21st Century Skills

Hello everyone! I wanted to write about something today that is an everyday, bottom line task of my job. I wrote on my Facebook status one morning this week the following statement: "Susan is heading to work...teaching Excel to 4th graders and PPT to 3rd graders today!" I got lots of comments on that one that were both surprised and excited and saying how much things had changed. Yes, things have definitely changed. We have an entire new generation of students of whom third grade and below have completely been born and raised in the 21st century. Even those who were born in the 90's have almost been in a world that is completely automated, web based, or connected in some way or the other.

In the educational technology world, we refer to this as teaching students "21st Century Skills." Those who read my status message the other day saw that I was teaching 4th graders how to make data graphs in Excel for science fair projects and 3rd graders were working on a PowerPoint to present as a study guide for their science unit on magnets.

It is so important that we begin teaching these technology skills including keyboarding, multimedia skills, research, etc. in the elementary grades. There are so many other technology and 21st century skills opportunities out there that if they get the basic technology skills at the elementary level they can cover so many other skills in the higher grades such as web design, and incorporate so many other "Web 2.0" tools. (I'll explain that one in a post for another day!)

Keep in mind that the normal subjects such as reading, spelling, math, science, history, etc. are taught from the very beginning from Kindergarten all the way up so why not incorporate those 21st century skills of technology to prepare our students for the work force they will encounter when they go out into this digital world!

Have a great Saturday!

Susan