This week, I had some time to explore the website for the
Partnership for 21st Century Skills.
This is a National organization that advocates 21st century readiness
for every student. They believe that
every child in the U.S. needs 21st
century knowledge and skills to succeed as effective citizens, workers and
leaders. The members of
this partnership come from a wide variety of fields – from Apple and NEA, to
Ford and Cisco. I found this site to be
an incredible wealth of resources for anyone invested in education, whether you
are a teacher, policymaker, parent, or community member. In a world where technology is drastically
altering the way we live, play, work, and learn, educators need to be prepared
to teach their students the skills they need to succeed. The teacher-specific resources on this site
were incredibly helpful and concise. I
liked the Common-Core Toolkit, which provided a guide for aligning the 21st
century framework with Common Core state standards. It provides an easy overview for any teacher
to incorporate more technology into the lessons and content they teach every
day. There were also strategies for
educators on how to create a 21-century learning environment in both their
school and individual classrooms.
Professional development opportunities and skills maps for specific
content areas were other resources that I found particularly helpful. I also read some of the site’s blog
posts. The most current post about
getting people (specifically policymakers) on board with engaging in dialogue
about 21st century skills really struck a chord with me - especially since I
discussed this in my last discussion post.
Although I was talking about colleagues in my school building, many of
the points in the post were applicable.
It helped me to look at some strategies for getting more people in my
building to understand the importance of teaching 21st century skills and
embedding them into every lesson we teach.
Any teacher who is not working to do this is doing their students an
incredible injustice. If you read under
the “What Employers Say” heading on the site, anyone can see that the skill
sets presented on this site are absolutely necessary for anyone entering the
workforce in the upcoming years. I think
that every educator today needs to take a look at this website and it’s
resources, and find out if they are doing everything they can to prepare their students
for the new global economy. The time has
come for technology to be a requirement in the classroom, not just an option.
Check out the Partnership for 21st Century Skills site at http://www.p21.org/
After reading your post I plan on taking a closer look at the Common Core Toolkit. The first time I visited the blog I was slightly over whelmed by the vast variety of information.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement that teachers who refuse to integrate 21st Century Skills into their classes are doing their students a great disservice. I understand that some schools simply do not have funding for much technology in their schools, but there are many teachers who do not use the technology they have available to them. In addition, to getting teachers on board, this year I've been advocating technology to parents as well. Our school went to 1:1 computing 5th-12th grades and many parents of our high schoolers needed some convincing that the technology is necessary. However, when technology is used effectively and allows students to create projects instead of just self-teaching themselves math skills and answering questions, it is easy to convince parents that technology is a wonderful educational tool. When students become engaged, the knowledge they have obtained is clearly evident in their project, and they actually ASK to spend more time working on a task, technology becomes a crucial necessity in the classroom.
Yes Mindy! Any parent (or educator) who is not convinced of the benefits of technology needs to sit in on one lesson in our classrooms. If they could see how much more engaged, excited, and creative students become through the use of technology, they would definitely change their minds. Just the difference between my pre-SMARTBoard classroom and my current classroom is incredible!
DeleteThe Common Core Toolkit certainly does have a lot of useful information! I need to look more closely at it, but I think it could and should take an important spot in planning for Common Core, as well as how we will be assessing our students based on the Common Core. It only makes sense to me to integrate the two now to ensure the educational advancement of our students into the 21st century workforce!
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