The Project 21st Century Initiative and What it Means for YOU!!

As I read through the P21 website, I felt that it was a worthwhile effort.    Please let me try and explain.

My overall impression of the website was that it really was a good idea.  The idea behind preparing students to be ready for the 21st century is something that national corporations have been asking for quite some time.  My favorite aspect of the P21 philosophy is the "4 Cs" approach to learning.  This approach is used to develop curriculum that focuses on the skills of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.  For most teachers, if a student develops these skills to a proficient level while in their classroom, the teacher will have done a great job.  This is especially true when you look at the desired student outcomes of the program, specifically life skills, learning skills, technology skills and proficiency in the core subjects (the 3 "Rs").

As I consider this approach to educating our students, I think it all looks really great on paper.  It makes perfect sense to educate our children with the intention of preparing them for successful careers.  However, there are a couple of potential pitfalls that I see that could prove difficult to overcome.

1. NCLB-  The No Child Left Behind initiative has put a premium on standardized testing, most of which is based on the core subjects, including math and science and language arts.  Of these three testing areas, all rely somewhat heavily on reading comprehension and thinking skills.  When you consider it that way, it seems that the P21 would be beneficial.  My concern would be in whether teachers would have enough faith in the P21 initiative programming to be willing to use it as a replacement for their NCLB preparations.  It would make sense to do so, but the potential for backfiring is certainly there.

2.  Expense- While it is obvious that there are many major backers of this program (including Apple, HP,Oracle and Verizon just to name a few), it still costs money to run a program like this.  In addition to training for teachers, the technology necessary to make this program worthwhile to students is a factor that schools will have to consider when looking into this program.  I am curious to know how much a school would have to put out in order to be a part of the program.

As teachers and students, the implications for such a program are real.  This is the direction education is going, should be going, and the sooner it happens the better.  This style of learning flies in the face of traditional education in all but the most advanced classrooms and best teachers.  Still, in order to best prepare our students, this needs to happen.

How to Use a Blog in My Classroom

I struggled with this idea for several days.  As a special education teacher, my initial instinct is to look at the idea of using blogs in the classroom as a "extended learning" tool rather than a "meat and potatoes" tool that has become the center of what I do for my students.
One idea that I thought of as I was playing with the aggregator sites is to have the students set up their own readers that would feed the blogs about topics they were interested in.  That way, if we had some down time, they could log into their RSS feeds and do some reading on a topic that is interesting to them.  It would be great reading practice, it manages itself by constantly updating, an because it is always changing yet stays on the same topic, the students will never get bored with it (at least in theory)

The Challenges of Special Education

We all know that working in the special education setting can be difficult at times.  As a special education teacher with a limited budget, I would like some guidance on how to appropriate my minimal funds.  My current situation is as follows:

- chalk board
- overhead projector
- small white boards (2 ft by 1 ft boards)
- bank of 4 computers with internet access and word processing capability

My first inclination is to ask for a media projector so that I can present things to my students in a more engaging and interactive way.  Is this a waste of funds?  I would appreciate and ideas anyone has.