21st Century Skills is About More than iPads
There has been a lot of misinformation circulating about the district’s proposed iPads and wireless upgrades. I want to dispel the myths surrounding this project and explain why it is important to prepare our kids not for the future but for today.
Myth #1: The money should be used for teachers and math coaches. The money that is being discussed is not part of the district’s general budget. The money is approved borrowing, originally for oil remediation. We legally can’t use it for staff. And, if we could that would be a bad idea because it is one-time money. We would have to lay people off a year after they started.
Myth #2: The district might cut middle school foreign language to pay for technology. No serious plan to cut middle school foreign language has been discussed by the school committee. The idea was raised by a single school committee member as a way to pay for math coaches. It did not receive much support. Myth #1 explains why this is just a distraction from the technology project.
Myth #3: WiFi technology will soon be made obsolete by cell technology. Recent trends in telecommunications would indicate the opposite effect is happening. Wireless bandwidth is also substantially cheaper than cell bandwidth.
Myth #4: Nobody else is doing this. Lots of schools around the country are providing actual laptops to their students. Auburn, Maine has had a program for 10 years. Locally schools in Beverly and Boston are piloting laptop initiatives. Many universities now require laptops and have restructured their programs for universal technology.
Myth #5: The district is trying to “pull a fast one” by asking for special town meetings. The 21st century skills initiative is, in part, about collaboration and openness. The need for special town meetings isn’t about keeping people uninformed. The early meeting is necessary to complete the wireless upgrades and purchase the technology before the start of the next school year. Rolling out new initiatives out during the school year is difficult, so waiting until May puts us a year behind.
Now, what are “21st Century Skills” and why are they important? The internet has changed the world. You don’t have to memorize facts anymore. I can learn anything I want to from my cell phone. However, I do need to learn how to verify information I find online. I need to understand its source and biases. I need to learn from the work others and share my work so that others can learn form me. I need to work collaboratively to solve problems. The easy problems were solved long ago. Great teams are necessary to tackle today’s difficult challenges.
I know very well what a 21st century work place looks like because I am the Director of Engineering at one. A book would be needed to describe the ways we use 21st century skills, but I will highlight a couple.
We collaborate within the team by encouraging two people to work on one computer, sharing ideas and catching mistakes. We collaborate with the company by having frequent demonstrations to make sure people are getting the software they need. An automated testing system alerts the team when somebody breaks something. However, that accountability isn’t about blame, rather a signal to the team to step up and help fix the problem. We do a retrospective, every two weeks, during which we discuss in frank detail what went well and what needs to be improved. Then we celebrate the successes of the past two weeks. We are so committed to each other and the job that we stay late, on Friday’s just to celebrate.
So what? A 21st century process is very efficient. We repeatedly turn out high quality software ahead of schedule and under budget. For example, we built a drug safety system from scratch in a three months that met all of the requirements and aced audits in two major pharmaceutical companies.
So what? Employers who understand what teams of people with 21st Century Skills can deliver are desperate to hire them. During this recession, “the worst since the 1920’s,” I have had to raise salaries of new employees by 20%. People who know how to work in this sort of environment take months to find.
Universal access to technology enables this sort of collaboration. The best jobs today are already demanding these skills. Lets give our kids the technology to learn those skills.
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