The Third Decade of the 21st Century...

This week my journey took me to the third decade of the 21st century.  How you ask?  During my monthly technology team meeting one of the elementary schools in my district asked me to set up Google Apps accounts for all their students.  I organize these accounts into folders with their graduation year as the name of the folder.  It’s crazy to think that most students in the elementary grades will graduate in the third decade of the 21st century.  Today’s Kindergarten students will graduate in 2024.

It’s even scarier that we don’t know much about how this decade will look.

We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that have not yet been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.   – Kari Fisch

All we can know about the world these students will step into is that it will have challenges and opportunities beyond what we can imagine today.  These problems and possibilities will demand creativity, critical thinking, ingenuity, problem solving and responsibility.

After hearing that and thinking about it, most people would say – what technology should we buy to try and solve that problem?  I guessing most Kindergarten students today might not be able to spell their name, but they will know how to surf the internet.  Most would Google how to spell their name.

Wrong!  It’s not about the tool.  We don’t even know what the tools will look like in the third decade of the 21st century.  Our focus needs to be on critical thinking, research, creativity and collaboration.  If we teach students now how to learn and how to problem solve, these students will be capable of doing new things – and not simply repeating what other generations have done.  I am excited to help these students enter the third decade prepared and ready to conquer the world!
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Google Band Wagon

The journey this week brought me to the Google Apps Midwest Summit in the beautiful Wisconsin Dells.  I was already riding the Google band wagon; but after two full days of training I feel like I have both arms up in the air, hair blowing in the wind, screaming at the top of my lungs riding the Google roller coaster!

I started using Google Apps in my 8th grade classroom two years ago believing that cloud computing was a future certainty.  Last summer I studied and took the six exams to become a certified Google Instructor.  I thought the conference was going to be good, but I never imagined it would be so amazing!  I really love all the free tools, applications and resources that Google offers education and the world for that matter.

I knew I would learn during the conference, I just thought that since I was already certified – how much more could there be?  Wow – was I wrong!  The Google Apps suite is growing every day.  I routinely get emails letting me know what has changed.  My certification only lasts one year – and for good reason – the applications change, update and expand daily.  There were also sessions on the new Chromebook, Google Earth, Google Search, Blogger, Picasa and Chrome just to name a few.  I have used all those tools, but certainly not to their fullest capability.  They are all powerful and work even better together as a suite of tools.

I also attended a session about a school in Iowa that has a student led technology team.  The name of their school is Clear Creek-Amana and they are known as the Creek Squad.  This group of 7th and 8th graders deploy and support Google Apps to the students and faculty of their district.  They have also trained other neighboring districts.  This is a concept I hope to implement in my district.  Right now I have an 11th grader that has taken all the computer courses our school offers.  He has literally run out of courses to take.  With the help of a guidance counselor, we arranged with one of our elementary schools for him to go there and help with technology issues.  The teachers of that school are very pleased with all the problems he has helped them solve.  Our students are a resource we should utilize more extensively.  We can all learn from them!

The final learning this week came from collaboration with other educators passionate about becoming better 21st Century Learners.  We tweeted throughout the conference.  I am now following new people.  I have added to my PLN.  The tweets were so frequent and intriguing that I often got distracted from my current session because I was interested in what others were learning in their sessions.  Google Apps documents were created so we could learn and share from the sessions we weren’t able to participate in.

As a Google executive said in one of his sessions, “it’s not about the technology it’s about the learning experience.”  This learning experience, like a roller coaster, was fast-paced, exhilarating, fun and amazing.  I can’t wait to bring this new learning experience to my colleagues and the students of my district.
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