21st Century Learning: An Outline for Success

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Educators who seek to broaden their 21st Century skill set often wish for a roadmap to guide them through the professional growth maze of the connected world.

Check out Back-to-School Quiz: Skills Every 21st-Century Teacher Should Know by Susan Lucille Davis (@SuluDavis) at the Getting Smart blog. Quiz-takers will get a clear  sense of where they are located on the connected learning continuum and what personal learning needs to take place.

Today’s students are effortlessly digital, but they often lack organizational and judgment skills to help them establish themselves as stalwart learners. On the other hand, we adults are fairly good with organization and judgment, yet most us need to strengthen the digital side of our skills and understand how to teach in a connected and information-rich world. Davis outlines learning steps, offers specific resources, and there you have it — a roadmap.

Choose one item, such as narrowing a search by date or country, a task that will make an enormous difference in the quality of student Google searches but takes moments to master. And this is only one of her suggestions.

To be sure, Back-to-School Quiz: Skills Every 21st-Century Teacher Should Know also suggests web 2.0 sites to explore, a TED lecture to watch, and apps to learn — activities that take more time. Yet what makes this blog post so compelling is how Davis includes something for everyone — the beginner, the middler, and the most accomplished 21st Century learner — while also admitting that she, too has lots to figure out.