Response to Readings: Assignment 2

1. How can you as a teacher build and maintain an effective learning environment for the new 21st Century Learners?
: The imaginary lines and vast waters that separate the countries of the world no longer matter in the world of business and communication. “We live in wired, globalized world in which communication and collaboration are possible 24/7.” (Soloman and Schrum, 2007) We are connected to everyone in the world. It is important to remember this when creating and maintaining a learning environment. The classroom, however small, must reflect the expansive outside community. Gone are the days of students staring straight ahead at a blackboard as the teacher writes the lessons of the day. Schools need to provide an environment that promotes collaboration and technology. Students must have access to the technological tools that they will use outside the classroom. Funding is key to providing the newest innovations to students to better prepare them for the connected world. Classrooms can’t and shouldn’t rely on chalk and blackboard when the world uses touch screens and laptops. Maintaining such environments is a hard task when it doesn’t seem as though we can substantially provide such environments for students.

2. What skills must your students know in order to be successful in today’s marketplace?
: Students must learn how to collaborate and communicate not only with those that make up the community around them but with those that make up the global community. According the article Growing Up Digital, everyone needs to not only have confidence in their talents and resources but also on those talents and resources of others. Each of us must be able to work with one another. In a world where everyone can compete, success hinges the relationships that you can build with others. In a world with such competition, what you know can only take you so far. Eventually, the ability to connect will be the deciding factor.

3. What will learners need to do in order to be prepared for the technologies and thinking skills needed for the 21st Century?
: Learners in this country must understand the competition they will face when entering the market. According the Soloman and Schuster, technology as allowed people from all over the world to become potential employees to business that is not necessarily within their community or country. These individuals may not only be more motivated to work, accepting lower pay and less benefits but also may have more expertise than candidates from the United States. Learners must recognize that the world is catching up to us in terms of the marketplace. When learners recognize this shift, they will be prepared to work harder in order to make themselves marketable in this new world.

4. How can you design and inquiry rich lesson and still meet the standards of learning?
: Technology provides newer more effective tools and technology is simply that, a tool. Technology allows teachers to create lessons more effectively. It also makes inquiry within the lesson more realistic. For example if the lesson is research Baroque Art and write about 6 characteristics and list several Artists, technology allows students a greater opportunity to research more information faster allowing more time in the lesson for collaboration and thought.

5. What will it take for us as teachers to catch up to this new world?
: Dedication. Teachers need to embrace the technological world not only to reach and better prepare students for the challenges that face them but to become more competitive themselves. Competition in the workplace is just as much a reality for teachers as it is for their students. Teachers must learn to use the technological tools in order to compete and it will take dedication to meet that challenge, especially for those that have not been exposed to technology the same way their students have.