“Technology is a gift from God. After life, this is perhaps God’s greatest gift. She gave birth to civilizations, arts and sciences. “
Freeman Dyson
>16. SonS vebinar
There is no clear consensus on which skills should be included in the 21st century skills category. Dr Tony Wagner from Harvard identified the so-called The “global achievement gap” between what is taught in the best schools and the skills that young people need to possess in the future. He defined 7 “survival” skills, to help young people prepare for the 4.0 industrial revolution. Those are:
- Critical thinking and problem solving
- Cooperation and leadership
- Access and analysis of information
- Curiosity and imagination
- Initiative and entrepreneurship
- Agility and adaptability
- Effective spoken and written communication
Richard Riley, the US Secretary of Education, said during Clinton’s time:
“How to prepare students for jobs that don’t yet exist, to use technologies that aren’t invented, to solve problems we don’t even know?”
Are we really doing that?
From the point of view of teachers, we can conclude that in the conditions caused by the pandemic, self-management skills (self-management, self-regulation) appeared, such as: active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility. We started to use hybrid learning, various platforms, social networks and all available resources that are available to us: Google Meet, Teams, Zoom, Cloud Computing, etc.
To prepare students to successfully address the demands of the 21st century, schools need to help them develop the necessary skills. Many researchers, as well as business leaders and educators, are united around the idea of helping students acquire 21st century skills to be successful in today’s job market.
Lecture and discussion with participants, students and teachers from Serbia and the region, was led by Milijana Petrović, computer science teacher and Scientix Ambassador from Serbia, as well as the National Ambassador of Science on Stage Serbia network and a member of the Institute for Modern Education.