Well, after spending a good amount of time on an assignment, I am realizing that I don't think I needed to do it. There isn't a place for me to submit the assignment or a discussion board for it anyway so I'm guessing I could have skipped it but I'm not totally sure. Because I don't want to think I just spent some time on an assignment that isn't going to get looked at, I'm going to share it here just to make myself feel better about the time spent on it. :)
Striking content, data, or statistics:
•India & China – more honor students than we have students in USA
•Today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38. 1 out of 4 people are working for a company that they’ve been employed by for less than a year. 1 out of 2 people are working for a company that they been employed by for less than 5 years.
•Top 10 in demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004 & we are preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist.
Implications for Teaching & Learning:
•Most of these statistics are interesting but not surprising with how quickly the world is changing. The one fact that really put things into perspective for me was the first one listed above regarding the honor students in China & India being more than the total number of students in the USA. The USA has always been so highly regarded in so many areas but it is somewhat frightening to think about the USA falling behind many countries in regards to education, innovation, etc. What do we do about this? Give our educational system a complete overhaul? What are China & India doing differently? Maybe we need to take a peek at what they are doing and consider making some changes on our end to keep up?!
•Because students have been born into this digital age, most have been connected at such a young age. They are used to the instant gratification that is part of using technology and being connected. They’ve been brought up hearing, “You can do whatever you want and be whatever you want.” I think we need to proceed with caution with students feeling the sense of constant connectivity and “I can do whatever I want” mentality. Maybe this is contributing to people bouncing around to so many jobs. If they don’t feel that instant gratification, they move on too quickly to the next opportunity without using some of those 21st Century skills like problem solving, teamwork, cooperation, creativity, etc. ??
•The last stat listed above talks about preparing students for jobs that haven’t been created yet. Interesting! I think it goes to support the idea of getting away from so much memorization of facts and moving toward teaching 21st Century skills which can be applied to any future.
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