Three Blogs on Skills for 21st Century Learning and Teaching

Blog 1: Around the Corner

I found this to be an excellent blog that teachers can use if they want to gather information on 21^st century skills or ideas for teaching and learning. The blog’s author Miguel Guhlin does a wonderful job providing creative ideas, skills or tools that can be used such as Evernote and Postach.io to build portfolios and share with other teachers. The tools he promotes to use sharing are ideal for collaboration to occur with students and teachers developing countless professional learning opportunities.  

The particular link I have provided shows an example of one his most recent blog posts that explore writing ideas that teachers can use through blended learning. I enjoyed the examples that Miguel provided and external links and resources for having students work on writing about zombies.

Image Source: John Spencer, Education Rethink blog

Immediately thought it was a clever and motivating activity that would encourage students to write and be creative. Also, the tactics Miguel shares about having students publish their work online allows for longevity and more appreciation of their work should be applied. This is a much better approach for students submitting a physical copy of their writing that eventually can get thrown out in a short time frame. Which leads me to wonder is how much more value and appreciation will students have in their work if they are able to publish it online to share with others? Should this be a shift we need to start focusing more in schools?

Blog 2: Education rethink(Write about)

The visuals that are used for this blog caught my eye and it got me interested in writing. The author of the blog John Spencer tackles many different topics about education and the classroom but the thing I enjoyed the most was his ‘Write About’ ideas. I really liked how the visuals accentuate a topic and can definitely encourage the weakest writers to want to pick up a pencil and start writing.

Image Source: John Spencer, Education Rethink blog

I think the Write About visuals is great blended learning tactic. Now that I have discovered them I will look forward to using them in writing exercise for my students. It is so easy to have simple sessions of quick writes where I put John’s images and topics on my smart board and have my students write. What could make this even more impactful for a writing session is having all of the students do their writing on computers to be shared and published with their peers. So If I choose a topic such as ‘You get to invent a new class, write the course description’ – then as a teacher I would be really enthusiastic of providing opportunities for my students to share their ideas and work with each other. I think with a topic like that students would be very enthusiastic to share their creative ideas. I can find students can take more pride in their work if they are given opportunities to share that goes beyond their classroom walls.

Blog 3: The Thinking Stick

Jeff Utecht blog is a really neat site that has various postings about 21^st century tools and skills that can be used in education. For instance, the post I found intriguing is having the class replace their textbooks by creating a digital textbook using a app called Flipboard. The teacher can create class specific and current content that can be used and accessed by all students as an online class textbook or magazine.

image source: https://flipboard.com/

What I also found intriguing about this is having the students become curators of the content by being able to add content or articles to the class textbook. Allowing students to become contributors to others learning is what is essential to developing leaders in your classroom. I really think that area is important for teachers to find ways and develop.  

Once students setup their own account in conjunction with the classroom account they can add content and share content with other class members.

I like this idea and think it’s a great 21^st century tool that can because it allows students to share articles they find interesting with each other or be able to add it to the digital textbook on Flipboard.

I would like to use something like this that would replace the nelson literacy books that might be used for certain subjects and instead allow my students to find content they would be more interested in or that could be relevant to something happening locally or globally. This is a great tool that can combine social media and academics into learning.