21st Century Index Card Challenge

 21 Century Learning & The Tower Challenge

The new buzz word in education is 21st Century Learning. Under this title falls 12 skills that educators say is the ticked to a job in the future for our newest generation of middle school students. The 12 skillsets are: creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, digital literacy, informational literacy, technology literacy, flexibility, leadership, initiative, social skills and productivity. 

What I recently noticed was that the very simple yet very fun team building STEAM challenge (The Tower Challenge) that only requires 30-60 index cards and a small figurine to sit atop the tower for 10 seconds without falling is all that is required to practice all of these very valuable skillsets. 

If each student team then uses technology to collect video footage of their challenge to create a video of their learning process then all 12 of the twenty first century skills will be met. This activity can be done within the first 20 minutes of class and it is a great way to jumpstart learning and creative thinking for the day.