21st Century Students

In the morning, students are so excited about school that they can hardly wait to get there. Upon entering the classroom kindergarten students become highly engage in active learning. The teacher has planned learning that centers on their interests, experiences, talents, and real world problems. On the active board, the teacher begins the day by connects students to another group of students in a different country. As they communicate with each other in real time, they collaborate, exchange ideas, and learn together about trash and recycling while developing 21st century literacy skills. Students learn how an abundance of trash affects people’s health and uses up natural resources (trees) which are homes to many animals. Students then use the information learned to work collaboratively on a project to help other’s become aware of this issue around their communities. Project-based learning opportunities spark their curiosity and creativity, increase their global awareness, and promote higher order thinking skills. Students also work on creating ways to increase recycling at their school. During literacy, the teacher leads students to create a letter (writing and/or pictures) that promotes recycling. Copies of their letters and/or pictures are made with recycled paper and are distributed around their schools and communities to increase awareness. A group of involved parents help students get a recycling bin for their classroom and label it with what can be recycled. Students are excited and engaged in their learning because they have worked on something that interests them and they have made a difference. There next step is to continue this project within their school community.

Throughout the day, students would also have multiple opportunities to use the classroom computers to connect to online story books, practice letter recognition, learn a new language, and receive individual literacy instruction through a website that monitors their learning. Reading, writing, math, art, social studies, music, etc. are always structured around topics of student interest.

Cell Phones in the Classroom

Teaching at the kindergarten level has not required specific knowledge of cell phone use in the classroom. In fact, I have not yet encountered a situation in which I’ve had to address the use of cell phones. In order to familiarize myself with my district’s cell phone/technology policy, I searched online for anything that mentioned the use of student technology in the classroom. I found nothing. The only information that I know is that teachers have individual classroom policies. This presents a need for clear, district-wide policies, guidelines, and rules that enable students to use technology in productive and efficient ways.

I am not against the use of cell phones in school but I do see a large need to educate students on the appropriate use. Currently, cell phones have not been widely accepted in education as a result of misuse. This includes students texting during class, passing answers during tests, bullying, or taking and distributing inappropriate photos. As a result, many schools have simply banned them entirely.

Cell phones are part of today’s society. They are not going away! So instead of fighting them, we should be looking at how we could take advantage of students having cell phones for educational purposes. We need to begin by educating our students in the ethical uses of these tools for life-long learning. I think they can be of great education value since they are common and can provide opportunities for accessing the Internet (Googlemaps, Wikipedia), documenting (field trips, experiments, etc. through audio and/or video), blogging, for digital photography, and as a resource for dictionaries and calculators. However, there is a lot that needs to be accomplished before we can start seen the true benefits that current technology has to offer.