After navigating through the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website, I was very impressed and motivated by the information and resources included on this site. The 21st Century Learning Framework provides an excellent visual representation of what essential skills students will need to acquire to be successful. Another aspect of the site that I found helpful was the “Route 21” link. After reading about some of the skills teachers need to be teaching, the “Route 21” link provides lots of great resources and tools that educators can begin using and implementing within their classrooms.
I was a little surprised by the short list of states included under the “State Initiatives” link. It is apparent how important each of the skills included in the Partnership for 21st Century Learning Framework are. It is critical for our students gain these skills in order to be successful in today’s competitive workforce. With society and technology advancing at such a fast pace, it will be necessary for every state to begin working towards preparing our students with many of these 21st century skills.
The 21st Century Skills website is an excellent resource that educators can reference for ideas on how to support the needs of our students. I am a strong advocate for the vision the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website has. I did not see anything that I would disagree with. As an educator in today’s classrooms, I would definitely recommend this site. The assessments and resources found on this site help to guide the instruction needed for preparing our students with the essential skills they will need.
Partnership for 21st Century Skills
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I would also classify what was covered in this website as "essential skills". We need to teach our students to be ready and everyday we awaken to newer technology. The list of states surprised me also, I would have guessed that closer to half would be listed and was disappointed by what I saw. I had not looked at the state list before, thank you for pointing it out.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised at the state list as well. This is a great site to share with my colleagues. The only proplem I have is that most of us know that we are not teaching technology to the fullest, but do not have the means to do something about it. Technology costs more money than we are allowed and it would take several years to save up enough money to buy what we need in our class. I would love for our district to supply us with current resources. We have a grant to recieve computers from Group Health Corporation. The computers are old and out dated by the time we get them, but at least there are computers in our classes. Some teachers have one computer for the entire class and others, such as myself, have 5 which are used during center time. After viewing this site it was frustrating because I do not know how to help my students get ready for the tech world. Though the site is great, what do we do now?
ReplyDeleteAllison,
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree with you more. As several of the readings explained, many of the schools/teachers in our nation are not up to date with the latest innovations in technology. Many of our students have a stronger understanding of how to use resources such as Web 2.0. Miners and Pascopella gave a clear understanding of this when they wrote, "..we're still struggling here with the best technology in the schools, and one might are the least use".
References:
Miners, Z., & Pascopella, A. (2007). The New Literacies. District Administration, 43(10), 26–34.
Melissa,
ReplyDeleteAs you noticed, the list of states included on the Partnership for 21st Century Skills was very limited. I'm hoping that the next time I check back to the site, I will see my home state listed.