December, 2011-January, 2012

Culver City Unified School District strives to ensure that all of our students are prepared to be global citizens in the 21st Century. Much has been written about schools, teaching and learning for the 21st Century. Phil Schlechty, author of Schools for the 21st Century (1990), notes “ the civic, intellectual, and workplace demands of the new century, will require that all students can read, write and cipher…think and solve problems…draw upon a rich vocabulary based on a deep understanding of language and the human condition” (1990). Mike Schmocker in Focus reminds us that effective teaching and effective lessons: how we teach, what we teach, and authentic literacy (reading, writing and talking) are the keys to ensuring that all students are prepared for the 21st Century.

 

Ian Jukes—Founder of the 21st Century Fluency Project has a mission in life…to ensure that children are properly prepared for their future. He asks many interesting questions such as How has the world of work changed? How is it likely to change in the future? What are the new thinking skills workers will require? How must we shift instruction to ensure we are equipping our students with these skills? What are the implications for teaching, learning and assessment in the new digital landscape?

“Today’s world is not the world we grew up in; and today’s world is certainly not the world our children will live in. Because of the dramatic changes our world has undergone, today’s digital kids are not the students our schools were designed for; our students are not the students today’s teachers were trained to teach.” Ian Jukes, January 2009

 

At a recent conference that I attended Mr. Jukes stated the following facts:

Teens Spend:

This digital bombardment is changing the brain and increasing students’ ability to process material visually. It is changing the way we need to teach. Students today are much more visual learners due to all the visual input they get daily. Students also process information very quickly.

 

We have a highly visual generation with highly developed visual skills. Research has shown that with no visual content, students only remember 10% of the content 24 hours later. If an image is added to the content, 65% of the same content is remembered 24 hours later.

 

Digital learners, also known as “digital natives,” prefer processing pictures, sounds, color and video before text. Many educators prefer to provide text before pictures, sounds and video. Digital learners prefer to network simultaneously with many others. Many educators prefer students to work independently before they network with others. Digital learners prefer learning “just in time,” while many educators prefer teaching “just in case.” Educators say you have to learn this “just in case” it will be on an exam or you may want to become an engineer, a historian or a writer. Digital natives want to gain an understanding of what they need to know, but they want to acquire these “just in time” to play a new game, play the piano, fix a bike or something else that they don’t know how to do. Learning must be relevant to them.

 

According to Mr. Jukes, the problem with education is TTWWADI or “that’s the way we have always done it.” Whether it is the length of the school day, the length of the school year, the bell system, the lecture teaching style, TTWWADI is the terminology used by some educators. In Culver City Unified School District, we are providing our teachers with important and relevant professional development aimed to increase effective teaching and learning and up-to-date technology in the classroom to address the needs of our digital natives.

 

As we examine our educational system, we need to realize that as Michael Fullan states, “Change is a process.” Change does not happen overnight, but in order for us to prepare our students to be successful global citizens who live and work in the 21st Century, we need to examine the world of education and prepare our students to meet the challenges and new realities of the 21st Century. Jim Collins in From Good to Great states “The real path to greatness, it turns out, requires simplicity and diligence. It requires clarity, not instant illumination. It demands each of us to focus on what is vital—and to eliminate all of the extraneous distractions.” In Culver City Unified School District, we focus on the essentials—our students will be prepared for the 21st Century.