The Future

Of the 10 skills listed that are considered to be important for the future workforce, three that I believe can be fostered in the LC setting are:

2. Social Intelligence: the ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions

I think we can foster social intelligence by modeling appropriate ways of conducting one self on a social media platform.  One of the ways we strive to share the work we are doing is by being transparent with it on either a blog, website or fresh grade.  It is our intent to connect learning to the world and the ones we share the world with.  In order to connect meaningfully with others we must evoke conversations on what the learning, experiences or thinking have been.  By going through the process together of sharing on social media I think it becomes valuable learning for students about how and what things are shared and become a digital footprint.

3. Novel and adaptive thinking: proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule based.

By being the Place of Yes, where we are charged with the task of saying "yes" to students ideas, interests, clubs, questions and projects, we are providing them with a space and resources to experiment.  The more varied types of activities we can offer them the more opportunities for adaptive thinking to emerge will result from trial and error.  It sounds a lot to me like personal inquiry creates adaptive thinking. 

6. New media literacy: ability to critically assess and develop content that uses digital forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication.

The more types of media we offer students to explore and master, the better they will be able to create, communicate and express their beliefs to the world.  By learning about, offering and assigning varied types of media projects and technology, students will be able to excel in this digital age, no matter our own digital immigrant status.  

With all that being said, I am so scared and overwhelmed with the task ahead.  I feel like I am having to completely rethink every form of delivery I am already doing at the moment.  

Great point about the need for students to be able to compete on this digital global stage.  I was just in Disneyland with my kids and family and it was my 16 year old niece who was mastering the Disneyland App and helping to navigate our way through the parks over the three days in order to make the best use of our time avoiding line-ups when possible.  Because of her tech savvy ways she was able to tell us where to go, when to get fast passes and generally made our trip so much more enjoyable because of it.  We joked together that I was the digital immigrant and she is the native. It was great timeing after this technology module to be around someone who uses technology in such a fluid manner.  I can tell she will be well prepared to compete in an ever changing workplace industry like you mentioned.  It makes it clear that we need to find ways like this for teaching in order to reach those students needs.