21ST CENTURY LEARNERS

AGNES T. CASTRO

Every day, we interact with other people using technology. When we want to learn about something, we punch in a couple of keys and utilize Google.

It seems that a lot of us – students included – cannot do without technology nowadays. Our world as we know it has changed.

Now we can access social media via computers, tablets and smart phones. This is the world we now live in. This is the 21st century – and our students need skills to be able to survive in the future as adults.

A method of teaching that is being used today marries content to skill. This is called 21st century learning, which actually involves more than information literacy alone.

It involves memorizing facts, recalling details, and most importantly, acquiring the necessary skills which our students need.

Twenty-first century learning offers an opportunity to synergize content and skills, using the past as a baseline for the future.

Students now have a very different experience in education. While education now leads them to the acquisition of 21st century skills, this will allow them to function, learn and adapt throughout life in this post-modern world.

All over the nation, we are creating 21st century classrooms, schools and districts. We are now moving beyond basic competency to promoting understanding of academic content at much higher levels by weaving 21st century interdisciplinary themes into the curriculum.

These themes focus on creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration, which are essential to prepare students for the future.

Our goals now are to create learners who take intellectual risks, foster learning dispositions, and nurture school communities where everyone is a l ear ner.

The mastery of 21st century skills, disciplines of which include English, reading or language arts, Mathematics, Economics, Science, Geography, History and Government, are essential for students.

Today’s students need to develop thinking skills, content knowledge, and social and emotional competencies to navigate complex life and work envir onment s.

— oOo—

The author is Teacher III at San Juan National High School, San Luis, Pampanga.

MARYGRACE B. GUEVARRA

Have you ever bought two hamburgers and a cheese burger and the cashier told you the total, but you only know the price of the hamburger? How are you going to split the price between you and your friends? Simple situations like this are solvable by algebra, total price minus twice the price of hamburgers equals x (price of cheeseburger). However, unlike arithmetic that you can count with fingers or answer using calculators, algebra on deeper problems don’t have calculators.

There is no substitute in learning how to solve, transpositions(addition property of equality), what you do to left you do to right and all those rules. But just in case you are not well versed, or you have a son or a daughter whose homeworks you can’t actually attend to at the moment, there is algebratorTM. It is a windows software that you purchase and install, there is a free version though, with some functionality limitations. So what does it do? It goes far more than your typical calculator, you insert an equation and you can ask it to solve for the missing value, then it gets the job done. But it doesn’t stop there, you can actually ask it, like your good seatmate when you were in high school how did it come up with the answer? And it will answer you in detail, step by step which you can actually reverse or fastforward. And it covers from LCM and GCF to linear algebra, matrix inverse and determinants! They even have a tagline: “you type in your algebra problem and algebrator does the rest”. But you shouldn’t do the resting, pun intended.

The software has been there all along since 1990s, but it was not so popular compared to winamp, Microsoft Office, and even Microsoft Paint, probably because though math is every day and everywhere not many people finds solving algebra problems enjoyable. Some teachers actually dismissed the idea, citing the possibility of students using it to cheat. They perceived that if the students would learn they might actually not try to learn and just depend on the software. However, just like any other good things, algebrator can be used for the benefit or otherwise. Algebrator is a tool, when used together with passion for learning, or proper guidance, there is no other end but benefit.

-Marcelo H. Del Pilar National High School

Position: Teacher III