Leading 21st Century Schools: Harnessing Technology for Engagement and Achievement

Prensky’s idea of student based partnering by teachers faced with high stakes testing, pressure to achieve, AYP, set curriculum, instruction, etc., and is geared towards an approach that more actively engages students in technology potentially increasing achievement as long as teachers start small. Teachers will present projects where students would incorporate Web 2.0’s all encompassing tools in order to showcase their product. By using Web 2.0, teachers do not move too far away from their comfort zone because it features all of the writing tools that they have used for years from Microsoft Word to Power Point. As students and teacher’s comfort level increases (with the Prensky’s idea of partnering), the more they may start adopting this new approach and move away from the previous pedagogy. This requires a lot of courage on the part of the teachers as the experience may be nerve racking, frustrating, and may take more effort than they want to expend. Teachers might feel like they are losing control of their classroom. Students will be required to participate more, in some cases even leading the class, which may also appear chaotic in the beginning. Large scale changes in a given approach may be disastrous for this reason, as teachers very well may lose total control of their classroom, leaving an overwhelming feeling and thus destine to fail.
Breaking the new process into manageable chunks, or starting small ensures that the students will see the correlations between the emerging technology, successfully adapting their new learning/teaching style. According to students who have made this transition successfully, they feel like they are more taking control of their learning. Students report that they are able to be more responsible with more freedoms.
School leaders should take it upon themselves as the district leaders to fully brief and train their staff of the changes going on. By adopting the shift in the pedagogy as part of their school’s mission and offering support in the initial stages of the process will ensure a successful implementation. If administrators and staff recognize that classrooms may appear chaotic at times they can coach, even an outside observer, that learning is indeed taking place.

Restructuring Schools

In light of the notion of lifelong learning and the seven essential survival skills according to Tony Wagner, schools should definitely be restructured to better address these skills. A brief recap from the Tony Wagner’s article, 2008 titled Rigor Redefined. Wagner lays out the seven survival skills today’s students need to master in order to thrive in the evolving world of work. According to Wagner, these skills are the same ones that will enable students to become productive citizens who contribute to solving some of the most pressing issues we face in the 21^st century. The skills to be mastered by students are: 1) Critical thinking and problem solving. 2) Collaboration and leadership 3) Agility and adaptability 4) Initiative and entrepreneurialism 5) Effective oral and written communication 6) Accessing and analyzing information and 7) Curiosity and imagination.

To address these seven skills, schools should be restructured to leverage emerging communications and collaboration tools to create and personalize networks of experts to inform the education process. The networks are available not only locally but also globally. Not only will both teachers and students have to stay connected to these networks, but to be amerced with these skills as active learners and contributors. In this way, teachers will be in a better position to guide their students and enhance learning experiences.

Schools should be structured in a way that takes advantage of emerging technologies and expand learning experiences that transcend the classroom walls and be sensitive to individual learner’s style and interests. Finally, schools should provide digitally-rich learning environments. This would mean, providing more technology, such as computer networks and IPads to all students. Schools will also have to minimize the amount of blocks to network sites and allow students to freely navigate and explore what is available out there to feed into their learning needs so that they can more freely research their topics on the World Wide Web. 

Emerging Instructional Technologies

Emerging Instructional Technologies