Whether it’s recommending a new show to watch or automatically buying you tickets to see your favorite band, AI is getting scary smart scary fast. It’s even making its way into 21st century education and being used in K-12 schools and higher education across the world. So, what does that mean, how can we prepare, and why is this significant?
As educators, we strive to provide our students with the best foundation for success. But, more importantly, we seek to impart skills that students can tap into throughout their academic and professional careers. The days of rote memorization are long gone. Now, students must learn how to ask the hard questions, solve difficult problems, and be creative.
Teachers get a lot of credit for molding Future Ready students, but it’s oftentimes the administrators who work tirelessly to provide teachers with whatever they need to help students excel. The right leadership approach, style, and team can go a long way in creating an innovative school and has an invaluable effect on preparing children for the future.
Every student has different skill sets, different strong points, and, as we all know, also varied weaknesses. Some learn more quickly and might prefer visual lessons, while others require hands-on experience and maybe more than one attempt to master a concept. Luckily, in the 21st century, there is plenty of technology to help close this gap and level the playing field.
Have you ever heard the phrase “bucking the trend?” It’s usually used when something in particular has been the status quo for a number of years and a group of dedicated individuals decides that they want to be a part of it instead of watching from the sidelines. When it comes to the number of girls who pursue CS careers, there’s always more we can do.
Proponents of STEM education generally believe that hands-on, practical and in-depth learning should really begin taking place during a student’s high school years. We believe, however, that it can start earlier than that—like, much earlier. Who’s to say that young children cannot be exposed to the same kinds of experiential learning as older students?
It’s time to replace pencils and notebooks with programmable robots and problem-solving courses that focus on interactively developing an unrelenting desire to improve creativity and inquiry-based knowhow. Strategies tend to differ as there are lots of different considerations to take into account, like grade level, affordability and other things.
Back in December, President Obama proposed and helped pass this Every Student Succeeds Act. A more modern version of the No Child Left Behind initiative, the ESSA will aim to ensure that every K-12 student in the United States has equal access to the latest and greatest in learning opportunities and crucial STEM tools every time they step in the classroom.
If you haven’t given much thought to trying Open Educational Resources in education or maybe aren’t quite sure what exactly they are, the time is now for you to explore some basics of them! OERs are freely accessible, openly licensed documents and media for teaching, learning, and assessing your students as well as for research—and they’re all available for download.
If students and teachers are not developing intellectually every single day, how are they going to succeed in today’s hands-on, project-based world? The importance of the constant presence of growth mindset in education is more important now than perhaps it ever has been—whether students realize it or not—and that’s why it’s our focus topic for this week’s post.
