A couple years ago I participated in a summer program called
Education to Industry that took teachers to spend the day speaking and working
with local employers. The goal of the
program was to allow teachers to see for themselves opportunities for real
world application of the skills they taught so that teachers could make their instruction
more relevant. Our area has spent years
hiring in staff from other parts of the country rather than recruiting locally,
because our high school and college graduates lack the skills needed to succeed
in industry. Employers were eager to
participate, because it was their opportunity to tell teachers what they needed
from potential new hires so that their candidate pool could improve. We went to almost a dozen different
businesses over the course of several weeks, and I found it very interesting
that all of the contacts said the same thing.
Every employer that we spoke to said that they needed people that could
work in a team to solve problems. Young
people, they told me, were great at finding information, but once they had that
information, they didn’t know what to do with it. The companies all said that no one works
alone any more. The problems they work
to solve are too complex to be tackled by a single individual. Teams need to be able to self-manage. They need to be able to work together to
break down their mission into workable pieces, assign realistic deadlines to
all of the components, assign tasks and roles, and then fulfill those tasks,
roles, and meet both internal and external deadlines.
Having heard that so many times, I became convinced that
problem-solving and collaboration are the most important of the 21st
century skills. If I had to narrow it
down to just one skill, I would say problem-solving, because if you are at
skilled problem solving, you can solve the problem of how to communicate well
and work effectively as a team.
Problem-based learning is an ideal strategy for instilling
these skills in today’s learners, but in order to expose my students to
meaningful problems and give them the time and latitude they need to develop
their own solutions (rather than simply follow the steps that I prescribe for
them), I need to open up their world beyond just what they can see within the
four walls of my classroom. That’s where
my Technology Infusion Plan comes in.
Because I teach Spanish and the ultimate goal of any language is
communication, a problem to overcome would involve using the language to send a
message. In order to be considered
successful, the students would have to receive a response.
Depending on the level and unit being taught, the problem to
overcome could be simple or complex. For
example, beginning students could find memes that use words for a particular
vocabulary theme and then make and share their own digital postcards. If their work is ‘liked’ or ‘shared’, then
they have communicated effectively. I
would grade this on a rubric that considered not only grammar and spelling, but
also the number of memes located, number of memes created, and how many likes,
comments, and shares their own memes received.
At more advanced levels, students can start to seek out
their own problems and solutions. For
example, our campus is closed. Once
students arrive, they cannot leave until the day is over. A lot of my students think that they should
be able to run out to lunch or leave during a study hall, and in many other
parts of the world this is common practice for secondary students. If students identify this as a problem, they
could contact administrators and students in Spain and South America and ask
them to describe their policies, how they were arrived at, and if they have
problems such as contraband arriving at school or truancy. Students might then use that information to
support their request for an open campus when they present it to the local
authorities. Using the internet, it is
reasonable that they could locate appropriate schools, contact them, and expect
at least some responses within a few weeks, whereas sending overseas mail via
the traditional method would have taken months and the project probably couldn’t
have been completed within a single semester. Of course, projects don’t need to
be limited to reading and writing; students could produce informational videos
to attract exchange students, Skype with people pursuing research in the
rainforest, or tailor the projects to their own interests in other ways. These projects would also be graded using a
rubric that considered quality of expression, use of grammar, variety of vocabulary,
and the effectiveness with which they interpreted responses to their
communications.
We truly are fortunate to be living in a time where our
ability to make connections need not be hindered by the county line, or even
our country’s borders.
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