21st Century Skills

For my masters class, I visited an awesome website http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ dedicated to helping teachers and administration prepare students to be successful in the 21st century. This website is user friendly and offers many helpful resources. Since I was a first time user, I navigated around the FAQ's and learned what the site has to offer and who supports this type of integration of such powerful 21st century skills for education. This site offers videos of different ways to implement 21st century skills into a classroom and resources that meet standards for various subject content. In addition, if you sign up (which is free), you can blog with other teachers and the actual site. These are just a few of the features that stood out on this educational site dedicated to preparing our students for a successful future.

I did not find any major flaws with this site, and was impressed with all the user-friendly charts and research developed to show foundation in the success of this program. While navigating through this site, I found an article about Ohio attempting to get on board with teaching more 21st century skills. Since I teach in Ohio, I was intrigued with the article and impressed with the Governor starting to understand the need for change in our school systems. As a contemporary educator, it is my job to implement technology into my classroom and let the students take ownership in their learning so that they develop proper skills needed for success in the workplace.

Blogging in PE

Hello, I am a elementary Physical Education Teacher (K-5) in Northeast, Ohio). Here are some thoughts about the positive effects blogging might have in Physical Education.

In Physical Education, I feel I can use a student blog for reflection of couse material. For example, throughout a sports unit, I could have the students blog at home or during student assist time to reflect on what they have learned individually, and as a team. A PE blog would allow students the freedom to share the positives and negatives of a unit, and reflect upon the skills they have learned. Most of the time in class, only a few students get to reflect on the lesson, during our closure. I do not call on every student at the end of class, because most of my class sizes are 25 or more. However, if I had the students blog, I would be able to take the time and read all of their posts and feelings. In addition, using this technology tool would give me new insight on improvements that I can make in my unit, and maybe even improve on my teaching style.