This article in NPRed talks about the skills that are the keys to learner success but what do we call them?
The game I created for my most recent EdX MOOC, Design and Development of games for learning, challenged my thinking about what competencies or skills I was addressing in the game. I believe it is important to identify competencies for games or any curriculum first since teachers feel more secure when they know they are connected to institutionally approved competencies, such as Common Core. So I googled to find the competency I wanted to address in the game. I called the skills, “21st Century Skills, but as I googled that phrase I could not find much research on these skills. Interesting that while the academic skills are well researched, the “soft skills” or whatever we call them are not well researched. Yet, these are the skills for success in life in the digital world. The skills addressed in my game focused on using social learning communities to gain and share information.
Identifying a lack of 21st century skills training is very to the point Kris.
Generally educators talk a lot about critical thinking skills as being 21st century skills and one can see that self direction in learning requires critical thinking. As does the ability to innovate, and adapt, and discern the best “risks” to take in a rapidly changing world.
Of note is that youth generally DIY with new technologies, teaching themselves both how to use new possibilities like smart phones, and also what new things would be fun, or useful, to do with them. This is a 21st century skills process, undirected for the most part by adults or educators.
In addition the immense popularity of video games may involve some aspects of 21st century skills. At least you have to know how to get the most out of your equipment. Maybe you need some critical thinking and collaborative skills in some games too.
Critical thinking in an academic environment might be a somewhat different thing than figuring out how to “beat” a video game, or what is the best strategy to beat an opponent in a video game.
Somewhere in the DIY learning that enables Lean Startup teenagers, we’d probably find critical thinking, and online communication and collaborative skills, as well as cloud curation capabilities. We’d also find a certain hard won awareness of what cloud tool improvements are needed, and what people might well like to use an app for online.