An educational concept that has been heavily talked about nowadays is the idea of 21st century skills. But what does this actually mean? Let’s break it down with an example. In 2020, the world was faced with an extreme crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic. This pandemic took the whole world by storm and forced everyone to adapt to a new way of living, from the way we shop for groceries to the way we learn in school. This change in our everyday lives created many challenges that we as a society were not prepared for and had to adjust to quickly. People had to learn new communication and technology skills to continue with their education, jobs, and day to day interactions.
Although this incident may seem a bit unique, the world is constantly changing, now more than ever. Skills and expertise that were once needed and expected for jobs only as long as 10 years ago are no longer useful in our market. Our discussions are no longer held in conference rooms, but on zoom meetings. We no longer have to go to the store to buy essentials, we can order them online and have them shipped right to our doors.
Whether we like it or not, the world is evolving, and in order to prepare ourselves, we must also approach learning through a different lens. In order to thrive in our digital age, many educators have constructed the idea of 21st century skills. These skills are more so built on innovative and creative soft skills rather than just academics.
So, how can we prepare our children and educators for a new generation of successful leaders?
You’re in luck, because we already created the solution.
Introducing STEAM Hub, our cutting-edge, interactive online learning platform that connects the real world to modern day learning. With a focus on science, technology, engineering, and math, students and teachers have the opportunity to explore our 65+ courses that reach on a variety of topics including coding, game design, entrepreneurship, digital art, and so much more!
How does STEAM Hub connect to 21st Century skills?
The three main areas of 21st century skills are learning skills, literacy skills, and life skills. We have analyzed these fields thoroughly and incorporated their concepts into our curriculums:
Learning Skills:
The four sub-branches of learning skills are critical thinking, creative thinking, communicating, and collaborating, which are all apparent through the STEAM Hub platform.
1.Critical Thinking:
Students will learn fresh perspectives on the function of technology, what it is capable of, and how it affects both individuals’ lives and entire communities via practical experience. For instance, in the cybersecurity course(gr. 3-5), students are tasked to create a poster of how society will look like in the year 3000. As a result, youth will acquire critical thinking abilities and the capacity for self-reflection in relation to information and digital technologies.
2. Creative Problem Solving:
Youth will use their imaginations to create innovative and adaptable problem-solving techniques throughout the courses (which will be further elaborated under Life Skills). Youth will comprehend the part technology may play in fostering original problem-solving. Moreover, students will link ideas and problems via a variety of learning situations, and they will be able to recognize and characterize challenges. An example of this is in coding with Microbit, where students are asked to identify the challenges that came about while coding and architect a plan on how to solve them.
3. Communication and Collaboration:
Although student interaction may be limited in an asynchronous environment, we have created discussion posts for students to communicate and collaborate with each other. As a result, students will be able to effectively and respectfully communicate their ideas and experiences, developing a sense of partnership within the virtual classroom community.
Literacy Skills:
Through the concept of 21st century skills, there has been a big emphasis on technology literacy, something that STEAM Hub specializes in. In the realm of coding, we provide a comprehensive range of programming languages to support children of all ages, from beginner-level like Scratch to industry-standard programming languages like Python, Java, and C++. In addition to that, we offer a variety of courses in other technological fields, including robotics, video game creation, digital art and media, artificial intelligence, and much more. The diversity of courses available to students will not only help them develop their technological skills and enhance their academic work in school, but it will also inspire them to pursue passions in the field of STEM.
Life Skills:
The four main branches of life skills that we ensured to promote through STEAM Hub’s courses are initiative, flexibility, leadership, and real world problem solving.
1.Initiative:
Students learn best when they have learning goals and success criteria to guide them. All courses and programs include clear learning outcomes through the communication of “learning goals” in each lesson.
2. Flexibility & Leadership:
STEAM Hub also promotes flexibility and leadership with our self-paced learning model that allows students to set their own goals and take initiative to achieve them with their own creative strategies.
3. Real World Problem solving:
Although problem-solving is a valuable trait in and of itself, it is crucial to be able to apply these abilities to situations and problems that arise in the real world. Throughout various STEAM Hub modules, we have implemented United Nations Global Goals Challenges to inspire students to use their skills to shape the future and change the world. An example of this is using 3D design to design the homes of the future in alignment with the Sustainable Cities and Communities goal or designing an app to promote sustainable clothing companies as part of the Responsible Consumption and Production goal. These activities have been curated specifically so that students can practice applying their classroom problem-solving skills on a larger scale.
All in all, 21st century skills are the new methods of effective teaching and very important for youth to learn starting from a young age. Get started with your free STEAM Hub trial today, and watch your knowledge and abilities transform! You will have access to foundational courses that will make you excited to not only continue, but thrive through your #FearlessJourney.
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