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Become an Information
Detective!
That is what I encourage my students to do.
"What is an information
detective?" you say. It is a person who
will survive in the 21st century,
because he/she is a lifelong learner. This learner knows how to access information,
make sense of it, and communicate it to others. Most of us use these skills
everyday in our jobs.
Bob Eaton, chairman and CEO of Chrysler Corporation, recently observed,
"For many upper-elementary students, learning stops being an adventure
and starts to seem like a chore." The U.S. Labor Department, in a study
called SCANS, noted that workers of the future need to know how to organize
resources, work with others, find and use information, apply technology,
and analyze and improve
the way things work. Simply learning a body of existing
knowledge will no longer be enough. The SCANS report concluded that 50%
of what we learn today will be unusable in 10 years. In the elementary school
we are preparing students for jobs that don't currently exist.
Don't get me wrong! My students still learn the
basics, but I attempt to
help them see a need for the knowledge, rather than simply having them learn
information because you or I say they must.
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