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Liberal Workforce Development?

2008-11-06T08:48:00.000-08:00

Recommendation 2, from page 8 of “College Learning in the New Global Century"
seems to offer a counterpoint to the brewing idea that offering Stackable Certificates is the way to ensure effective workforce development. LEAP suggests that 2-year colleges, traditionally and currently the institutions that focus primarily on skills development for employability, should integrate liberal education into all coursework. Here is the excerpt from the report, with my emphases:

"Nearly half the nation’s college students, and the majority of
students from low-income families, begin their studies in two-year
institutions. It should be a national priority to ensure that these
students, whatever their career choices and preparation, become richly
prepared for a changing economy, for the option of further study, and
for a lifetime of continuous learning—as employees and as citizens.

This recommendation neither requires nor anticipates that
community college students should study only, or primarily, what
are conventionally known as arts and sciences or “general education”
courses. Rather, it calls on two-year and four-year institutions, in every
state and region, to collaboratively remap the curriculum so that arts
and sciences and professional or “career” courses can work together,
from first to final years, to foster the broad knowledge, sophisticated
skills, personal and social responsibility, and demonstrated achievement
that every student needs and deserves."

The Holy Grail?

2008-11-04T07:36:00.000-08:00

I wish that i could remember how I linked to this site....I actually think that it was through the Ohio STEM Learning Network somehow.....

At any rate, College Learning for the New Global Century(2007), a report from the National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) beautifully and compellingly describes what revsions need to occur in Liberal Arts education in order to make this field of study relevant in the 21st century. While STEM education is getting the lion's share of publicity, funding and fans, the authors of the LEAP report argue that Liberal Arts education is essential to student success and must not be ignored.

Of particular interest is the fact that authors of the LEAP report urge us to think deeply about what college grads need to know--a question, they argue, that has not been asked.

The authors of this report see liberal education as a "liberating education", one that shapes and melds civic awareness, global awareness, and complex problem solving ability through an interdisciplinary inquiry and knowledge base.

Echoing the tenets of STEM education, LEAP urges learner directed activities in education. Unlike STEM, LEAP encourages institutions of higher learning to avoid falling into the trap of educating within one discipline, one focus, one major. Think engineering majors who do a service project in rural Mali for 2 weeks (Miami University has done this) and then publish a paper on their experiences or science PhD candidates at OSU who, as thier graduate assistantship, serve at Metro High school, leading students though cutting edge experiences and inviting teachers to participate in experimental endeavors with them....

2008-11-04T07:09:00.001-08:00

I Have finally found in print the answer- or perhaps partial answer to the STEM focus. The Ohio STEM Learning Network website spells out the impetus for the national STEM focus in terms of the publications that have informed the policy; Thomas Friedman's book is listed first!

Also, the Science and Engineering Indicator report apparently mentioned the need to focus on STEM education in their 2006 report. I suppose that it is good news that Friedman's work, the information published with the Indicators and other seemingly low rumblings have so quickly and fervently been applied in the education sphere. But I fear that this haste can lead to panicky decision making rather than accurate, effective thought and planning.

It is also creepy that the rhetoric in support of STEM seeps with national security talk. It is true, I'm sure, that STEM education is a security issue, but I haven't recovered from the Axis of Evil rhetoric....and I don't like any scare tactics, educational or military.

21st Century Skills, Web 2.0 and Changing the "Learningscape"

2008-10-27T09:01:00.000-07:00

"Creating a Culture of Learning", John Seely Brown's forward to Opening Up Education: the Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content and Open Knowledge (Toru Iiyoshi and M.S. Vijay Kumar, eds) provides a great framework for thinking about course design changes. Brown acknowledges that many current teaching approaches fail to capture the 21st century student's mind, experiences and facility with Web 2.0 technology. He positions Web 2.0 tools within the emerging "learningscape", one in which Internet based participation, collaboration and networking will help students to become active agents of their own learning processes. He says it much better and with much more detail than I can, so read on

Ohio Centers for Learning and Technology

2008-10-23T10:23:00.000-07:00

The Ohio Learning Network has published a list of the academic centers throughout Ohio that focus on teaching and learning though technology. In Northeast Ohio, there are technology/learning/teaching centers at

Case Western Reserve University (The University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education)
Cleveland State University (University Center for Teaching and Learning)
John Carroll University (Center for Teaching and Learning)
Kent State University (Faculty Professional Development Center),
Kent State University (Research Center for Educational Technology)
Lakeland Community College (Excellence in Teaching Committee)
Lorain County Community College (Center for Teaching Excellence)
Notre Dame College (The Center for Professional Development)
Oberlin College (Center for Technologically Enhanced Teaching)
University of Akron (The Institute of Teaching and Learning)
YSU Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning at Youngstown State (CATALYST)

Also on the OLN site are some resources for professional development that appear to be very useful for self-education. The TeachU initiative offers webinars for educators. These webinars focus on emerging technologies and how to integrate them into pedagogy that will enhance student learning.

Centers of Excellence in Teaching and Learning throughout the USA

2008-10-23T09:55:00.001-07:00

Gannon University provides yearly seminars for small groups of faculty to explore new applications of technology for enhanced learning through their Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

From the website of the Center for Technology in Learning and Teaching at Iowa State University: "More than a physical space, the Center for Technology in Learning and Teaching (CTLT) is a community comprised of a collegial, collaborative group of faculty, staff, graduate, and undergraduate students who have created a learning environment that continually demonstrates powerful applications of technology that improve student learning."

Indiana University's Center for Research on Learning and Technology is focused on organizing and analyzing data regarding the ways in which appropriate technology can enhance learning and teaching.

At Rice University, the more than decade-old Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning
offers many past and current projects relating to an array of disciplines and to many different age groups. Most of what is displayed are links to the resources that the Center has developed through the years.

Washington State University's Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology offers a great page about ePortfolios. The WSU Center mentions their focus on faculty support first, stating that they are a resource for "everyone teaching at WSU". This primary focus on faculty support is clearly based on a desire to expand learning capabilities for students.

Student experience as Text

2008-10-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

Blogging allows class participants to better know and understand one another. Also, blogging allows for more of the personal experience of each student to become part of the class knowledge; there is rarely enough time for all personal reflections to be addressed in a traditional class time. Blogging expands the space and time available for class participants to share their experiences

The following is from Shiang-Kwei Wang and Hui-Yin Hsua. “Reflections on Using Blogs to Expand In-class Discussion.” TechTrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning. 52.3 (May 2008): 81-85

The authors studied a blogging project that was used in pre-service teacher training. What they found was that students generally liked the blogging, because it "enabled them to share knowledge and experiences as well as to express their feelings and thoughts outside the classroom discussion" (83). Those results are common and even to be expected. But there was another result that is interesting:

“From the in depth stories or postings contributed by their classmates, [students who blogged] became aware of their peers’ opinions and were able to confront perspectives on reading and diversity issues better than in the face-to-face environment.” (Wang and Hsua 83)

In this study, the authors found that the blog helped students to grapple with ideas and concepts that were not best served in the classroom. The blog, then, does not merely augment what goes on in the classroom; in some instances, it can create an entirely new opportunity for communication, understanding and growth. Students themselves were providing the "texts" from which learning occurred, not books, not a teacher's lecture, not published or peer reviwed articles. That is an incredible statement of voice and authority.

Women's Ways of Knowing and Web 2.0

2008-10-21T10:39:00.000-07:00

In Women's Ways of Knowing, Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule describe the different possibilities of female intellectual awareness (knowing) from silence, to received knowledge, to subjective knowledge, to procedural knowledge, to constructed knowledge. It is the constructed knowledge that fits quite well into Web 2.0 capabilities such as social networking, blogging, creating wikis, podcasting, and more. In this last "way of knowing", women, the authors assert, are able to create "the optimum setting so that half baked, emergent ideas can grow" (144) and they are able to identify and use “a way of connecting to others and acquiring and communicating new knowledge” (145).

Connecting, innovating, incubating, listening, providing context, seeking, recording, sharing, and declaring: all of these activities are reflected in the technology tools that are a part of eLearning. The student who comments on a blog puts her voice into publication, into the public sphere, into a conversation with anyone and everyone who reads the blog. The student who contributes to a class wiki is physically and mentally engaged in the act of producing knowledge, of recording and communicating intellectual growth, of collaborating with others to create. The student who uses coursework posted on Open Source sites is able to control the pace and the content of her learning.

Source:
Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M., Goldberger, N. R., and Tarule, J. M. (1997). Women's ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind. Tenth anniversary edition. New York: Basic Books.

The Power of Blogs in Intellectual "Ownership"

2008-10-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

Blogs offer the opportunity for continual revision in the public sphere. The author has the opportunity to publish, then revisit the published text and change it as often as desired. This change may be precipitated by comments that viewers of the blog leave in connection with a particular entry, or the changes may be the result of the writer’s desire to sharpen and to hone their text. In either case, revision is a clear option, and one that the writer is able to take advantage of in the public sphere. The old post is replaced by the new post; the more thoughtful, cohesive “post” is what the world sees.

Writing traditional papers that are handed in to a professor is a linear, private transaction. The student writes, then gives a finished product to the teacher. Perhaps there are drafts along the way, lesser transactions of handing the draft to a tutor, to a peer reviewer, or to the professor for preliminary feedback. In any of these instances, the student is required to relinquish control over his or her document by rendering a static, finished product to an authority, thereby delimiting the development of the writing product by completing a transaction with an audience.

Writing blog entries expands the transaction between student producer and audience. In space and in time, the student is the primary agent of the text; the student’s voice remains dominant. The student never relinquishes his or her position as knower, as writer, as thinker, as reviser – as creator of the blog, “owner” of the domain. Others may comment on certain thoughts or ideas, but these comments are physically relegated to a secondary space on the Blog, the comment box. It matters that anyone and everyone can read these comments, because the comments are then subject to analysis and criticism (very unlike traditional teacher grading). The student has the opportunity to revisit and grow his or her ideas immediately by engaging these comments.

Tension between IT and Faculty

2008-10-21T08:28:00.001-07:00

One of the challenges to envisioning a Web 2.0 focus is pushback that can occur from faculty. Especially at smaller institutions, many instructors are overtaxed in their teaching and administrative duties. Asking faculty to adopt new technologies into their pedagogy is asking them to significantly increase a workload that is already heavy....And the result can be that if and when these overtaxed faculty members do need to use some form of technology in the classroom, the IT department handles it.

At small schools, this IT department may simply be an IT person, who must support students, faculty and staff in understanding and effectively using any and all technology tools. Thus, this IT person is also overtaxed.

Luke Fernandez contributed an interesting article to EduCause Quarterly, "An Antidote to the IT - Faculty Divide", about the relationship - often strained - between IT staff and faculty. I do not completely agree with Fendandez, particularly in his concluding recommendation that IT people need to reach out to faculty more. Particularly at a very small college where there is only one IT person, this places a huge amount of effort on one end. In truth, everyone needs to be persuaded that Web 2.0 technologies are really not that scary or difficult to use, and that these technologies-moderately easy to adapt to - are essential to student success in the 21st Century.

But I want to highlight one of Fernandez's thoughts in particular because it does not, I believe, reflect this school's situation:

Fernandez writes that "From the point of view of many faculty, the growth of IT more often advances the interests and market-oriented perspectives of the administration, solidifying and securing the powers of the administration over faculty and narrowing faculty's ability to teach with a modicum of autonomy. Rather than fostering a spirit of free inquiry and creativity, IT seems complicit in the promotion of "factory" models of education where innovation and exploration are sacrificed to automation, efficiency, and the codification of standardized business processes."

If technology is embraced by all, if learning communities are formed for faculty members who are experimenting with technology, if the IT person is invited to/included in faculty committees and meetings, if the IT person is seen as more than someone with a set of skills and instead as a mentor to faculty members.....then the inclusion of technology will not, perhaps, be so fraught with tension.

Pick and Choose

2008-10-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

From Web2.0 magazine, here is a basic rundown of the many many options from which to choose in incorporating Web 2.0 into the classroom. The list is organized by programming. video, music, chats, blogging, bookmarking, VOIP, games and sketching, wikis, office tools, RSS, emails, new, file sharing and more. There are several options under each heading.

This list, and in particular its categorical breakdown, provides a good framework for determining out needs/desires in terms of options for instructors and trainings that might be needed.

Web 2.0 and Today's Workforce

2008-10-20T08:20:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately, I cannot link to the Aberdeen Report, which, according to CNN.com and other sites was sponsored at some point, but according to Aberdeen's page, is no longer sponsored or viewable by nonmembers. Shame. The secondary sources that I have found, however, capture and summarize the findings of the study that are relevant to my project, namely, that Web 2.0 capabilities are essential for individuals entering the current workforce.

Aberdeen found that "Best in Class" companies utilize Web 2.0 tools in order to increase worker productivity and output. These companies invest in the professional development of their workers who might need guidance in using these tools.

The important take away here is that in the business world, working with Web 2.0 is a fundamental skill. If it valued in the workplace, then it should be valued and cultivated in academia.

Exciting Resources for Instructors

2008-10-20T07:14:00.001-07:00

1) The Open Learning Initiative from Carnegie Mellon University is a free offering of courses ranging from Biology to Economics to French. I entered into the French module and performed some of the exercises - they were quite engaging and would be an extremely useful addition to any French course in their student-directed pacing, self-testing, and real-life (video) simulations.

Professors who are interested in using some of the OLI models (Causal and Statistical Reasoning, Economics, French I, French II, Logic, Statistics)must register and pay a small fee. However, there are also resources for building courses and opportunities for students (or any interested individual) to participate in these courses.

2) From Merlot (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching), ideas for course enhancement and a Virtual Instructional Design helper

Recently launched site offers support for instructors

2008-10-20T06:04:00.000-07:00

The Social Media Classroom site offers helpful information for looking at

specific classroom tools that we should be looking into: integrated forum, blog, comment, wiki, chat, social bookmarking, RSS, microblogging, widgets , and video commenting
how the use of these tools can enhance learning and help to reposition the student's experience from receiver of information to participatory seeker and creator of information
how Web 2.0 tools are a rich extension of the best elements of traditional classroom methods, particularly those that are valued here: collaboration and self-expression

In order to access the repository of resources for educators, one needs a login ID and password.

Training in Web 2.0 for Higher Ed

2008-10-16T10:31:00.000-07:00

This is perhaps a taste of what we have been looking for, from the Higher Education 2.0 Blog:

Training modules for using Web 2.o in the college classroom!

This resource can help us to understand what it is we should know and students should know...not an end in and of itself, but a helpful resource for defining our needs: podcasting, blogging, using wikis, and general conceptual frameworks for these tools.

SocialLearn: Guidance for Moving Foreward?

2008-10-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

I came across this site while searching "Web 2.o and Higher education". The ideas that I found here are articulated in a manner that has eluded me, namely, the Assumptions that SocialLearn holds regarding 21st century education:

from their site:

There is a major shift in society and education driven by the possibilities new technologies create for creating and sharing content and for social networking.
Higher education, to date, has not really addressed how to engage with these fundamental shifts and their impact on the core business model of higher education.
There is educational value in the application of both the technologies seen in web 2.0 and the approaches they embody.
The status quo is no longer feasible or advisable; we need to apply the best of our expertise and experience to address the necessary change.
Competition in the learner sphere is ever more complex, multi-faceted and fragmented; If higher education doesn’t address the issues this raises someone else will.
The principles embodied in SocialLearn reflect the essence of the proposal – harnessing social networking for learning and include adopting an approach which is open, flexible, disruptive, democratic and, most importantly, pedagogically driven.

Exciting News for Northeast Ohio

2008-10-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

Technology based economic development (TBED) is indeed revitalizing this economy by drawing large sums of venture capitalism to and providing hope for the future of Northeast Ohio. An editorial by Dorothy Baunach and Les Vinney in the PD from October 15th describes some of the successes of tech innovation that have been seen in recent years.

If a school does not have an engineering program or a science program, what can it offer to the new TBED initiatives? An obvious point of entry would be in looking toward entrepreneurial support and entrepreneurial finance and investment. But teachers - whatever the discipline - should also be aware of this great glimmer of hope for Ohio's future, a hope that they can nurture and explore with their students.

If everyone must realize that Northeast Ohio truly has a great thing going for it in TBED, and we can be proud, confident, excited, and engaged in our region. This is a fantastic perspective to latch onto....

The Global Perspective in Education

2008-10-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a global professional/social networking site for educators: The Schools United. This site offers the opportunity for educators from countries throughout the world to discuss their ideas and their teaching practices, and clearly fits into the 21st century theme of global awareness and global connections.

The site seems, from my rather brief glance at it, to be geared toward primary and secondary school teachers. However, it got me thinking about the need(?) for a similar networking site here. Instead of replacing meetings, these social networking sites can enhance communication and collaboration by allowing users to constantly update - and be updated about - what is going on on campus. I wonder how many faculty members have used social networking sites.....

The Schools United is great because it offers entree into a global forum from the cheap comfort of one's office.

Ideas to consider in Planning Professional Development

2008-10-14T07:07:00.000-07:00

Interesting ideas for thinking about professional development, from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching :

From Special Occasion to Regular Work
For the past several years the Carnegie Foundation has been working with a group of California community colleges to improve student success in pre-collegiate math and English. One of the themes that has emerged as central in this effort—which we call Strengthening Pre-collegiate Education in Community Colleges, or SPECC—is the need for different ways to think about and conduct professional development.
Part of what needs to be different is language. Though most educators aspire to be life-long learners and to improve in the various facets of their professional work, being "developed" is not an altogether appealing prospect. For starters, it sounds like something that happens to you; even worse, there's a sense that something's broken and needs to be fixed. In contrast, many of the SPECC [Strengthening Pre-collegiate Education in Community Colleges] sites have adopted the language of "faculty inquiry," pointing toward a process that begins with the questions that good, thoughtful teachers have, and need to understand more fully, about their own students' learning. In this spirit, SPECC campuses have created Faculty Inquiry Groups (FIGs) that illustrate powerful professional growth and learning characterized by three key principles.
First, opportunities for teachers to grow and develop must be sustained over time. Professional development often takes the form of one-time workshops and presentations by outside speakers that may or may not be related to the campus's goals for student learning. SPECC participants have been energetic in pointing out the limitations of this model. "We believe that the one-hour, lunch-time faculty development workshop has little impact on the transformation of faculty attitudes and behavior," one campus team reported. In contrast, they noted that their work in the Carnegie project "has taught us that if we are serious about making radical changes to the way we deliver instruction, we must work intensively with a select group of faculty over an extended period of time." Some FIGs established in SPECC have continued for more than a year now.
A second principle is the importance of collaboration. One of the most persistent impediments to educational improvement is that teachers have—because institutions provide—so few purposeful, constructive occasions for sharing what they know and do. Thus, one of the most important moves a campus can make is to create occasions for educators to talk, to find colleagues, to be part of a community of practice. As an administrator at Merced College remarked during a SPECC site visit, "Good things happen when teachers talk."
Of course talk is not enough, and not all talk is created equal. With this in mind, some campuses have worked their way toward carefully structured routines and protocols for collaboration. At Los Medanos College, for instance, a group of English instructors organized themselves as a kind of graduate seminar, with clear tasks in preparation for each meeting and an emphasis on developing new tools and materials—course assignments, for instance, and assessment instruments. At City College of San Francisco, several faculty groups employ a carefully structured process of classroom observation, which is then grist for discussion during their meetings.
The third defining feature is a focus on evidence about student learning. SPECC campuses have served as laboratories for exploring how to bring different kinds and levels of evidence more effectively to bear on the improvement of teaching and learning.

I feel somewhat validated

2008-10-14T06:35:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from David Loertcher's article "invention, transfer, efficiency, and innovation: 21st-century learning abilities can be taught", found in Teacher Librarian. 34.5 (June 2007). My comments are in italics at the end.

"Most learning experiences currently concentrate on efficiency: coming up with right answers using recognized techniques. . . [H]owever, these desirable learning characteristics--if really valued by society--must be assessed by using methods different from current standardized tests.

Action steps for the teacher-librarian when teaching alone or in collaboration with the classroom teacher follow:

At the beginning of a lesson, ask students to manipulate data on a topic to come up with an explanation, a formula, a way of seeing relationships--a preliminary invention of ideas. Do not criticize these efforts, even if they seem wrong. For example, if you know that students are going to face a wide spectrum of opinions on an issue, then provide them with a range of opinions in random order and ask groups or pairs of students to come up with a way to picture, group, or explain differences of opinion. Do not criticize charts or groupings; the students are inventing ways of thinking about data.

Teach the students how some experts deal with a range of opinions, by constructing an opinion line, such as that demonstrating for-and-against opinions or pro-and-con opinions. Have students retrieve articles on the subject and place the various opinions from the articles onto the opinion line; have them defend their placement.

Present students with a task that requires them to place articles on the opinion line as taught. They may argue among themselves about the position of a particular authority that seems to be taking a middle-of-the-road stance.

Assess their work as you normally would.
Finally, give the students a unique problem to solve where the technique taught might be one key in the solution to the problem. Assess their ability to encounter this novel problem in a new situation."

This is an English degree, only the "data" is words. If English studies - a core of Liberal Arts along with Philosophy, History, and other Humanities subjects - is already encouraging this type of intellectual pursuit and this type of intellectual pursuit is THE hot topic, why are the Humanities being underdiscussed, undervalued and underrecognized? People seem to discuss 21st century skills as something that needs to be incorporated into classrooms because it is not necessarily there.....but, in terms of critical thinking, it is.

Conversation, Voice, and Technology in the Classroom

2008-10-13T12:40:00.000-07:00

Through the Educause website, I found the following article that will provide a great basis for describing the need for integrated technology. I have highlighted the key points - that which clearly supports the current mission.

Other writers and researchers have focused on the idea that while alone, in front of a computer, a student may find more of a voice that they would in the classroom. That surely describes me as a sophomore who was embarrassed by how much I loved my literature studies. And this private, cyber-public participation does not preclude physical-public participation. In fact, becoming comfortable with one's voice via technology may effectively, if slowly, build a shy student's confidence.

Sarah Robbins-Bell writes
"Today’s moderately tech-savvy student is accustomed to having a voice. Social networks (e.g., Facebook), instant messaging, blogs, and virtual worlds not only allow conversation but rely on it. After all, what would a service like YouTube or Digg look like if no one contributed content and no one commented? Instead, these popular social media services feature high levels of participation, numerous contributions and discussions, and even detailed debates.
We know that the demographics of Facebook, Digg, Fark, and World of Warcraft are the same as the general demographics of college/university students. So, why don’t we see the same levels of participation in the social media that are used in the classroom (typically, learning management systems) as are evident in the social media that students engage in voluntarily? I think the problem is that our pedagogy often isn’t ready for an increase in conversation."

Robbins-Bell goes on to explain that part of what makes online learning so compelling is the element of constant development in space and time that occurs in games, on social networking sites, etc. Young people become devoted to these 21st century endeavors, she posits, because they must do so if they wish to keep up with what is going on. The world keeps developing and evolving around them, and if they fail to check in, they become lost, irrelevant, late, confused.

STEM and 21st Century Skills

2008-10-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of this placement, I was bothered by the ubiquitousness of STEM - as a term, as a concept, as the seeming superstar of education from elementary school through higher ed. I was bothered because, I realize now, in Ohio it seems as though STEM is being used interchangeably with the concept of "21st Century Skills".

The two are different. 21st Century skills are not a separate entity from STEM; science, technology, and math skills are fundamental elements of a successful 21st century education, which encompasses global awareness, competence in communication, strong critical thinking, effective writing, and acute analytical and synthetic skills. But STEM is becoming a monolith in education talk, and I fear that it threatens to invalidate anything - any program, any path of study - that is not immediately or obviously STEM related.

See, for example, the following excerpt from the Ohio STEM Learning Network:

"The goal of a STEM focused curriculum is to drive STEM-literacy for all students as they prepare for college, work and effective citizenship. After entering a STEM school, many students have already made the decision to move on to careers in the rapidly evolving technology and science sectors, two areas where American industry struggles to keep in step with foreign competition. STEM schools are working hard to educate the future leaders and innovators of America."

Well, so are small liberal arts colleges, independant colleges and non-STEM disciplines in any institution of learning. This school is not in a position to become a STEM school, but it can be a school that remains diverse in its focus as it prepares graduates who posess strong 21st century skills. If schools genuinely adopt such a skill base and creatively integrate this base into all disciplines, graduates will be intellectually flexible, professionally capable, and therefore economically relevant - as "future leaders and innovators of America" in many ways.

20th century vs 21st century classrooms

2008-10-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

Abilene Christian University published a useful comparsion of the 20th century education model
to the 21st century educational model. In the 20th century, education adn pedegogical approach focused on hierarchy, specialization, and formalized interaction. The teacher was the authority in his or her particular subject. The classroom, the textbook and/or the lecturer was the locus of academic progress and process. However, in the 21st century, barriers are broken. Just as we in Northeast Ohio hear about the push towards economic and political regionalism, just as we in America feel the effects of globalized economies and cultures - both of which necessitate and reflect a loss of rigid individualism, so it is in academia.

The ACU website delineated several concepts regarding 21st century learning. The teachers must now focus on his.her mentoring role, and be a guide to students who are actively engaged in inquiry, discovery, exploration and critical sysnthesis of the wealth of information available to them. The classroom is no longer the locus of learning; rather, the student, who is "connected", directs class content and creates classroom learning paths.

From The International Society for Technology in Education

2008-10-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

The National Educational Technology Standards for Students offer a technology-centered outline for what our 21st century students need to learn and apply. This list provides details for enhancing the 21st century skill set with technology.

Of equal importance are the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers, which offer a basic framework for planning professional development goals and assessing professional development success.

Best Practices in 21st Century Skills

2008-10-13T09:14:00.000-07:00

Using Wikis as Electronic Portfolios for collaborative work employ Web 2.0 capabilities in the service of knowledge creatioon and knowledge expression produced from group work

Personal e-Portfolios developed either throughout one course or - perhaps more compelling - throughout the college experience allow a student to maintain a living document of academic progress, findings, research. reflections and growth. This could be useful in a job search, and, for Graduate students in particular, would serve as a timeless snapshot of graduate work/thought/research/curiosity/process/intellectual fire!

3D Virtual Environments (Second Life, Active Worlds, Central Grid, Kaneva, Twinity, CyberNet Worlds, The Palace, Furcadia, and Project DarkStar) are at the cutting edge of classroom technology.

Faculty "grad seminar" style of professional development for faculty supports professionalism and encourages enthousiasm for exploring new technologies while engaging faculty in intellectual growth

The ChemCollective offers free online resources for teaching and learning Chemistry

The TLT Group lists ideas for encouraging student to student collaboration using technology, including web quests, discussion boards, and group web page construction.

The TLT Group also points out that technology integration in the classroom allows instructors to create a more inclusive or diverse learning environment, one that, by virtue of multifaceted presentation, is perhpas more effective at engaging all students

Creating a Ning site for faculty members or for Graduate classes - one can set up a social networking site that is limited to certain participants - a sort of Facebook with academic perameters and only open to students/faculty here

From Classroom 2.0, educators offer ideas about the Web 2.0 tools that they use in the classroom, inlcuding Google Notebook, Google Reader, Del.icio.us, podcasting, wikispaces and more