Week 2 - Blog Posting #4 - 21st Century Skills & Lifelong Learning

I can't remember exactly what the stat is, but it said that by the time today's students are 38 they will have had 20 or so different jobs or careers, not many of which exist yet ... that is really interesting.  So we are supposed to be teaching skills for jobs that we really don't have too much of a clue about.  Many people are making predictions.  This discussion about 21st century skills is an interesting one.  Different experts weighing in and creating different labels for what they think today's students are going to need for tomorrow.  Take a look at this video that describes 3 steps for teaching 21st century skills in the classroom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yCB4i7GJuM.   Our students will need to be adept at communicating with all different types.  Making useful products by collaborating with a wide variety of multicultural, multilingual, multi-taskers ... where gaming, social networks, texting, IM's and other media and technology is used in a highly creative and interconnected way for a larger context.  Global connections inside a global community to increase global communications ... Hmmn.  How do we get our students ready?  

Related to 21st century skills is the idea of Lifelong Learning.  A video that does a great job of defining lifelong learning is, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh6yd6wfCgU&feature=player_embedded.  One idea that stood out to me, was that if you take 30 minutes a day to learn something you want to master, in 5 years, you can become a world class expert at anything you want to become.  What if we encouraged children starting at the age of 5 to take 5 years to master a new activity.  Then at age 10, take another 5 years to master something else?  Each student would be a master at at least 4 separate things specifically tailored to their unique talents and skill sets.  Wow.  Wouldn't that be amazing?