Mohanad Ajina RRJ 2

R R J 2

Mohanad Ajina
EAP1
04-03-2011

Electrical Engineering
Reading Reaction Journal # 2
Reference:
How to bring school into 21st century. (2006,Dec). CNN. From a Time Magazine cover story. Retrieved on March 30, 2011 from www.google.com
Summary:
In this article, the author said that students spend much time in the school as in the past, which means like their grandparents, but this happened before digital age. Also, he said that during the last five years, which means 10 years from now, the schoolhouse, which focuses on reading, listening, and etc., made the students unable to solve problems such as problems because of misunderstanding the English language. In the 21st century, we had something called 21st century skills, which are very poor comparing to reading and math, but may be good. Then, the author talked about four of them which we should have to develop our world by bringing what we learned up to this time; therefore, he began with "knowing more about the world" which means people who know other cultures and are able to connect with them. After that, he talked about "thinking outside the box" which means thinking differently from the school way; also, the author talked about " becoming smarter about new sources of information" which means we should think about everything, which we have gotten, and whether it is reliable or not. Last but not least, he talked about "developing good people skills" which means developing your EQ, emotional intelligence. In conclusion, the author said that by adding new classes to our curriculum we could bring the school into 21st century.

Reaction:
In this article, I did not find what 21st century skills mean because what I read did not make sense to me. The author talked about four points which we should have before the 21st century, and these helped many people to be rich, famous or whatever. In my opinion, 21st century skills means technology skills more than the way of thinking or having more info. Using a computer or surfing the Internet does not mean that these are what we need. Each major or job has a special need with those, but we should have more to success in our job or school by using computer and Internet. For example, math is one of the most difficult classes in school, and it has a lot of complex problems such as the 3rd level of equation or higher. So, with the technology we do not use the old way to solve it, but what we have to learn is how we can use special programs on the computer. Therefore, there are a lot of skills that should be discussed before mentioning 21st century skills. Having the author's skills do not make us really able to catch up to people in this century. At this point, everyone should find the skills that he or she needs to be successful in the21st century.