As an educator, I know how important it is to prepare the students that I have worked with for the future. In order to prepare them, it is vital to teach them the 21st century skills that they will need in order to enter higher education and to succeed in the workplace. This week I have been looking at the site called Partnership for 21st Century Skills. This website is full of a lot of information, and it will take more than just a few minutes to look through the whole site.
My initial response to the page was pretty positive. On the front page, they have have links to other sections of the page, along with with icons for Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Linkedin. They also have a small box with some of their twitter feed in it. I also like how they have a section towards the bottom on the main page that has featured blog posts. I also enjoyed reading about their mission. Part of the mission states that, every child in the United States needs 21st century skills and knowledge to succeed as an effective worker, citizen and leader (P21, N.D.).
One thing that surprised me was all of the resources that they had available to educators. My favorite resource was the one on a 21st century learning environment. A 21st century learning environment enables the students to learn in a real world 21st century contexts, such as doing a project based assignment (P21, N.D.b). The information listed here will definitely help me develop a whole new learning environment for the students.
Another thing that I found to be helpful and surprising is the information on the 21st century skills maps and ICT literacy maps. There is as ton of information that is extremely useful to an educator, and this information can be used in the classroom to help teach the students the skills that they need to move towards a good job.
In conclusion, I found this website to be intriguing and filled with a lot of information. I didn't find anything that I disagreed with, instead I found a lot information that I agreed with and liked. I think this web site can be helpful to all educators and I recommend it for all educators to read.
References:
P21. (N.D). Twenty First Century Children. Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Retrieved from: http://www.p21.org/about-us/our-mission
P21. (N.D.b). A 21st Century Skills ImplementationGuide. Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Retrieved from: http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/p21-stateimp_learning_environments.pdf
Posts
6 comments:
I was also surprised by the amount of resources available for educators, policy makers, community members, and more. I found the skills maps to be useful. Do you think you would incorporate these maps into your lesson and unit planning? It would add more to our plate, but I think it is important to address the 21st Century skills. Using the maps would allowing educators a resource on how and when to incorporate these skills.
Tori,
I do think that I would use these maps within my lessons and units. I know it would add a lot of extra work, but I really think it would be worth it in the end. It is really important to me to teach students the skills that they are going to need to succeed in their life, and with everything going more and more towards technology, I feel it is even more important to teach the students 21st Century Skills.
I too enjoyed all of the resources they had for teachers. And what is even better is that they are FREE! A lot of companies like this make you pay a membership fee before you can access any of the teaching resources they offer so it's nice to know that their main mission is about children learning these skills and not raising money. something that was on the website that you did not mention was the blog. If you missed this while you were looking through this week they are always adding to it. I found so many helpful topics they post about! Right now it mostly posts about brain research impacting education but if you go back you can see other topics that were addressed. I really enjoyed looking through it so you may as well.
Lori,
I too enjoyed the Learning Environments resource section. Most students will retain information longer when they participate in project based assignments. Our district is really emphasizing hands on learning environments. I teach in an elementary school, but our high schools are becoming career oriented. On a larger scale, each high school has specified career programs. For instance, one high school specializes in Public Health Sciences so students interested in that field will attend classes there even if they are not zoned for that area. I agree with you that this site offers resources to teachers that will help us teach our students the skills necessary to find a good job.
I'm really glad you mentioned the learning resources. I would like to go back and research those in more detail. What kinds of information did you learn about the learning environment in the article that could be useful in our classrooms?
Michelle, I was really surprised that all of these resources were free. Like you said, a lot of times you have to pay a fee to access those resources.
Lynn, I really like how you mentioned that the high schools have specified career programs and that students can attend those schools even if they are not zoned too.
Whitney, some of the information that I learned about was on the 21st Century Skills Maps. The maps have a lot of information and ideas on them on how to teach the students that skill. The one I really looked closely at was the one for the arts. I'm excited to use this, especially the section on communication, as a lot of students seems to struggle with communicating.
Post a Comment