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Category: 21st century skills

Leaders as Storytellers

The 21st Century calls upon our children to develop the skill of leadership – that is to abilify the gifts of others and work together to bring about changes that transform the world to be more just and beautiful. Developing the skill of leadership, according to the Grow a Generation resource What Do You Mean …

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Permanent link to this article: https://growageneration.com/2011/10/20/leaders-as-storytellers/

Leadership: Can Girls Rise to the Challenge?

     I pulled out all my favorite books on leadership in the process of co-authoring the new What Do You Mean I’m in Charge? Leadership Skills for Teens. Setting a good example, I checked over the last ten years of best sellers and the books being ordered by professors in graduate schools of leadership. It wasn’t …

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Permanent link to this article: https://growageneration.com/2011/09/29/leadership-can-girls-rise-to-the-challenge/

Not Merely Future Leaders, But Leaders Today

     May droplets of sunshine mix with dappled shadows of autumn leaves to blanket the path you walk today.      At twelve years old, my daughter attended a Leadership Conference in Toronto, Canada. She stayed a week with hundreds of children as young as nine and as old as twenty from around the world. Each …

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Permanent link to this article: https://growageneration.com/2011/09/21/not-merely-future-leaders-but-leaders-today/

Leadership: Opportunities Needed!

     Tuesday night over forty people gathered in a Community College classroom focused on how the FIRST series of robotics competitions can empower our children to develop 21st century skills. Co-presenting with me were five area young people experienced with FIRST robotics, Katrina, a 7th grader who had been competing with the FIRST Lego League …

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Permanent link to this article: https://growageneration.com/2011/09/15/leadership-opportunities-needed/

Teaching Innovation

Innovation is an essential skill for the 21st century. Can it be taught? Absolutely!  Skills are taught through modeling (that is surrounding the student with effective models and examples), by opportunities to practice the skill (project based learning), and by feedback that helps them internalize the changes they need to make to improve their practice …

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Permanent link to this article: https://growageneration.com/2011/08/25/teaching-innovation/

London Riots and FIRST Robotics

I watched video footage of the London riots dismayed by images of young people striking out with such violent fear of the future and utter disregard for the property of others.  No one explanation suffices.  One writer, picking up on tweets and social media posts, claimed these teens and young adults are frustrated by unemployment …

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Permanent link to this article: https://growageneration.com/2011/08/16/london-riots-and-first-robotics/

Imagineers and STEM Education

“We are not preparing children for the world we have lived in but for a future that we can barely imagine.” Gordon Brown, former dean of the MIT EngineeringSchool. Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?, differentiates between a politically conservative attitude of scarcity and ‘can’t do’ and an innovative engineering attitude of abundance and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://growageneration.com/2011/08/08/imagineers-and-stem-education/

The Possible’s Slow Fuse Lit by Imagination

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942 Do you consider yourself an innovator? One component is creativity, thinking up novel and unique ideas. We are far from unraveling the complexity of imagination, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://growageneration.com/2011/08/01/the-possibles-slow-fuse-lit-by-imagination/

Do I really want an innovative kid?

Innovation can be scary.  Juan Enriquez in his February 2009 TED Talk describes the three contemporary fields of innovation:  microbes, tissues and robots.  In the area of microbes, we now have programmable cells where we can insert DNA “snipets” and have it boot up as a different species (check out the 2010 International Genetically Engineered Machine …

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Permanent link to this article: https://growageneration.com/2011/07/26/do-i-really-want-an-innovative-kid/