Partnership for the 21st Century Skills
My initial response was that this could be another helpful resource for educators, but as I went deeper, I began to understand the importance of the web site. Many others like it offer a wealth of information and resources to guide teachers in the 21st century, but this site seems to be focused more on creating an initiative to achieve these skills. Offering a visitors the opportunity to interact and submit ideas is a great jumping off point for getting people involved. Collaboration is truly going to be the key for the modern learner.
I was a little dissapointed not to see my state involved. What did impress me though was that there seems to be some investors on board. Without proper funding we won't achieve anything, take for example the No Child Left Behind Act.
This reminded me of piece I listned to on NPR a while back. They were discussing an inititive that got high school aged students placed in real working environment in order to expose them to the real world skills and critical thinking. These opportunites, much like what the Partnership is advocating, is providing skills that studetns will use in the future. It simply amazed me to learn that our studetns spend only about 15 minutes per week using technology in our schools compared to what how much time they will be spending with technology in the workplace. The gap needs to be tightened not widened and maybe a project such as this can help.
The implications for this project could be enormous, but it will remain to be seen if we can get everyone on board. We are often mired by the politics of everything when it comes to inititives that are all encompassing.
A Blog of My Own
12 years ago
I agree, I thought at first it was a good resource but I did find that it did guide the reader toward what the site is trying to achieve. I liked how you can interact with it in a variety of ways or just search out information depending on why you were on the site in the first place. I also agree with your point on funding, if things are not properly funded, they tend to go nowhere.
ReplyDeleteMy state was on the list and that did surprise me. Working in a state on the list, I would thought that I would have heard more about 21st century skills. However, I may not be aware of it due to different terminology or they way they are working at reaching these ideas.
Our school district does have programs that allow students to work part of the day rather than spend the whole day at school. While I think this is a great thing for many students, I don't think the students then get to work on or learn the skills they discover they need. I think more needs to be done to connect working experiences with school experiences.