The seventh grade teachers and I are in the process of planning for a 1:1 Tablet PC deployment this fall. When we started identifying all the “non-tech” issues and questions that would need to be addressed, most fell into one of two categories: Policies and Procedures, and Organization. Policies and Procedures includes all the Middle School-specific rules, regulations and responsibilities that accompany using and maintaining a personal computer. Organization encompasses managing files and folders, taking notes with OneNote, keeping track of assignments, and submitting work electronically.

While these are important and necessary facets to a successful implementation, there is another “category” that we must also consider: curriculum. A 1:1 environment affords us the perfect opportunity to reexamine what and how we teach and address the essential question, “Is my classroom a 21st century learning environment?” While the details of this environment will unfold in future posts, as a starting point let us consider these four components of 21st century skills:

• Information Management and Research
• Digital Citizenship
• Communication and Collaboration in a Global World
• Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Design

Incorporating these four elements into our classrooms will go a long way toward ensuring that we are fostering a contemporary learning environment.

Information Management and Research

In a 1:1 program, information access is ubiquitous. Consequently, teaching students to effectively locate, access, and utilize information has never been more paramount. For this to occur, however, requires that we (1) develop/adopt a unified research strategy, (2) extend our students’ toolkit beyond Google, and (3) partner teachers, instructional technology and the library. Together, we need to guide students though explorations of probing questions that are central to our curriculum and require myriad resources to answer.

Digital Citizenship

I’ve touched on this topic before, but students absolutely need to understand their rights and responsibilities as digital citizens. Projects like ProTechT, which several advisories are participating in this year, are invaluable, but with Tablets and the potential to spend more time online, the concept must extend into the very fabric of our daily instruction. We need to create learning opportunities that enable us to join our digital natives in their virtual world; we need to become citizens ourselves.

Communication and Collaboration in a Global World

Blogs and wikis can redefine the concepts of audience and cooperative learning for our students. Through these tools (and others), they have opportunities to reach outside the school community and connect with people from across the country and around the world. Our curriculum needs to foster these connections; working in isolation and creating content for the teacher’s eyes only is no longer sufficient. A few faculty have already moved in this direction; we need to follow their example and look to them for leadership.

Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Design

We have all read Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind and thus should already appreciate the importance of these elements in the classroom. Mobile technology can provide nearly endless outlets for creativity, readily promote critical thinking, and enable students to experience the design process. By creating as opposed to merely consuming, students are better prepared for the challenges that await them in the Conceptual Age. We need to leverage the inking capabilities of the Tablet, our extensive suite of software, and the Web 2.0 tools that are so readily available throughout our curriculum.

A New Conversation

These four points, exemplars of the modern age, need to become part of our 1:1 planning. While we cannot neglect the other aspects of our work, we need to have a new conversation and discuss how the curriculum can support the acquisition of these important skills, and how these skills can become part of an important curriculum. We have the potential to build not just a “laptop program” but create a 21st century learning environment, and this is but the first step….

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Posted: 02|24|08 at 8:36 pm. Filed under: 1:1.
Pinging is currently disabled.