Tuesday, April 17, 2012

21st Century Learning for 21st Century Jobs

My Econ students have been reading Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat 3.0. Last week we read the chapter about what skills would be needed for the new "middle jobs". This week we started reading chapter 7, which talks about how we learn and prepare in terms of education for those jobs. I draw a box on the board and called it our "school" and asked students to fill it with "classes" that would help prepare them for the 21st century jobs that we had previously discussed. Here is what they came up with:

6 comments:

  1. Love that your students are reading Friedman. Interested in what their thoughts are on his perspective on liberal arts education?

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  2. I love how none of these are disciplinary silos (which, I'm guessing, is how your students experience most of their school days).

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  3. They are reading the liberal arts education in class today with a sub but I'm hoping to have some guest blog posts about it because we are having some REALLY interesting conversations come out of it all.

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  4. Based on the photo, after they generated the concepts, the students were able to identify what they found important in other students' thoughts. That is great. In addition, I see a few "no" statements, which may be even better. That may not be logical, but when someone disagrees, the emotion of that person brings out the intellectual defenses of those that agree. That is what creates passionate debate and discussion. As long as it is kept in an appropriate manner, these exchanges are the most valuable. Nice approach to students leading the educational way.

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  5. Dan Pink is another person to bring into these discussions. He has a good TED Talk on his recent book on Motivation, and his ideas in "A Whole New Mind" carry many of these same themes about the shifting landscape of which skills will become more valuable – essentially the addition of right-brain creative skills to the left-brain analytical skills that have ruled the roost in recent decades.

    Steven Slaughter
    Rosslyn Academy
    Nairobi, Kenya

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  6. I think that is an interesting point to be made. Was at TEDxDes Moines last weekend, and while the theme was "SHIFT", there were several talks on the value of being a "creator" within that shift. One was from Scott McLeod (@mcleod), and allowing students to be creators in the classroom, but another was Jennifer Wachter, an artist who spoke about the idea that we are all artists who create in some way, and then Alex King, who works in the field of creating/engineering solutions to our shortages of critical materials - whether that is creating a new compound or an alternative method. Anymore, I don't think you'll be successful if you aren't a creator in some respect. Thanks Steven, I'll check out the TED talk!

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