Here's basic notes, brainstorming, etc. for our podcast.

 

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Learning and Innovation Skills

Learning and innovation skills increasingly are being recognized as the skills that separate students who are prepared for increasingly complex life and work environments in the 21st century, and those who are not. A focus on creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration is essential to prepare students for the future.

Creativity & Innovation

• Demonstrating originality and inventiveness in work
• Developing, implementing and communicating new ideas to others
• Being open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives
• Acting on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution to the domain in which the innovation occurs

Critical Thinking & Problem Solving

• Exercising sound reasoning in understanding
• Making complex choices and decisions
• Understanding the interconnections among systems
• Identifying and asking significant questions that clarify various points of view and lead to better solutions
• Framing, analyzing and synthesizing information in order to solve problems and answer questions

Communication & Collaboration

• Articulating thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively through speaking and writing
• Demonstrating ability to work effectively with diverse teams
• Exercising flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal
• Assuming shared responsibility for collaborative work

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Podcast Resources

Partnership for 21st Century Skills:  Learning and Innovation Skills. 

http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/route21/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7&Itemid=4           

1.   Creativity & Innovation

 

2. Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
   1. Critical and Creative Thinking – Bloom’s Taxonomy

http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic69.htm

http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/cels/el4.html

http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/6/cu11.html

http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/6/cu11.html     

http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/6/cu11.html

 

3. Communication & Collaboration

a.     Children and Electronic Media, vol 18 no 1, Spring 2008

http://www.futureofchildren.org/pubs-info2825/pubs-info_show.htm?doc_id=674322

b.     Writing, Technology, & Teens - April 24, 2008

      http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/prof/community/PIP_Writing_Report_FINAL.pdf

c.     OMG! Electronic Communication Isn’t ‘Writing’, Teens Say  - Joan Oleck, excerpt from “School Library Journal” April 2008

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6556136.html?industryid=47060

d.     Teen Audience Profile , Health Communication Unit – Jodi Thesenvitz, University of Toronto

http://www.thcu.ca/infoandresources/teensaudienceprofile.htm     

 

 

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Podcast Scripts

Creativity & Innovation

Music Intro,

 

Hello. This podcast series was produced in September 2008 by myself, Jerry Piette, Bob Townsend, and Jeff Coburn of the Glover Community School 21^st Century team.  We will be addressing the section of The Partnership for 21st Century Skills – entitled -  Learning and Innovation Skills. 

 

This 3 part series will address: Creativity & Innovation; Critical Thinking & Problem Solving; and Communication & Collaboration.

 

Part One: Creativity & Innovation

In researching this topic, it didn’t take me long before I found myself flooded with many different viewpoints of how important creativity and innovation are in the classroom, work place, and life itself.  Along with these different opinions of what creativity and innovation are, there also exist as many approaches of how to develop creativity and innovation in students. 

 

So where do I begin?  I guess by first trying to define creativity and innovation.  Not an easy task.  However, the description provided by Linda Naiman, founder of Creativity at Work (http://www.creativityatwork.com/articlesContent/whatis.htm), is one description I like. She says that creativity is the “act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality.” She goes further to state that – “If you have ideas, but don’t act on them, you are imaginative but not creative.”  It is the process of acting on those ideas is where innovation comes in.

 

As a history teacher, I say, hey - creativity and innovation are not new in the American experience.  They have been the backbone of America’s emergence as a world power.  Our history textbooks are filled with creative people and their innovative achievements.  Their inventions and discoveries are at times even glorified   What I find missing is the journey these people had to take to reach success.  What some would call the “creative process”.  So if creativity and innovation have been such a vital part of our history, why is there such an emphasis on integrating them within today’s classroom?   Well, the answer is quite simple - the global economy. Thomas Friedman’s best-seller, The World is Flat, basically states that the playing field is expanding rapidly and if the United States wants to remain a dominant player, its future lies in its educational system. “There is a wave of anxiety out there, … a lot of traditional boundaries are being eliminated, competition is much more intense. And, gosh, I wonder if my kids are going to live as well as me.” (http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=7022)

 

So how does creativity and innovation become a part of a child’s educational experience?  Some of the literature on the topic suggests that it isn’t so much what we teach but how we teach it.  Jim Moulton purposes that the emphasis should be on what he calls -  Any-Century Skills.  Skills where using scissors as well as computers should be in balance. “They must also be able to select the right tool for the job and be so well informed about current possibilities that they can select the best one for the current job.” (http://www.edutopia.org/twenty-first-century-skills-any-century-skills)

 

Creativity expert, Teresa Amiable, http://www.his.com/~pshapiro/growing.up.html simply suggests that adults can promote creativity in children by engaging in creative behavior themselves. Students imitate surrounding adults. So if kids see creative behavior at home and at school, they'll “internalize the creative approach within their thinking patterns.” I can relate with this statement for creativity and innovation were both a part of my daily life growing up on a dairy farm. Hands-on learning was the norm in my farm life experience. Therefore, school with its rigid structure made the learning process for me a chore – pun intended.   The document, The 6 Myths of Creativity (http://www.fastcompany.com/node/51559/print), says it well:  “… all of us are creative and tapping into that creativity enhances the learning experience.  It’s quite simple, when we enjoy something, we are most likely to remember it.”

 

So I close section one with some remarks made recently by my 8 year old after a little wood-working in our garage.

 

Critical Thinking & Problem Solving

 I’m Bob Townsend and this is the 2^nd of a three part series entitled Learning and Innovation Skills

 

 

Critical Thinking is the left-brain counterpart to the creative thinking of our right brain.  It is described as including the skills of comparison, classification, sequencing, cause/effect, patterning, webbing, analogies, deductive and inductive reasoning, forecasting, planning, hypothesizing and critiquing.[i]”. “Creative thinking is generally involved with the creation or generation of ideas, processes, experiences or objects; while critical thinking is concerned with their evaluation.[ii]” Critical thinking is “the process of determining the authenticity, accuracy and worth of information or knowledge claims.”

 

[iii]

 

Problem Solving is the process that elicits any type of thinking.  Life itself can be considered as just a series of problem solving experiences.  We are confronted in everyday activities with problems from the moment we are born.  Some of our early problems are conveniently solved by our reflexes  (nursing, crying) but we soon learn that we can control our lives and solve our problems.  In doing so we begin to think critically; “if I smile at adults they will smile back and take care of me.”

 

            Critical Thinking and Problem Solving are nothing new in the process of education. We have always professed that we want students to be able to think critically and solve problems.  Mathematics and Science were put into a classical education to emphasize these processes more.  Benjamin Franklin urged that general understanding was to be achieved by a knowledge of history and the diligent study of mathematics and logic, …it required a well disciplined, well stocked mind [iv]What seems to have changed over the years is the emphasis that we place on teaching these skills and subjects.

 

            At the beginning of my career as a teacher 40 years ago William Glasser and other educational leaders were calling for a change from the current teaching methods. In response to the shock of Sputnik it had been believed our educational system was failing. Elementary students in the 1950’s & 60’s were given more facts to learn.  Students were seen as vessels to be filled to the brim with as much information as possible.  Alternatively Glasser called for education to be activities in which children “learn that they have a responsibility for finding the best alternatives to a series of difficult problems, problems they themselves help to pose”[v] Giving students the mental tools to deal effectively with new situations would enable them to handle the changing world around them.

 

            I find it interesting that we have come back to this way of thinking now as a new way of response to the political demands that students “learn the basics”.  If we have learned anything over the years it is that there are far to many things discovered daily for us to know it all.  We need to have skills that enable us to think critically and solve problems as they occur in our lives. As Beyth-Marom writes “Thinking skills are necessary in a society characterized by rapid change, many alternatives of actions, and numerous individual and collective choices and decisions.”

[vi]

 

            How then do we teach students to think critically in the 21^st Century?  Sadly there is no clear agreement.  Studies disagree on whether infused programs work better than those taught separately.  Both discovery learning and the direct teaching of thinking skills show gains but more importantly the most significant factors seem to be the skills of the teacher in creating an encouraging classroom environment and the time and school wide commitment devoted to the teaching of thinking skills.[vii] 

Communication & Collaboration

Hi, I’m Jeff Coburn, and welcome to part three in a series of podcasts focusing on 21^st century learning skills, produced in September of 2008.  In this part, we will be looking at communication and collaboration skills, defined loosely as how students articulate themselves, how they work in diverse groups, and how they work toward a common goal.

In preparing for this podcast, a few facts jumped out at me.

In 2001, 99% of teens used the Internet

In 2003, 85% of teens age 12-17 engaged in some form of electronic communication (like e-mail or instant messanging), and 36-39% of teens talked on a cell phone or text their friends on a daily basis.

However, the same research showed that

60% of teens did not think of these electronic texts as “writing” while

73% of teens said their personal electronic communications had no impact on the writing they do for school,

In this day and age where teenagers are communicating electronically all the time, it seems like there is a large disconnect between how kids are talking out of school and how they are working in school.  To get a better idea of what students think, I went right to the source and interviewed a couple of students.  Here’s pieces from that conversation.

INTERVIEW

An interesting fact in the conversation is that, at first, the girls don’t really see electronic communication as helpful for schoolwork (even though I know both have participated in electronic-based school projects.)  However, after more thought, they came up with several ideas for classroom projects.

A couple of interesting facts came up after the interview was over.  Both girls said that they usually multitask at home but rarely do at school; interestingly enough, all the adults in the room said they rarely multitask ever.  It makes me wonder if most educators don’t provide opportunities for multitasking in school, even though many kids could handle it, because we ourselves don’t think that way.  Another interesting fact was that both girls said they spend between 1-4 hours daily online but rarely read for pleasure at home.  It seems to me that if they’re online, chances are they are reading;  they just don’t equate reading e-mail and electronic text as “real”reading.

I hope this podcast gave you an opportunity to think about how communication and collaboration affects students we’re working with.  To view links to research I used for this show, check out gloverschool.pbwiki.com and the homepage for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills at www.21stcenturyskills.org. Make sure you also check out the other podcasts in this series produced by myself, Jerry Piette, and Bob Townsend from Glover Community School.  Thanks for listening!