The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

This site contains all the information, and more, that would have been useful to me for the past two years, when I participated in my district's rollout of G.L.I.D.E.S (Global Learning Initiative for Digital Education for Students). While the workshops I took at that time were definitely eye-openers for me, I really did not have the total concept of how important digital education and the accompanying 21st Century skills are in today's workplace, or how essential they are to global (and local) problem-solving. Of course I thought that digital tools were cool and exciting, and certainly learning to collaborate is an important skill for middle school students to learn, somehow all the pieces never really came together for me, and mentally I was still looking for students to come up with the answer based on research, as opposed to sharing points of view.

As I browsed through the list of partners on the website, I began to understand that with the diverse array of companies, this initiative is really important. I also was surprised to find that funding for 21st century skills was signed into law as the 21st Century Skill Incentive Fund Act. I want to find out if the funding for the Promethean boards in our school comes from that funding; I also want to get more involved in advocating for the incorporation of 21st Century skills into the district curriculum.

Right now, I'm not sure that I disagree with anything on the website escept for the fact that this technology has not reached as many children in as many classrooms as it ought to have reached. Why is the concept of 21st Century skills not being disseminated to all educators? Why is this funding not trickling down to all the students who need it most?

Living as I do in Florida, I also have some serious concerns for implications in the near future. We are supposedly readying ourselves to welcome an influx of Haitian students, many orphans, into our district quite soon; how can we offer them the best possible education without being technologically prepared, that is, without having all the resources available to them so that they can best learn how to survive in a modern society?  We do not have these resources for all the students we have now, and even if they are available, teachers do not have the training necessary to use these resources. I find myself asking what I can do to speed up the process of getting teachers trained. Most teachers claim that they have no time, because they are too busy preparing their students for standardized testing. The key is to convince these teachers, along with administrators and district policy-makers, that change must occur through our initiative: if testing will not change, then we must change testing. I need to find other teachers who  are thinking along these lines, and investigate further on how to become a state partner with this movement. I want Florida to be one of the 25 states that will be a partner with this intiative by 2014, as predicted by Ken Kay, the President of  Partnership for 21st Century skills. Ironically, 2014 is the year in which all schools are supposed to reach 100% AYP.


 I was interested to find videos on this site that showed how teachers incorporate skill-building in technology into their curricula, links to project-based learning resources, and to international learning sites. This is definitely a site I will return to in the near future.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Book Talks

Blogging would be an excellent way for my Language Arts students, who are all in middle school, from Grade 6 through Grade 8, to talk about books they are reading. Although these book talks are conducted verbally in class, not everyone participates because some students simply do not feel comfortable with talking in front of their peers. Many do not feel confident enough about their own opinions to speak them aloud.  If they can write in a blog, however, I feel they would be much more inclined to express their opinions and their enthusiasm. So initially the blog would be for discussing content.

To extend this activity, we will also be blogging about books we are reading as part of the curriculum; I will post questions for discussion and then have students engage in dialogue to discover answers to the questions. the lessons will be enhanced because everyone will take part, and students will feel more free to talk to each other; another important point is that natural discussion leaders will emerge from the blogs, and so the students will be more autonomous and less constricted by me always leading them where my mind tends to go, and I can facilitate from the sidelines rather than be the constant dominant presence.

Eventually I want engage students in reviewing each other's writing prior to publication, and then showcasing it online. There is an NCTE site where teachers can create a gallery for their students' best work. I believe the blogging process in a private context however would be great for students to peer review their work.

Taking Small Steps in Blogging

Most of my students have never actually blogged before, although of course a majority are adept at texting and instant messaging. They are surprised when I tell them that texting language is not to be used with blogging, but generally they accept this rule because, after all, this is a language arts class! For this reason, I'm finding it necessary to first conduct a lesson on the proper use of blogging: that is, it's designed for use as a classroom tool in this case, and should not contain references to their plans outside of school or other strictly personal data. Most students also do not keep diaries, so I find myself needing to introduce them to the concept of journaling. So far I have only asked them to comment on the current literature we are reading, by either asking a question, drawing a conclusion, or relating a personal story. Since I already have a website where I post homework that they are familiar with, I have bypassed the first step recommended by Richardson (p. 45). The next step, however, of getting them to read blogs, I am going to try when we get back to school next Wednesday after this short break. It is also the start of a new semester, so I believe that may be a good place to begin.

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wiks, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Learning About Technology in the Classroom

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