The course strives to build into the curriculum opportunities for students to explore, practice, and develop skills recognized as important in the 21st Century. These our outlined below.
In the book 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in our Times by Bernie Trilling & Charles Fadel speak to the 7Cs skills of 21st century learning which Senior Seminar integrates into the work students engage in throughout the course.
- Critical thinking and problem solving
- Communications, information, and media literacy
- Collaboration, teamwork, and leadership
- Creativity and innovation
- Computing and ICT literacy
- Career and learning self-reliance
- Cross cultural understanding
LEARNING AND INNOVATION SKILLS
Learning and innovation skills increasingly are being recognized as those that separate students who are prepared for a more and more complex life and work environments in the 21st century, and those who are not. A focus on creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration is essential to prepare students for the future.
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION
- Think Creatively
- Use a wide range of idea creation techniques (such as brainstorming)
- Create new and worthwhile ideas (both incremental and radical concepts)
- Elaborate, refine, analyze and evaluate their own ideas in order to improve and maximize creative efforts
- IMPORTANT VIDEO ON CREATIVITY: Sir Ken Robinson “Do Schools Kill Creativity?“
- Work Creatively with Others
- Develop, implement and communicate new ideas to others effectively
- Be open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives; incorporate group input and feedback into the work
- Demonstrate originality and inventiveness in work and understand the real world limits to adopting new ideas
- View failure as an opportunity to learn; understand that creativity and innovation is a long-term, cyclical process of small successes and frequent mistakes
- ARTICLE from Harvard Business Review: When Failure is A Good Option
- Implement Innovations
- Act on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution to the field in which the innovation will occur
- Talk on TED.com relating how computer-human interaction create an unstoppable force Shyam Sankar: The rise of human-computer coordination.
CRITICAL THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING
- Reason Effectively
- Use various types of reasoning (inductive, deductive, etc.) as appropriate to the situation
- Use Systems Thinking
- Analyze how parts of a whole interact with each other to produce overall outcomes in complex systems
- Make Judgments and Decisions
- Effectively analyze and evaluate evidence, arguments, claims and beliefs
- Analyze and evaluate major alternative points of view
- Synthesize and make connections between information and arguments
- Interpret information and draw conclusions based on the best analysis
- Reflect critically on learning experiences and processes
- Solve Problems
- Solve different kinds of non-familiar problems in both conventional and innovative ways
- Identify and ask significant questions that clarify various points of view and lead to better solutions
COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION
- Communicate Clearly
- Articulate thoughts and ideas effectively using oral, written and nonverbal communication skills in a variety of forms and contexts
- Listen effectively to decipher meaning, including knowledge, values, attitudes and intentions
- Use communication for a range of purposes (e.g. to inform, instruct, motivate and persuade)
- Utilize multiple media and technologies, and know how to judge their effectiveness a priori as well as assess their impact
- Communicate effectively in diverse environments (including multi-lingual)
- Collaborate with Others
- Demonstrate ability to work effectively and respectfully with diverse teams
- Exercise flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal
- Assume shared responsibility for collaborative work, and value the individual contributions made by each team member
INFORMATION, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY SKILLS
People in the 21st century live in a technology and media-suffused environment, marked by various characteristics, including: 1) access to an abundance of information, 2) rapid changes in technology tools, and 3) the ability to collaborate and make individual contributions on an unprecedented scale. To be effective in the 21st century, citizens and workers must be able to exhibit a range of functional and critical thinking skills related to information, media and technology.
INFORMATION LITERACY
- Access and Evaluate Information
- Access information efficiently (time) and effectively (sources)
- Evaluate information critically and competently
- Use and Manage Information
- Use information accurately and creatively for the issue or problem at hand
- Manage the flow of information from a wide variety of sources
- Apply a fundamental understanding of the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information
MEDIA LITERACY
- Analyze Media
- Understand both how and why media messages are constructed, and for what purposes
- Examine how individuals interpret messages differently, how values and points of view are included or excluded, and how media can influence beliefs and behaviors
- Apply a fundamental understanding of the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of media
- TEDTalk on Media’s design to influence: The Key to Media’s Hidden Codes
- Create Media Products
- Understand and utilize the most appropriate media creation tools, characteristics and conventions
- Understand and effectively utilize the most appropriate expressions and interpretations in diverse, multi-cultural environments
- Social Media’s power to change history is highlighted in this TEDTalk by Clay Shirky: How Social Media can Make History
ICT (Information, Communications and Technology) LITERACY
- Apply Technology Effectively
- Use technology as a tool to research, organize, evaluate and communicate information
- Use digital technologies (computers, PDAs, media players, GPS, etc.), communication/networking tools and social networks appropriately to access, manage, integrate, evaluate and create information to successfully function in a knowledge economy
- Apply a fundamental understanding of the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information technologies
Source:
Partnership for 21st Century Skills
- Download the Framework for 21st Century Learning (PDF)
- Download the full P21 Framework Definitions (PDF)