Thursday, 14 July 2016

What do you consider to be the most important skills of the 21st Century?

ITL research considers these to be the most important 21st Century skills:
  • Collaboration
  • Knowledge construction
  • Self-regulation
  • Real-world problem solving /innovations
  • ICT for learning
  • Skilled communication 

After discussing each skills. We were allocated one as a group to create a video. Our skill was Real-world problem solving




When reflecting on these skills for both myself and my students I found myself thinking about how much value I put on these skills in my classroom. When planning I realized that subconsciously I often look for or create activities that centre around these skills. The planning flow-charts we were shown today will definitely help to ensure these activities are higher stage activities. As a school we talk a lot about these skills being the 'soft' skills we want our children to develop. They are embedded in most of our practice and although they may not be assessed and checked off I think our children are beginning to develop a great understanding of these 21st Century skills. One area I have seen a huge improvement on is collaboration amongst children. Traditionally we undertook 'group work' however now that as teachers we have moved into collaborative environments I think the children also more naturally collaborate on tasks. Many tasks we do are collaborative in nature however even when set tasks that are not explicitly collaborative our children still naturally tend to collaborate with peers to complete activities. Moving forward I would like to expand this by creating tasks that have components that are reliant on other group members. I think this will extend my students' collaborative nature by showing them that group discussions are fantastic however to truly work as a team each person/sub-group must do their part. This will then feed naturally into creating environments where skilled communication, real-world problem solving and self-regulation are needed. I will aim to use this as a focus in my first assignment. 

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