21st Century skills Week # 6

I myself are a supporter of encorporating 21st century skills into the teaching curriculum. In today's world you simply cannot compete if you cannot do such a simple thing as use a computer, for example. The difference between being able to use it and not is all the difference between being employed and not. Two years ago my mother newer even turned on a computer, never mind use it. Now in her job, (she works for a chemical company) she has to use it to do shipping or ordering. She uses internet and since she has trouble with her english, she found a website that translates English to Polish. She has a job, and these days it is hard to find one. Just to think that two years ago she could not type, she could not use the internet, I had to teach her everything from scratch, even how to turn on a computer.

The article "21st Century Skills, Will Our Students be Prepared," states that our life is transformed by technology, putting pressure on students to constantly change, and adapt. I myself found the use of technology necessary to get good grades in school. I went beyond just finding links with practice tests and assignments. For my organic chemistry class, which I have retaken, I found website that offers unlimited practice problems involving interpreting spectrum analysis of different compound. After two hours and fifty problems down the road I was able to solve every problem on the intermediate level. I aced the exam and got half the points on the test from interpreting organic spectra which killed me when I took it previously. I studied much harder previously, but only had access to a few problems from the book which I more memorized than was able to learn to interpret them.

In the articel called "The Latest Doomed Pedagogical FAD" The author is concerned about 21st century skills, because his personal experience wasn't a good one. He got a good grade despite learning nothing. My guess is that his group did all the work, and he was too preoccupied with his love life to put his head in the game, but since it was a group project he passed. I think that even with a group project everyone in the group has to do an assigned part, and be responsible for a specific part of the project. If one person in the group does all of the work then working cooperatively with others certainly does't work. It has to be enforced in a smart way in which even if it is a group project, everyone will get his own grade, or situations like this one will take place.

Finally I would like to say that article "Critical Thinking, You need Knowledge" does not give a good comparison to the situation that takes place today. The experiment in which students bake cookies to learn math, is not the same as teaching them to use a computer to do chemistry problems. I believe that in today's world 21st century skills and knowing them are a must, and I believe that they are a key to the future.