Education
 

21st Century Skills Course Syllabus

From School Computing

Contents

[edit] Description

The semester long course for 9th grade through adult learners will provide a baseline of computer literacy skills and "21st century competencies." In this course you will be taught several skills and will also complete several projects. Instruction will be differentiated based on pre-assessments and self-paced acquisition of content. Students will have some choices about projects & assignments and will have a real global audience for your work. Collaboration among students in the course and with others online will be an important part of this class. Students will create multimedia artifacts and will engage in teaching of others. There may be some game-based learning.

[edit] 21st Century Competencies

Some excerpted from: Time Article

  • Knowing more about the world. Kids are global citizens now, even in small-town America, and they must learn to act that way.
  • Thinking outside the box. Jobs in the new economy--the ones that won't get outsourced or automated--"put an enormous premium on creative and innovative skills, seeing patterns where other people see only chaos. Kids also must learn to think across disciplines.
  • Becoming smarter about new sources of information. With overflowing information and proliferating media, kids need to rapidly process what's coming at them and distinguish between what's reliable and what isn't. "It's important that students know how to manage it, interpret it, validate it, and how to act on it."
  • Developing good people skills. Emotional intelligence "EQ" is as important as IQ for success in today's workplace. "Most innovations today involve large teams of people."
  • Online safety, ethics, appropriate use

[edit] 21st Century Skills


[edit] Essential Questions

  • Productivity: What kinds of skills and tools will help me be more productive?
  • Organization: How do I manage all this stuff that I am sent, create, or search out?
  • Research: How do I find information and once I find it how do I know if it is any good?
  • Social: How do I interact safely and appropriately with my co-workers and community?
  • Presentation: How do I present what I have learned in an effective & interesting way that will teach others?
  • Tools: What tools (software/hardware) will I need to do my job? What are some of the opportunities associated with Free and Open Source Software?
  • Ethics: How do I live my life so I am true to sound ethical values? How do I live so I am respectful to the health and welfare of myself, the living things, and places around me?

[edit] Hardware That Will be Used


[edit] Web 2.0 Tools That Will be Used

  • Google Reader or Bloglines RSS aggregator
  • [ZOHO][1]
  • Blogger
  • Ning
  • Wikispaces
  • Skype.com
  • Voicethread.com
  • MyPodcast.com
  • Del.ico.us
  • Free and Open Source Software (client software)
    • Open source office suites, scratch programming, Gimpshop photo editing, Audacity Audio editing, web browsers, etc
    • Free and Open Source Operating Systems such as Ubuntu, GoS, Sugar, SUSE, etc.

[edit] Required Skills for Successful Completion of This Course

  • Reasoning: use reliable evidence and sound logic to generate and support arguments
  • Mathematics: use mathematics to solve problems, model phenomena, and support reasoning
  • Collaboration: acquire and synthesize information from both peers and real-world participants
  • Business Writing: write letters and documentation/procedures
  • Copywriting: for more effective marketing and promotions
  • Public Speaking: so you can sell your ideas to others
  • Social Networking: blogging, profiles, forums, and etiquette
  • Offline Networking: trade shows, organizations, strategic partnerships
  • Multimedia Digital Presentations: students should be able to present a topic through video, web, text and interactive discussion (blogs), audio, and video production and editing
  • Introduction to Free and Open Source Software Development. Students could be required to collaborate on a Scratch application with another student in the course, or better yet with a student (or students) in a remote location.
  • Keyboarding

[edit] Course Assessment

In order to assess 21st century skills and competencies the following tools will be used

  • Portfolios
  • Narrative Reports
  • Computer-based assessment


[edit] Books, Readings, Articles

  • Hofstede’s Software of the Mind
  • Pink's Whole New Mind
  • Friedman, Thomas L and Oliver Wyman. 2005. The World is Flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century
  • Kurzweil, Ray. 2006. The Singularity is Near.
  • Also see: Books

[edit] Sources for the page

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