STSD Curriculum & Technology Update

Regular updates and musings on curriculum and technology in the Salisbury Township School District in Allentown, PA.

21st Century Skills & New Media Literacies

As with anything worth doing there are always resistors and critics. In Monday’s Washington Post, education reporter Jay Matthews titled his column The Latest Doomed Pedagogical Fad: 21st-Century Skills. In his column, Matthews contends that there is nothing new about 21st century skills. “Young Plato and his classmates did the same thing in ancient Greece.” There is a typical flaw in Matthew’s thinking - understanding how age-old skills look different in the technology-rich world of 2009. What is different then? Take two minutes to watch this video, and I think you’ll start to see how technology changes, in both bold and subtle ways, the rules of the game where “skills” are concerned.

For a detailed response to Matthew’s column, read Will Richardson: Response to Jay Matthew at the Washington Post