The phrase 21st Century Skills is inescapable in education these days. Educators are continually told that students need to develop and acquire skills that include being creative, working well with others and being able to use technology as an effective communication tool. So how do we support our students in obtaining these much needed skills?

It has been my experience in working with students and technology that the biggest factor of whether or not students have gained 21st Century Skills is their time actually spent using technology. Not time learning about technology or just looking at technology, but the actual hands-on time using technology. The typical approach of sending students to a computer lab for computer class once a week is simply not adequate when it comes to the development of 21st Century Skills. Even when considering the rudimentary skill of keyboarding, a once per week approach is not sufficient. In most school districts, students begin learning keyboarding skills in elementary school. However, how is a second grade student really going to learn to keyboard by just going to a computer lab one time per week and practicing for a few minutes? By the time a student returns again to the computer lab seven days later, they have almost forgotten everything they had practiced which results in rather slow progress towards their typing capabilities. Keyboarding is about muscle memory and teaching your pinkie finger to reach up and press the "P" key without looking. But how is a student's little pinkie muscle supposed to remember with a week in between lessons?  

It doesn't matter if we are talking about keyboarding or podcasting, as technology in schools needs to stop being taught as a separate subject and needs to become embedded into daily classroom instruction. 21st Century Skills need to be woven into the daily lessons that are taught in the classroom and not just in the computer lab.

So, if time using technology is one key factor to ensure the attainment of 21st Century Skills, how do we access more time? The answer is through the use of netbooks. Netbooks came along at the perfect time for students needing to attain 21st Century Skills. These newly developed netbooks are small, light and affordable and are the perfect size for elementary and middle school students. Because of their incredibly low price, schools and parents can now afford for each student to have their own computer. Netbooks allow students to have and use technology at their desks all day long. Netbooks give students the chance to research a subject, email findings to fellow students and their teachers, and update a blog. Without having to leave their desks, student are able to access, use and develop 21st Century Skills.

Let’s return to our original keyboarding dilemma in which students struggled to access the computer lab in a timely enough fashion to increase their typing speed. Instead, envision that old-fashioned problem with a modern day solution in which students with netbooks practice keyboarding everyday and then use those skills all day long as they continually use their netbooks. Students quickly obtain keyboarding skills that prove to be proficient in a matter of weeks instead of years. Imagine the advantage that a student who transitions into middle school keyboarding at 60 words per minute has over a student that is struggling at typing 5 or 10 words per minute.

With netbooks it is finally possible for our students to develop the 21st Century Skills they need as they race into a global society and employment market that we can't even imagine or begin to understand.   Later in this book we will look at the development of specific 21st Century Skills however let’s first “paint a picture” of how a netbook classroom could operate like.

Brad Flickinger
Media Director/Technology Teacher
Bethke Elementary, Timnath Colorado

www.BradFlickinger.com

(excerpt from the book Teaching with Netbooks)