Blog 3: 21st Century Skills

21st century skills consists of communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. These skill sets are highly sought after by today's employers. Therefore it is our duty as educators to help our students develop these skills. Technology is also a large part of today's work environment, and information accumulates at incredible speeds. It seems that technology will continue to become more and more part of our daily lives. As a teacher it is our responsibility to incorporate this into our students lives as much as possible.
It seems that combining 21st century skills and technology can easily go hand in hand. Many of the projects that we have worked on in our 505 class allow for this to happen. The interactive posters on Glogster for example depend on creativity. An individual must be able to create a visually stimulating board in order to keep their audience interested. Blogging is an excellent way for students to work on their communication skills. It allows them to develop ideas through conversations with their peers and instructors who can provide insightful feedback. Useful websites such as Cacoo allow for collaboration to happen on a grand scale. Students will need to work together to develop effective projects. Other sites such as Kidspiration help children with their critical thinking, by allowing them to put their information in a format that they can see and use.
I am glad that I took this course early in my journey towards a teaching license. As I continue taking classes, each time I learn new teaching methods and techniques in a variety of subjects, I will be able to formulate different ways that I can use technology to capitalize on the information. Before this class I was unaware of all of the resources that I had at my disposal. I feel that my classes would have been hindered by my lack on technological insight. I hope that those taking this course will carry with them, what they have learned. If an educator in training doesn't realize it now, they will soon realize that you need all of the help and resources you can get.