Interesting perspective…the fallacy is that technology-based solutions will transform every aspect of work for the better. In truth, people have to embrace technology for positive change that is approved and endorsed by the reigning status quo. Are public schools ready for this kind of change? Only if the superintendent, the School Board, and the Community are ready to accept that they must change or “die” where “die” represents out-produced, out-worked, out-sourced.

THoughts? Fascinating anyways to read Jay Matthews; I’ve included some of the points that capture the essence of his article for later reflection:

• The Latest Doomed Pedagogical Fad: 21st-Century Skills – washingtonpost.com
  • the latest program teachers are told they cannot live without. It is called 21st-century skills. Education policymakers, press agents and pundits can’t get enough of it.
  • 21st-century skills could improve teaching of the basics, in a report quoted elsewhere on this page.
    However, teachers who say this approach works agree with me that the marketing of the concept has not been entirely honest or wise.
  • Matt Greenwolfe, who teaches this way in Cary, N.C., sent a student’s reaction: “In small groups we would use whiteboards to write down ideas, draw graphs and solve for unknown variables. Using webcams I would take pictures of the whiteboards and post them on the class Web site for everyone to use as a resource. . . . Physics class has helped me look at problems in different ways so I can solve them. If I don’t understand the data when it is presented in one way I am able to ask questions and change it, using a method I can understand.”
  • It takes hard work to teach this stuff, and even harder work, by poorly motivated adolescents, to learn it
  • Great educators tell me that teaching and learning are more about relationships than content, more about asking questions every day of everyone in class than depending on students to soak it up on their own. In our poorest neighborhoods, we still have some of our weakest teachers, either too inexperienced to handle methods like modeling instruction or too cynical to consider 21st-century skills anything more than another doomed fad. There might be a way to turn them around, but if there isn’t, instead of engaged and inspired students, we will have just one more big waste of time.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.