Evaluating 21st Century Skills

As a part of my summer development and career advancement I am completing my Masters at Waldent University. One of my assignments is to evaluate the web site Partenship for 21st Century skills. The mission of this site is to build “collaborative partnerships among educators, businesses, government leaders, and communities.” They advocate that for U.S schools to produce students who are globally competitive in the workforce, the schools must “align classroom environments with real world environments by infusing 21^st century skills,” not only into the classroom in terms of infrastructure, but into the lesson plans as well.

To create inroads into this ideology they have partnered with various groups like Intel Education, Pearson, AASL, Adobe, Apple and Cable in the Classroom just to name a few. On the site one may also find the following resources:

1. Route 21: which is "an online interactive tool that demonstrates how 21^st century skills can be supported through standards, professional development, assessments and curriculum instruction." In searching through a couple links in this section I was a bit disappointed to find that their lesson plan data base was not up and running.

2. Assess21: is designed to provide "background information on 21st century skills assessment as they become available and is open to submission." Furthur investigation revealed that Assess 21 was now incorporated into Route 21.

3 Milestones for improving Learning and Education (MILE guide). Here you will find links to downloads, the MILE guide online assessment and the MILE guide workshop. MILE was designed to assist schools and teachers in identifying the progress of their schools in "defining, teaching and assessing 21st century skills.

The MILE guide assesment is something that anyone can complete online and once you have completed it you are given the results. The areas tested were learning and teaching; learning and managing; and finally partnering. This assessment gives you an idea of where you are in developing and implementing 21st century skills in the classroom.

I was dissappointed with certain aspects of the site however as a couple of the links did not work. I tried to acess the resource data base and the sucess stories but was unable to. It would have been interesting to read about the success stories.

Although I have already included the use of video clips, power point and webquests as the forerunners of 21^st Century skills in my classes, I am just beginning. My next step is to develop priorities for 21^st century skills, by adjusting my teaching techniques and lesson plans to include more technology applications in my subject area (Miners, Z. & Pascopella, A., 2007). I must also collaborate with outside partners and plan collectively and strategically, so that my students will be successful in their future endeavors. As Heather Wolpert comments in her blog, the summer break is not the time that a teacher gets off, but rather it is the time to replenish the classroom library, and explore our own professional development. Summer is also a time to learn new technology programs and find ways to implement them into our lesson for the upcoming school year.

Yes teachers, here in the U.S. and the world over, teaching is a noble yet taxing job. But, we have a responsibility to groom, and educate our students to meet 21^st century challenges and to do that, we need to realign our curriculum and get prepared this summer to make a change, make a difference. We need to use our time wisely to be trained in the skills needed for the 21^st century work world. My intention is to be prepared how about you?

References

Partnership for 21^st Century Skills

M Miners, Z., & Pascopella, A. (2007). The new literacies. District Administration, 43(10), 26- 34. Used by permission.

Wolpert, Heather (2009). The Myth of Having Summers Off.