The 21st Century Teaching

Being in an ICT class, there were video clips to communicate and disseminate information which I thought was benefitting.  Due to time constraint we could not prolong our discussions but with these video clips in hand we can always revisit and make thing clearer at the click on a button.

Topic	Summary of content	Analysis	Future Commitments
1.      What does it mean to teach in the 21st century?	It is the 21st century world but we are still using the same old method – delivering content and facts though we plan some activities to make learning fun. Teachers are now not the main source of information as our digital natives can find information from many other sources now in this digital world. Our responsibility now is to help them find the right kind of information at the right sites. It is not just feeding them with information but to ENGAGE them so that they develop skills and not just learn mere facts.	Delivering content and facts to children of this digital world would be boring so to make children interested in learning we need to engage them properly and meaningfully. I remembered the words by the Former Chief Justice Lyonpo Sonam Tobgay in the meeting at the DYS hall “Self-Satisfaction is the starting of downfall.” So, as a teacher we should be satisfied with what we learnt and gained but should crave for more knowledge and experiences and our doors are already opened. So, we can now gain more ICT knowledge by interacting with our tutor and our friends.	Our role is seen as OBSOLETE because we had been using the same old teaching methods and teach the content and facts and not skills. To cater to the my children I will now use ICT in my lessons as teachers are not just the resource to get information but children can get it from anywhere. It is important to engage children rather than entertain children. It makes learning active and in a fun way. So, I would keep this in mind while planning my daily lessons.
2.      What are the 21st century skills?	The 21st Century Skills are: ·         Critical Thinking ·         Media Literacy ·         Communication ·         Collaboration ·         Information Literacy ·         Creativity	The teachers teaching in the 21st Century should guide and support our children to posses this skills. ·         The curriculum needs to be designed and implemented that integrates the 21st Century skills into the classroom. ·         I feel that teaching strategies like the Project- Approach can be focused to encourage collaboration and critical thinking. ·         Though integrating technology into the instruction can enhance learning but we are in short of resources. ·         Our classroom teaching and learning should foster student’s creativity.	Teachers can make a difference by an action or lack of action. Accordingly to bring some changes in the teaching style, we need to think of these skills and plan accordingly. In our daily teaching we can have activities like colorings and instead of letting children use individual crayons packs we can offer just a packet to encourage sharing and taking –turns to foster social skills. I will also promote teamwork whereby students learn the skills as they interact with each other. We can design some lesson using ICT and can take children to the IT lab to inculcate these skills.
3.      ICT for Education	Meaning and definition ICT- Information and Communication Technology are technological tools and resources used to communicate, to create, disseminate, store and manage information. Various forms of Information ·         Text ·         Audio ·         Video ·         Graphics ·         Flash (multimedia) ·         Data-base (students)- is a collection of related information. Various file format of Information ·         Text Files- MS word document ·         Data Files- ppt. ·         Audio Files- mp3 ·         Video files- flv We were then introduced to Teacher sites .Teacher sites help meet the needs of the teachers. It also has resources that the teachers needs and shares teaching ideas and has lesson plans for teachers to refer to. This site enhances own teaching methods	The session talked about using ICT in education.  The participants had a lot to say about using ICT in our daily lessons which is only possible if our classes possess a computer and other accessories needed to carry out the lesson.  Teachers are trained on using computer skills and are given refresher courses to make them fully equipped but as teacher get back to schools they forget because they don’t use it. It can only enhance our teaching and learning process using ICT if we are provided with the facilities. Discussions on various forms and format of Information made us realize why files open in one computer but do not in the other. It is because we need the software to support the file format in our computers. The teacher sites would help us find information on different subjects which will help us design activities which will engage children and make learning fun.	I have come to learn the importance of ICT in Education and now I would use it in my lessons though the facilities are limited. Our school has a LCD projector and I will make best of it by using it to begin my lessons with the new technology. We can plan lessons using it when we take leave from work as we can capture what we want children to do during the period. The activities can be made and then uploaded so that the lesson is still continued without our presence. As a saying goes “Be not afraid of going slowly; be afraid only of standing still.” It may take some time to practically do it but it’s never too late to try it out now.