Houston, all communication has been lost....

Choose the 21st Century Skill you believe is most crucial to students' lives outside the school walls.

1. Why is this skill most important?

2. How might this skill be used in your Technology Infusion Plan?

3. How can this skill be assessed?


Skill: COMMUNICATION!

1. In my experience, I have found that communication, effective communication, is the common ground on which all other skills need to meet in order to create a successful, self-sufficient, problem finding and solving society!  Without the appropriate level of skill in communicating, a person is essentially cutoff from the real world - total isolation. And let's be honest....it takes a village! Society cannot exist and function without talking/writing and listening/reading happening. No communication, no collaboration. No collaboration, no growth, and certainly no innovation! Let me be clear. When I speak of communicating, I'm not simply referring to the ability to convey one's thoughts and/or feelings to another human being, but in fact communication within oneself also! (Be honest, the person you talk to the most is yourself.) Communication is what leads us to work together to achieve clarity of issue, focus of job at hand, and effective collaboration to attack limitations.

2.  In a social studies classroom, opportunities to address and practice communication already are abundant. But toss in a technology infusion plan, and you have your own piece of infinity right at your feet. Here are some ways in which I have dipped into this infinity:

• Daily Morning Announcements produced with iMovie: This is the quintessential display of developing presentation skills. Each and every day, my students would create a short movie to present the daily school announcements (reminders, daily lunch menu, occurring activities, character trait of the week, vocab of the week, Pledge of Allegiance, etc!). This movie would play schoolwide through the use of the closed-circuit broadcast system.
• Current Event Friday: Students gather and bring in any current (local or world) event to share and discuss with their peers each week. Some weeks, the topics are dry or lack the possible formation of opinion and debate. Other weeks.... WOW! One example is the current theories surrounding the missing Malaysian flight, MH370. I sat back and watched 6th graders discussed possible issues with not only the flight itself - but also the search! They listened to each and every peer's theory and displayed collaboration of ideas and issued possible solutions or even debunked another student's ideas with facts! Communication at its finest. During these student-led discussions, the students are encouraged to fact-check one another on personal devices and some even come to class with multiple webpages ready to reference! :)
• Frequent intervention and conflict management: I do not believe in nipping the student's conflicts for them. As an adult, no one has stepped in to pull myself and another adult together to end whatever issue may be pulling us apart. So why not teach the students to solve personal problems themselves? Simply put, I will pull students who are in conflict together and act as a mediator as I coach them through resolution strategies. More often than not, student-to-student conflict has begun and perpetuated on social media. During these peer-to-peer interventions, I ask the students to discuss with one another how social media has helped/hurt the situation and allow them to offer suggestions to each other on how to avoid conflict through social media.
• Animoto Commercials: Several times throughout the school year, my Student Council group will produce a commercial (to be played with morning announcements) advertising the current fundraising effort or social gathering. Students get to practice their presentation skills and effective communication of pertinent information.

And this is the tip of the technological iceberg....

3.  To assess something means that there is an end-point, a mastery of skill. Communication is not a finite skill. There is always room to grow and develop. Therefore, I do not often assess communication...but rather, give students "Growth Points." Simply put, these points can be earned when I see a student become more involved in discussions or show effective, successful collaboration with peers. However, next year I would love to steal this Blogger idea and begin having students keep personal blogs for classroom reflection and collaboration of ideas. :)