Wow - as always, I get so impatient with my learning curve on new technology stuff. It's taken me WAYY too long to get this post up. So, for the future, I should really be relaxed but more focused about this kind of stuff. Save procrastination for another day .

So, first, an overview:

How would you define web 2.0?
The web now is growing up - evolving, changing. while it's still a great place to find information, it's become a place to share, discuss, and evolve information. The ability to do this with other like-minded folks has increased along with the types of ways to share, discuss and evolve information. What's really cool and requires the closest to a paradigm shift for me is the opportunity and eventual expectation that each person can and does add to the group information learning and exploring. Downside? I wonder if the concept of copyright can get blurred by this sharing of info, and, in part, loss of the original author. The owning of information and 'core' of an idea will, no doubt, change along with the growth of web 2.0


What three important things have you found out about 21st Century learners?
I love the fact that brain neurology confirms that students think and learn very differently than we did/do. How we teach has got to keep up with the changes in how the students learn.
As technology looms larger than ever in our lives, our students need skills that use the technology to their (learning) advantage. Learning how to access information, and then evaluate the quality of that information is important. Then, using that information in a new way(creativity), with other folks ( collaboration) . Folding technology skills into Blooms Revised Taxonomy ( which SO supports the arts!! Hooray!) is an exciting approach to teaching the 21st Century learner.

Name some 21st Century skills and which ones do you think are most important?

Basically, the skill sets seem to be divided into the following groups, :

• Using technology -basic literacy in approaching various fields of knowledge
• Creative and critical thinking - using the information in new and innovative ways
• Communication - working with others to utilize knowledge and share that resulting knowledge clearly with others
• High quality results - the final project/product/ results indicate thoughtfulness beyond simply regurgitating information.

The article found on 21st Century skills found here http://tiny.cc/s36sF , organizes the skills a bit differently -

• Creativity and Innovation
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
• Communication and Collaboration

While all of these aspects are important, my particular loves are in the creative and critical thinking. Seeing and sharing the world with originality are at the core of creating. I want my students to take information - either ideas or art supplies, and step out into new worlds of thinking and ideas.

This takes some internal strength and audacity - but folding, stretching and pulling ideas in new directions is the core of moving forward in our world. This is where the critical thinking and problem solving jump in.

Hand in hand with that vision and problem solving is the ability to communicate ideas, particularly new and unusual ideas, since the idea is nothing if no one understands it.

It's difficult to pry these skills apart - they work together for maximum effectiveness. So yeah, we need all of these, but my favorite are the creative problem solving skills.

Read this article and think about the assignments and assessment tools you have been using? Are you assessing 21st century skills? If so, what has worked well for you in this area? If not, what unit could you most easily change to begin to move your learners to acquiring information that will be remembered long after the test is over.

Wow. This affirms a curricular change I made two years ago. I went from presenting lessons where all the students created similar artworks based on a specific skill set. Now students choose between studios designated loosely by supplies. They define their direction; they push themselves. There's lots of exploration and problem solving happening both in groups and individually. While my preference is that each student primarily work independently, it's surprising to me to see the numbers and frequency with which students work in groups, spontaneously created for various reasons. Each time the class visits, I present a new technique to be added to one or more of the studios. Immediate use of this demo is optional for the students; still, they are exposed to yet another idea or technique, which sometime later they might choose to utilize. The assessment of this style of teaching is something I struggle with since it's difficult to assign a system of objective growth measurement to a class of 20 individuals, many of whom are creating projects unique to the classroom.






I'll tackle these in the next few hours-min's- days, and probably years.