Partnership for 21st Century Skills website

Wow, I never knew that this site : http://www.p21.org existed. I have spent some time on the site reading through articles. I found one on executives stating that the 21st Century requires more skilled workers. These skills require the workers to not only know the three R's, but they need to be better prepared in the area of the four C's: critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation. These skills will become more important to business and organizations in the near future and our students need to learn these skills in order to be successful when leaving school.

I know that it is important to have these skills, however, I did not know that we are lacking in general with preparing our students with the four C's. According to the findings from the AMA, organizations will be requiring their workforce to be proficient with the four C's as part of their employees training and development. So, we as educators must start now, if we haven't already, with preparing our students with these necessary skills.

The website, P21.org, has many useful articles to read through that can give any educator a better understanding as to why it is important to prepare our students for the 21st Century. After looking at the Framework graphic, I have to disagree with the percentage that life and career skills is given. I know that the other three areas are important in order to be successful, but learning life and career skills is enormously important for everyone. You can be the smartest, brightest, etc, but if you do not possess life skills, then your are stuck in the mud, so to say.

As an educator, I can see where this site can have an impact on my students and how they view the 21st century skills that they will need to be successful.

Blogging in my classroom

I teach a high school web design and development course to 10th through 12th grade students that I do believe would have good use for a blog site to help them with the course. I could set one up for my students to share html code ideas and tips. They could share design concepts and scripting language ideas. When I get into flash, they could post links to helpful websites and share their flash work and how they accomplished them. I think this would not only benefit the students in my class, but I believe that I would learn a lot more about the course I teach, and stay on top of the current technology trends in our society. I think that a class blog site would allow me to see how talented my students are and where they may or may not be struggling in class. I know that some students will always do the minimum in class, and there are those who go above and beyond my expectations. Having them interact with each other through a blog might motivate the unmotivated to be more creative and produce better quality work! Using a blog that they could access from home would allow them to show their parents the concepts and projects that they are working, stay on top of things if they missed class, and share new fun ways to do things that they might discover outside of the classroom.

Technology in the classroom

With the ever changing technology that can be incorporated into the classroom, I think that we, as educators, are moving towards a paperless environment and that textbooks will be replaced by e-books. Students will have access to their work from their home computers in addition to their access at school. Students will start using social networking sites, blogs, and chat rooms more frequently and use them as a resource tool in their studies and assignments. Texting, smart phones, iPads, etc. will be more useful in the classroom providing that they are used for educational purposes. All this technology can be overwhelming to the veteran teachers who prefer the textbooks and not so much the technology. Training these educators on how to use this technology is critical if the students are going to benefit from its use in all classrooms.