Thursday, July 23, 2009
21st Century Skills
After viewing the website The Partnership for 21st Century Skills I must say that I was excited, yet disappointed at the same time. I was excited about the fact that an organization had been created to "serve as a catalyst to position 21st century skills at the center of US K-12 education" (Partnership, 2004); yet disappointed because Washington State was not yet a part of the initiative. In fact, it was very surprising to see that there were absolutely no states from the west coast involved. Although our state is not involved in the partnership, I would have to say that I disagree with the graphic representation of the framework for 21st century skills shown on their "overview" link. I do not believe that "life and career skills; learning and innovation skills; and information, media, and technology skills" are correctly represented. I believe that "life and career skills" include "learning and innovation skills" and "information, media, and technology skills". Although I do not believe the graphic representation is correct, I do believe in what they are trying to do as a partnership and hope that by using this site as a resource I might be able to get my state involved. If not, at least I can use this site as a way to explain to my students what 21st century skills are and why they are so important. I will also use this site to help locate professional development opportunities in my area. I am glad to have found this site and will be adding my e-mail to recieve updates in the future.
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3 comments:
Erin,
My state is not a part of the Partnership's initiative yet either. The website is a good resource for those of us who are implementing 21st century skills into our instruction. Since I teach kindergarten, I must say that it is troubling to think about the fact that the students will be exposed to and learn the importance of these skills in my classroom, but their future teachers may not know about and, therefore, not reinforce and build upon these skills. My principal often speaks about the importance of teaching 21st century skills, but I have to wonder how many of the staff truly recognize and understand the importance of 21st century skills. I am hoping to discuss, with my principal, strategies we can implement to get all teachers in our building "onboard" with teaching these valuable skills.
Erin,
There seems to be a common theme in our classmates' reactions to the low number of state partnerships with P21! It is nice that even without the partnership, we are able to access the organization's resources through its Web site. It makes me wonder how many individual school districts and/or teachers across the country are on board with P21, even if their states are not in official partnerships with them. Hopefully that number is high. I did notice that there are around 6000 members subscribed to Route 21, the site connected to P21 for resources and support systems. It would be interesting to see the demographics of that membership.
Your point about the graphic organization of necessary skills was interesting. I hadn't thought about the particular way in which the skills are grouped, but it does make me curious as to how the grouping decisions were made, whether they were data driven or grouped by a committee of some sort. I've had experience in business education with that type of decision making, except that it related to career clusters, and people don't always see eye-to-eye about how those types of categories should be grouped!
I agree that the graphic representation is a little lacking, and that the rainbow and catergorization could use some work. The general vision of the organization is wonderful, however, and I too wish that my state would sign on. I think that one of the ways to get your state on the list would be to write your congressman and others to put some pressure on the state school board.
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