Curriculum Development
By Dr. Daniel Curry-Corcoran - Director of Accountability, NNPS
Since the early years of education in America, our focus has been on reading, writing, and arithmetic. As we approach the conclusion of our first decade of the new millennium, many would argue that our primary focus is still reading, writing, and arithmetic. It is important that we ensure students have those minimum competencies that are going to prepare them to survive in our world, but how are we going to educate our children for jobs that don’t exist, problems that are just beginning to materialize, and an interdependent global community? Yet there is a glimmer of change in the air. We now have a new model developing of 21st Century Skills – Life and Career Skills, Learning and Innovation Skills, and Information Media and Technology Skills.
Our question for this week is thus three-fold – What type of curriculum revisions are needed to focus on the 21st Century? What type of revolution is it going to take to get K-12 education to move away form our old business practices? What role do you play in the revolution?
April 27th, 2009 at 8:31 am
How do teachers encourage high school students to write paragraphs and compositions that contain complete sentences that are NOT run-ons or fragments? I have trouble teaching writing without teaching “old school” grammar (for instance, phrases and how they differ from clauses….and subjects and verbs….and which pronoun is correct after a linking ver). Do we still need grammar instruction? What is the consensus?
April 27th, 2009 at 8:36 am
It almost seems as if there need to be minimum technology requirements to get out of school, perhaps integrated into the SOLs. I teach elementary, and it definitely needs to start as early as here. Not only do students need to know how to add and subtract, but they need to know basics like how to minimize and maximize windows, cut and paste from documents, create and use folders, work the control panel, etc.. So many teachers assume that kids know these things, but in my experience, only those kids with computers at home can easily manipulate technology. The gap between socio-economic levels is going to increase if we fail to make sure that all kids have a basic working knowledge of computers so I think that even in elementary school, there should be minimum technology requirements kids need to pass, just like SOLs. If there was a test, then all teachers would teach finally start teaching it.
April 27th, 2009 at 8:57 am
As the thought leader, I will try to keep up with our posts and keep the discussion going. It is hard for me to be objective about grammar, I am an English teacher at heart. But there is definitely a place for good grammar. The question is do we continue to teach it as an isolated concept in an isolated subject. What 21st Century Skill does it fit under? How do we make this learning more student-centered – can students teach a component of grammar to the class and become the functional experts, can they look for different types of grammar in newspaper articles, on-line blogs, what are some ways of making this more real. I think it is not a matter of teaching grammer, but a larger discussion of how do we improve student writing. What is the 21st going to require of students when it comes to writing. Let’s teach students how to write and have fun with writing at the same time teaching them the names for things how how to label. I couldn’t telly you what the more difficult parts of speech are, but I know how to use them. We need to write more. Write for different audiences. This will lead to good writing. What about starting your own blog? What about students grading each other’s writing?
April 27th, 2009 at 9:01 am
When it comes to technology, do we want to separate technology from our normal instruction or is technology a part of our instructional process. I am sure we all had teacher prep courses and the dreaded computer class where we were taught how to use Excel, Word, etc. If these skills are not contextualized in a larger learning environment they will always be just that – add ons. For me, we have to learn new ways of teaching this material. We have to require students to use the computer more. With children, they eat this stuff up. We won’t have to teach them how to minimize, we have to teach adults how to do that. The more exposure students have to producing learning, I mean really working on projects that they have thought about and critically assessed will lead to new learning. What changes can you make in your instruction to think differently about how they do their work?
April 28th, 2009 at 7:05 am
We need to teach students how to think. Students need to understand real world problems and how to find solutions to those problems. Understanding past problems will help them to understand the problems that do not exist.
April 30th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Since technology is so important to the future we need to focus more on this. The next generation is going to be the “net generation.” Students are surrounded by digital media. Society is leaning more towards jobs that have to deal with technology. Since we are the educators we need to be preparing our students for the future workforce. We as educators need to keep up with technology because technology provides new approaches to teach students. Every student has different learning styles and technology can help touch on more of those styles. We have to provide guidance to the students; therefore we have to stay up to date with technology so that we can find new ways of reaching all students. Students also need to know how to use the internet better. They need to be taught what a valid source is. They need to be taught the 6 elements to use when looking to see if a website is valid. They need to look at the author, audience, bias, currency, links and scholarship. Also students need to know about internet safety. Students need to make sure they are protecting their identity and creating a ground of mutual respect among the school. They also should not communicate with strangers and share personal information. Technology is going to be the next generation so we as educators need to start preparing our students of today for tomorrow.
May 1st, 2009 at 5:23 pm
As teachers in the 21st Century we need to be aware of the division that is occurring within our society among students who have access to new technology and those who do not. In the publication “Online Content for Low-Income and Underserved Americans: A report by the Children’s Partnership” students from low-income families, who live in rural communities, or are members of racial or ethnic minorities are at a great risk for being left behind in school and when they seek employment. As technology is changing at such a rapid pace these individuals, who may not have access to more advanced technology at their homes, need to be familiarized with the different technological tools while at school. I think that focusing on incorporating technology into the curriculum should become one of the revisions needed to the current curriculum. While I believe it is important to consider adding more skill-based classes to the school curriculum, possibly service/technician jobs so that students who do not attend college are able to have work-ready skills upon graduation, I think having classes thoroughly integrating technology is one of the most important things we can do to prepare our students for their future jobs.
One thing that we, as educators, need to do in order to accomplish this is to become fluent in the new technology that is available. Many of our students have grown up with technology. Don Topscott refers to these children as the “Net Generation” in his article, “Educating the Net Generation”. These kids are growing up surrounded by technology such as computers, video games, and cell phones. We need to learn how to use the technologies that are available so that we can engage our students in the classrooms and speak their language. We also need to be able to reach the students that are on the verge of being left behind because they may not have the same access to technology as their peers. What these students learn in school may be the only exposure that they get on how to use technology. If they are not able to master these technology skills they will most certainly be unable to succeed in the workforce.
We need to reach these kids while we still teach them the necessary skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic or we are not going to help them be successful in a Web 2.0 world. While it is important to teach the students how to read and write we can teach them how to be successful at reading online, as more and more content is being strictly available online only. Students will need to know how to fill out online applications for higher education and employment and they will need to know how to read these forms. We need to teach our students the importance of writing a proper email so that they can communicate with future employers and that it is different than an email you would send to a friend. These life skills are not ingrained and must be taught, just like we were taught to write letters in our elementary school English classes, only now the medium is the monitor and keyboard rather than pen and paper. We can incorporate tool such as blogs and wikis into our classrooms and illuminate the hard copy research paper. We can host class websites were we can open discussion boards for our students to communicate with us and their peers. Whatever we do, we need to help our students prepare for the 21st Century world they live in so that they can become successful adults.
May 5th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
I agree with K. Wolfe, that there needs to be a minimum technology requirement for graduation; however to prepare our students for the 21st Century, the curriculum needs to incorporate Web 2.0 tools (Wikis, Youtube, Del.icio.us, Flickr, and Blogs), and Differentiated Instructions that promotes critical thinking and problem solving.
June 27th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
The curriculum of the future will definitely need to have technology integrated. Jobs of the future will be highly technical and will require people to be able to use the technology available. The level of technology we are experiencing now is just the tip of the iceberg. I think that in the next 10-20 years, most of the learning will be online. There will be e-books taking the place of hardcover textbooks and there will be computers at every desk or no desks at all but computer stations in every classroom. Administrators and teachers will have to figure out how to incorporate each advancement of technology as it progresses. Technology will provide students who may have various disabilities the opportunity to develop skills that maybe is not happening as fast currently. I believe that the curriculum will still have reading, writing, and arithmetic, but will not be taught in the same manner as we are teaching our children today. Students of today will have to be even more technologically savvy than people who think that they are today because they will be the teachers of tomorrow. Based on readings, we have learned that students are more and more engaged in the technology revolution and in order for teachers to keep them engaged and hopefully motivated to learn, we will have to ensure technology is a major part of the curriculum development for the future.