My initial reaction to 'Did You Know' was that it was just listing of data. When it made the comparison to the dominance of Great Brittan at the turn of the last century it showed what could be in store for the US if we continue on our current path.
To prepare our students for the future we will need to increase computer and technology skills. Based on the video, we will also have to re-emphasize our efforts in math and science to compete for future engineering jobs.
I think that more than ever students need to have problem solving skills to survive in the future. With the rate at which everything is changing it will be difficult to teach the specific skills that will be needed. Therefore students will need to be able to solve problems that have not been addressed before.
Teaching problem solving is very different than getting students to memorize information, this means we will need to take a different approach to teaching the skills our students need.
I believe that to make this happen we will need greater cooperation with our industrial base to communicate what needs they are looking for in their future workforce.
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I agree that teachers will need to place a greater focus on problem- solving in order to help better prepare students for the future. I wonder who will prepare the teachers to prepare the students in this way? Granted, plenty of teachers already teach problem-solving skills, but I wonder about the many who don't.
So many of my professional development workshops seemed pointless and/or impossible to translate into the classroom (at least for an extended period of time.) I guess it will take a real commitment from the top down in order to ultimately switch gears.
How do you think we can get a better connection and partnership between corporate American and schools to do what you propose?
You raise strong points. I completely agree that a discussion of the role of engineering in this whole new picture of our current world is very important. That being said, engineering is something that requires a strong left and right brain combination of skills to be successful. I wonder what that means for our future educational goals.
Jill,
You said your workshops seemed pointless. That sounds like a good opportunity for a workshop to cover what we are discussing. Maybe there is a workshop out there on conducting a class on problem solving using flow. Let the students come up with a problem and try to research the answer.
Barry,
At my high school we a had a program with a local chemical company that provided volunteers from the company to come to the school and teach a class and then had the students follow-up using the companies labratory to conduct a lab based on the class. It worked well for a while but the company moved and we haven't had anything like that for a while now.
Paul,
Yes. Teaching problem solving skills is a must. However, I’ve found that many of my students are very “needy.” I assign a task and before I can turn my back all 30 of them are calling my name. “I don’t understand !!” “I need help !” I envy the teachers and principals who instill the trait of problem solving in students as early as kindergarten. I’ve seen it successfully done.
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