The Four Cs: Learning in the 21st Century

Forgive me for jumping around a bit, but I find this topic  energizing and there's a lot to think about!  I'll try to be as organized as possible, but this post comes with a warning:  possible jumbled thoughts ahead...

As I was reading An Educator's Guide to the "Four Cs" http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/A-Guide-to-Four-Cs.pdf
problem-based learning came to mind.  I've tried a few pbl projects and I realize now on my last project that I didn't utilize tech tools well enough for us to really communicate all the various ideas and solutions my students came up with.  The project was to create a presentation for our school board either arguing for or against our district's current athletic eligibility requirements. We did view all the presentations but it would have been helpful to have one place to hold them all, so my students could have viewed them multiple times, and not just at the end. We critiqued the presentations, pointing out what we liked about each presentation and giving helpful hints, but we used pen and paper.  It would be great for next year's class to have copies of this, so if it was all done online it's easy to archive.  Anyways I just think pbl is perfect for addressing the "Four Cs" and I need to work on my curriculum this summer to fit more in.  One issue I have at my school is I teach different classes/curriculum almost every year, so I try to be reflective but then I am moving on to the next thing.  Of course there's overlap (now it's all skills-based) but I want to have a good grasp of the curriculum to see how the "Four Cs" skills can fit in. I've been teaching for a long time and I hate to say it because it's such a cliche, but this approach is a paradigm shift for the older teacher. It's not how I was taught and it's not how I taught for the first 24 years of my career. I have to be really intentional in my practice. This quote sums up the approach I need to have at the forefront of my teaching:

When we think about bringing the 4 C’s into our classroom, we don’t need to “add” a thing. The best way to help students master these skills is to change HOW we teach and learn in our classrooms. It is the process of learning, not the content of learning, that addresses the 4 C’s.
http://web.tech4learning.com/blog-0/bid/45149/The-21st-century-classroom-where-the-3-R-s-meet-the-4-C-s

I totally buy in to these ideas because these skills help our classrooms be fun and creative spaces.  Places where kids can feel free to make mistakes and try new things.  I know I sound like a cheerleader but the "Four Cs" are exciting!  

These skills and strategies also support cooperative learning, a methodology I've studied and used in my classes the last 6-7 years.  CL basically is a way of structuring positive interdependence so that students are truly collaborative in their work to accomplish shared goals.  I like CL because there's an emphasis on social skills - there's a learning objective and a social skills objective for every lesson.  Students' feedback has been mostly positive and when I see students a year later or so they tell me they feel better prepared to work with others.  Here's a link to some of the basic ideas behind cooperative learning:
http://www.co-operation.org/what-is-cooperative-learning/

Another document that was so helpful and interesting is the 21st Century Skills Map for English:
http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/21st_century_skills_english_map.pdf.  This document is the result of a collaboration with the NCTE and gives teachers examples of how the skills can be integrated into English lessons.  They have taken each of the Four Cs and provided specific tasks, incorporating technology, with outcomes for various grade levels. This is so necessary, many of us learn by examples, and it can also save educators time.  Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, we can look at these examples and go from there. As I read some of the examples I thought this is totally do-able; again it's just a bit of a different way of thinking and organizing my lessons.  But it's all exciting stuff, engaging and really gets students involved in critical thinking and collaborative activities.

  

I'm dying to start a book discussion group in my department, if not in my school.  I love Heidi Hayes Jacobs, she's written numerous books on teaching reading and I love her approach.  I want to either use this book above for the study group, or another one:



This is the book Doug mentioned in his Active Learning post last week.  I ordered it from Amazon and oh gosh, it looks like a good one.  Again so helpful, with specific examples and objectives for teachers.  Thanks Doug!

(I also need to learn how to put text next to an image. I've gotta get one of my students to show me how to do that ☺ .)

Anyways I'm excited to dive deeper into the Four Cs in the coming weeks.  And sorry, if you read this far, I truly am all over the place!