21st Century Topics and Tools

An effective way to prepare students for the 21st century workforce is by empowering them in their leaning. As an educator, one of my responsibilities is to show students how to think critically about the world around them. Students today read and process data at an alarming rate. Although they are very technology literate, they must be supported in their quest for information. One effective way to do so is by teaching them how to find and evaluate  credible sources of information and data so they can make an informed decisions. 


The big idea I decided to focus on was Evidence, Models and Explanation. It is a unifying concept that carries across grade level and science disciplines. The goal is not to teach students large numbers of facts and figures. Teaching is about providing the students with the tools and knowledge to piece this information together for them to eventually get the big picture or idea.  Students should never been expected to become experts in any one content area.


As students look at becoming 21st century scientifically literate citizens, they will need to be able to ask the following questions when faced with challenges:
- What evidence of properties and patterns did I observe during this investigation?

•  How can I use the properties and the patterns observed to build a model?
• How is my model similar or different from what I observed?
• Is it relevant to the real world?
• What can this model explain? Can I make predictions based on this model?
  The most powerful sites which helped shed some light on how to bring this big idea to my students were the following:
  
  http://derekmecham.com/evidence.html
  
  http://www.dlese.org/library/browse_cs_01t.htm
  
  The ability to evaluate in terms of extracting information from a scenario or object is critical. These tools will enable my students to understand the relationship which exist between looking for evidence, properties and data and a real-world context or model. Although models can answer many questions, predict outcomes or explain interactions, they are only as effective as their creator.  
  
  A physical activity I found which would be engaging for my students was found at the following site: 
  
  
  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3667/is_200302/ai_n9219875/
  
  It links math and science skills in a fun interactive way by using driftwood. My students live in a coastal community and would love to learn while using such a familiar material. The challenges would be in the manipulation part. I would need to find a container large enough for the students could test their pieces of drift wood when measuring water displacement. The process (with small objects) has proven to be messy in the pass but nevertheless worth the effort.