What does every school district have in common? Whether your role is Superintendent, Principal, Teacher, Intervention Specialist, Technology Coach, or Reading Tutor you all share a common goal – equipping students for the future.

What does this look like? What skills are necessary to be successful beyond the classroom?

The 4Cs were born out of the framework developed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills to define what our learners should develop in order to be successful once they leave the classroom. The 4Cs serve as a road map to provide authentic, engaging learning experiences for students. The 4Cs are:

  1. Collaboration – Using technology in the classroom can easily take your in-class groups or partner pairs to the next level. In person grouping can present a variety of limitations. With technology, those barriers can be knocked down. Using a tool such as an online discussion board allows every student in the classroom to collaborate with each other as well as other grade levels. Collaborating with a wide variety of their peers and not just those in the same room creates a bigger impact on student learning. Students now have the opportunity to collaborate with other schools in your district and around the world. Technology can make this possible through collaborative documents such as Google Docs, video conferencing such as Google Meets, or something as simple as an online discussion board using your LMS.
  2. Communication – Learning becomes authentic when students are able to communicate their learning to a real audience, not just their teacher and classmates. Technology not only allows students to share their work with a larger audience but to communicate it in a clear and effective way. Use Flipgrid, a tool where students can record a video of themselves to communicate their learning, publish a podcast where students share their findings on a specific objective, or have students create a presentation to publish online.
  3. Critical Thinking – Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, we know that true learning occurs beyond memorization and basic recall. In order to fully engage with the learning objectives students must be able to think critically about a problem at hand. Using technology allows students to analyze, interpret, and make decisions about real world problems. Imagine students using a program like Tinkercad to create a 3D model to solve everyday problems in the classroom, or a program like Google MyMaps in order to map out bear sightings around the community to discover patterns and find solutions. Technology allows students to investigate and provide out of the box solutions.
  4. Creativity – At the heart of innovation is creativity. Many people associate creativity with artistic skills but when technology is utilized it becomes more than that. Students can discover new ways of thinking and demonstrate their knowledge using tools such as Adobe Spark to record and tell a story, Canva to create a unique infographic to organize their learning, or Genially for interactive learning experience. When thinking of the SAMR model, utilizing these tools can move your lesson from the enhancement category into the transformation category.

When students are engaged in all 4Cs in the classroom they walk out empowered and ready to change the world. Technology can be used as a tool to easily reach these goals and give our students more opportunities.