What are We Preparing For? Day 1

Today students were asked the question "What are we preparing for?"  While I am not a big fan of the way that question is stated, I have decided to start there and see where it goes.  I explained to the students as well that the question started with "What's the point of school?" or "When will we ever use this?" and that it will probably continue to change as we think about life in 2020 (which happens to be the year these students will graduate from high school).  

Students had the choice of 3 video to watch

• The Future of Work
• What will Future Jobs Look Like (Andrew McAfee) until about 5mins.
• Watch your day in 2020 (based off of corning glass but interesting perspective)

From there, students were to use today's meet to name the video watched and opinions on the subject.  After the discussion began I noted a few things for the students

• Think of it as a discussion between 30 people where everyone can all talk at the same time.
• 
  After making your own opinion and thoughts, comment, agree, disagree, or question other people's comments

• I agree, I disagree, I was wondering, Just like ... I think

When referring to what your classmates said:

• Use their name or @ sign to give credit
• Use quotation marks if you want to copy and paste comment being replied to

The today's meet discussion reminded me of the good ol' Jetsons.  To end, we discussed the Jetson's Youtube clip which focuses on how the future of technology was seen in 1960's

Reflection:  Overall, we had some great discussion.  Today's meet was a great tool for this because it did give all 30 students the opportunity to participate at the same time rather than having to raise their hand and wait their turn.  As a teacher I was able to have a great discussion with several students while others watched and joined in as well.  I thought it was interesting that many of the students were upset with the increase in technological advances discussed in the videos.  Cost was an issue for many while others were concerned about the great outdoors and people actually having to do things for themselves.  I am excited about where we can go from here.

PBL Plan

After watching Chris Lehman: Education is Broken and considering the themes of

• live & matter
• classes should be lenses to open your eyes
• School was based off of information scarcity, but now there is information overload.  We need to help kids find, understand, sort through, and apply valuable and reliable information.
• Can we fail?  failure is important: Angry birds: number of apps that failed before that?
• Be comfortable with being uncomfortable

I have decided that it is time to give my students opportunities to discover themselves, learn,  investigate, question, create, take action, …

    The question I started with was "What's the point?"  In order to be sure discussions stay possible, I thought more about "What is the purpose of schooling?"  From that I researched the number of teachers in Wisconsin and in the United States.  The Institute of Educational Science explains that, "Public school systems will employ about 3.1 million full-time-equivalent (FTE) teachers in fall 2014."  This gave me my first talking point:  Why would 3.1 Americans dedicate their lives each day to teaching?  After explaining to the students that our primary objective as an educator is to give students the tools they need to be successful when they graduate, I started the discussion of "What are we preparing for: 2020?"  As students who will graduate in  2020, and as a teacher whose job is to get you ready for 2020, what is it that we need to prepare yourselves for?

While the above was the start of the PBL unit, places I would like to take the students include:

• Where have we come from? (students need to understand the speed at which technology is advancing in order to understand where we are going)
• Primary vs. Secondary Sources
• Successful Internet Researching Skills
• different search engines
• key search terms
• basic layout of a search
• scanning / searching for key words
• Touching base with employers around the world to find out
• what qualities do you currently look for in an employee?
• what do you feel most of your applicants are lacking?
• what skills do you think applicants will need 10 years from now?
• Researching 1 particular career to find out
• what degree will you need
• skills required
• estimated demand in the future
• Making contacts with people outside of the United States to compare and contrast how American schools are working to prepare students for the future as compared to other countries
• Possible end:
• youtube video to explain skills needed in 2020 for a particular career
• letter to the superintendent / school board / Wisconsin Department of Education as to standards that educators should be teaching in the everyday curriculum
• Letter / Opinion Column expressing concern with or support for where technology is headed.
• Debate on: Is technology advancement getting out of control?