Technology and Personal Skills

After each group presented and defended their theories and research, we felt like we had a good picture of what the educator of the future should look like.  It was evident that a lot of research had been done, but we still had several issues to break down as a group.  The first was the issue of technology.  Technology is obviously something that will be widely used in the future, as well as something that should be included in the classroom.  However, we debated on how much focus should be given to technology in our profile of an educator of the future.  On the one hand, it was argued that technology is one of many tools that should be used.  Teachers should choose the appropriate tools to teach, whether that tool be as simple as a handheld globe or as complex as google earth.  Some members argued that we should not specifically address technology because it is just one of many tools.  On the other hand, some group members argued that technology is here to stay and we need to specify it in our documents because we need teachers to realize that it is a kind of tool that future educators should be using.  There was even some discussion about whether or not technology should be a category by itself.  In the end, we decided that technology does need to be menioned but it should be embedded in the various attributes and their descriptions.  

The other issue that was brought up after the presentations was that of personal skills.  As educators we all know that building personal relationships with our students and the community around us, is a vital piece to student success.  We determined after some discussion, that a 6th group needed to form and research the importance of personal skills as they apply to the teaching world.  The following meeting would include a report from this new group and a group discussion on our combined research as a whole document. 

Back to the Blog

It's been awhile since I've blogged anything on here, but I just got over the latest hurdle in the action research project of the euducator for the future so I thought I would take a moment and reflect on where we've come from in the past couple months.  What I thought was going to be an easy action research project has really turned into quite a beast. As the action plan originally posted had planned our research has led us to 5 separate categories that we feel define the educator of the future:

·         Academically Prepared – Know the content

·         Skilled Assessors – Be able to effectively design and utilize formative and summative assessments (i.e. not just exams/tests)

·         Critical and Innovative Thinker – Model higher order thinking in the classroom and beyond

·         Adaptable – Be willing to take risks in the classroom as well as adapt to the changing needs of 21^st century learners (this has a strong focus on technological tools)

·         Teachers as Designers  - Design lessons in the way that promotes the desire of learning

Each member of the design team was given the opportunity to pick which category they would like to research.  Myself and 4 other members chose the "Teachers as Designers" group.  Honestly, I figured this would be the easiest for me since I work in the classroom every day and I love designing engaging lessons.  I had no idea how much I would learn from this little assignment.  We were given an hour long brainstorming time to discuss where we would like to focus each of our research.  After considering our prior readings and preliminary research we each decided to take one of the following categoies: Impact of Constructivism on 21st Century Learning, Current Brain Research as it Relates to Student Learning, Project-Based Learning (PBL), Current Practices at Our School.  My assigned topic was the impact of constructivism andI set out to reseach the likes of Dewey and Co.  Our research proved lengthy and our next meeting as a subgroup proved to be just as lenghthy.  We each came back with plenty of research.  I discovered how constructivism really is the basis for most of the popular 21st century teaching models.  Another member found brain research to prove that our brains are wired in a way that causes us to learn better if there is a "discovery" process invovled.  The member researching PBL connected her research to constructivism and displayed effective methods of using PBL in classrooms today.  Finally, our principal showed data she had collected on where many of our middle school teachers fall on the continium between constructivism and traditionalism.  We each had a lot to say so after our very lenghthy 3 hour meeting we concluded to set-up a  google power point presentation so that we could each polish up our research and confine it to 2-3 slides each to present to the district design team.  Up next in the next blog.... the presentation and design team feedback.