Middle School Science for the Future!

I was researching the 21st century learner idea and found a website for the Center for Educational Learning Leadership and Technology (CELLT).  Here is an excerpt from their home page describing the goals of the curriculum they have created and posted online.

The 21st Century Skills Curriculum and ePortfolio is a series of lessons and assessment strategies built by experienced and practicing educators. The hands on assignments, lesson plans, and rubrics are rooted in The Graham School’s community based internship/service learning pedagogy. The curriculum assignments and student outcomes are aligned to state and federal content standards and focus on skills required for success in the 21stCentury: Knowledge of self, Collaboration, Communication Skills, Research and Assessment Skills, Technology tools.

The curriculum they have posted online covers 2 years and is integrated with an internship program.  The goal is to teach students to become flexible, metacognitive, learners with experience working in teams and in 21st century media skills.  Students create their own eportfolio online.  I like the course a lot.  The online resource provides everything you would need to teach the course to students at your own school.  I am not sure how I could adapt this to my middle school students.  I think they could definitely do the work, but I am not sure that my principal would allow that much time not dedicated to core subject area classes.

For this to be feasible for my school students would have to commit to come in for extra classes 2 or three times a week and to work on their own time on class assignments.  I think I could only do it with one group (32 kids max) and I would have to have 1 to 1 computers to do it with.  Internships would have to be served during their elective time in different areas of the school (teacher aids, office assistants, health office assistants, maintenance crew…etc).  My head is spinning with ideas about what this could be like for my students.

Filed under: Web 2.0 and tagged 21st Century Learners, collaboration, computer skills, eportfolio, internship