TIME: How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century

[Graham Donaldson]

Ok, as promised, here are my answers:

1. A global student is one who is well versed in technology and language, and knows how to interact with others. They must be creative, be able to solve problems, and combine the skills they know to solve these problems. They cannot be sitting through lectures all day; there must be interactive class discussion and/or debates on a topic.
   
   
2. I agree that most schools are not in the 21st century enough. Teaching styles and lessons are outdated, and they need to be updated. I agree that foreign languages will be extremely critical for any business (quote-unquote “desk job”) occupation, and that students must be trained to quickly and accurately research and identify information that is good or bad, and use it and compile it into a presentation that is engaging and appropriate, or a report that is well-written and thorough.
   
   
3. This one I couldn't (and still can't) think of anything for, but if I do, I'll post it.
   
   
4. I feel like PHHS (my high school) is on the way to being a 21st-century school. Having the laptops (the district gave out Sony laptops to every student and teacher, which comes to around probably 2,000 people) are a boost, but not enough teachers using them to their full potential. Some teachers do in-class projects on them, which is good. But the majority of the classes where they can be used (history, english, science), teachers just lecture and we take notes on them- exactly what we would do with pen and paper.
   
   
5. Since I felt there was not enough group work and career-orieented classes, I took some ideas from a private high school I applied to and used them for my idea. Our school at the present has structured 8-period days where every day is the same. Instead, I suggested (or am suggesting) that they modify the schedule so not every class meets every day, leaving a certain afternoon (say Wednesday) open so that students can sign up for a "elective" class which they have to take, but they can choose what they take. You might have business classes, where students would be in groups and have to create, name, and organize a fictional company selling, say, a car. They would design the product, in this case the car, figure out how it will be made, and also decide general things on how the company is run, like offices, utilties, salaries, the works. Students would then at the end of the term present the projects to the teacher for a grade. You could also have engineering classes (of course I was thinking of FIRST here), where you would do projects like building trebuchets, and, during build season, a robot! You get my drift.
   
   
6. As for whether or not participating in FIRST makes us more global students, makes us more 21st-century students, I say a resounding YES! IMHO, if you cannot agree that being on a FIRST team, particularly during build season and competitions, makes you:
   

   Originally Posted by TIME

   • Think ouside the box
   • Research well and identify good and bad info (Look at CD- who hasn't gone on and looked for an answer at some point?)
   • Develop good people skills
   • Creatively solve problems by bridging knowledge from different areas

   Among other things, well then, your experience in FIRST has been much different than mine.

Now that I've posted my opinion, what does the rest of CD think?

[Conor Ryan]

I'm a big fan of TIME, it was an interesting article to read (could of used a cooler cover though)

1. What do you think is a global student (after reading the article)?
   • I attended an International Elementary School in England for 3 years (it's not as different as they say) other than that, I'm involved with FIRST, I worked in a Science Lab, I Science and Technology classes are my best subjects, I am a global student. I am awful when it comes to languages, but you can blame the school system with not introducing it early enough (it didn't start seriously for me until 7th grade).
2. What do you agree with in the article?
   • The idea of Portable Skills - learning skills that can be applied in so many different ways, than again there is nothing new about it, people are always doing it.
   • ETS's idea of a technology/communication skills standardized test, lets hope they get it right and college's then demand it. Technology/Communication capability is as much of a skill as being able to comprehend Shakespeare, understand Fermat's last theorem, know what the Bergeron effect is. The SAT's or ACT's don't test that, I think it should.
3. What do you disagree with?
   • The idea that people read differently now than they did before, they are over analyzing the situation here, every generation has faced the problem of irrelevant information, we just happen to have a lot more of it than our parents did.
   • Math and Reading classes are needed, no more or no less than they currently are, however classes like Technical Writing/Reading, or Applied Mathematics may make more sense at higher levels.
4. What does your school do to make you a 21st century student?
   • People are scared of change, the idea of a "Learning 2.0" system scares the pants off of any Board of Education, what they need is development. Get it down to a science, and gradually grow it. Hopefully it'll evolve.
   • A few years ago we had a major initiative to give every student a laptop, they didn't market the idea as well as they could of, and in the end voters were too scared of it (mostly because they didn't realize how cheap it really was, less than 1% of the proposed budget)
   • Schools need more software on the computers they already have so they can stop students from exploiting the ability of the Internet to not learn what they should be learning.
   • Some genius kids are gonna get together and put all the answers to any open-source education worksheets online somewhere, it's gonna be a problem (see above comment).
5. My teacher decided today that we would turn this idea into a project, and propose ideas to make our school more 21st-century. We're going to work on them occasionally throughout the year, and then at the end of the year, she wants to present them to the administration. What would you guys do to improve your school?
   • Ok, so everyone in school has heard about bringing technology into the classroom, as students you and I know where teachers tend to go wrong with bringing it into the classroom, do something about it.
   • Try to get more options of languages to younger kids, all elementary students in my school take Spanish and English, but what about French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Portuguese these are all languages that are in the world in major proportions, what about them too? Tomorrow's world will have the same problem we face, we don't speak enough of the same languages.

[Eric W. Jones]

I'd like to apologize for my previous post. I was rude. It was an interesting article, and I shouldn't have given you any flak for your wording. You have no need to apologize.