a rapid pace and information can be outdated in a matter of weeks. Students need to be able to gather data, analyze it, and think about how they can use it to solve the problem that they are working on. They need to generate solutions to novel problems by using the information that they research.
Skill 2 - Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence: People are already working from home, in different countries, and at the office at the same time. Tomorrow's workers will need to know how to plan and coordinate with the different types of people they will encounter at their work place and work with them successfully no matter the location. Not only that, but they will have to be leaders themselves. The will have to learn how to become those leaders despite the fact that they may not be able to interact with the other person in the same room but rather through a computer or other form of communication.
Skill 3 - Agility and Adaptability: Technology has hit a point where knowing how to use the newest programs and operating systems is not feasible. Instead, we must learn how to rapidly adapt to continuously updated software efficiently. Students and workers will have to develop the skills necessary to troubleshoot and adapt to new programs and obstacles efficiently. One way to teach students this skill is through discovery learning, where they set their goals and reach a solution through their own means.
Skill 4 - Initiative and Entrepreneurialism: Students have to learn how to initiate their own projects and their own learning, just as they will have to initiate projects in the workplace and execute them.
Skill 5 - Effective Oral Written Communication: Knowing how to communicate is just as essential now as it has been in the past. The advancement of human knowledge has always been dependent on ideas being communicated properly. It is no different in the workplace, if workers cannot communicate effectively they may cause miscommunication issues. Amazing projects may never be approved if the creator cannot communicate his/her ideas properly.
Skill 6 - Accessing and Analyzing Information: With the vast amount of information available to us in the internet age, being able to collect and evaluate information is a much needed skill. Students and workers need to know how to separate information that is meaningless or incorrect from the information that is useful and peer reviewed. This way, misinformation is not spread.
Skill 7 - Curiosity and Imagination: Students/Workers need to always be curious, they need to want to learn new things, seek out new solutions, and use their imagination to find those solutions.
Incorporating some/all of these skills in my school does not have to be difficult. Project based learning is one way to incorporate most of these skills into the classroom. Teachers can create assignments where the topic that needs to be learned is done so through week long projects where students choose what they want to learn (within the topic of the assignment) and then go on to create a meaningful project that they have to present to the class. This can be done individually or in small groups, depending on the skills that the teacher wants to promote.
In my classroom I do plan on using some shorter term projects where students can choose what they want to learn, create something that reflects what they learned, and then present it to the class. I have not decided on what specifically, but it is something that I plan on doing. In order to measure if the students were successful in their learning, I will be judge their final products and their presentations within the guidelines/rubrics that I set out for them at the beginning of the project.
If the students enjoy the learning and are engaged with what they are learning, then I will consider the project to be successful. They must create meaningful products of what they learned, whether it is a poster, film, or audio recording, as long it conveys what they learned then it will be successful.