The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Schools today are very concerned with raising test scores and making sure that students are meeting standards at each grade level. Now there is an organization that is looking beyond the test scores and even beyond the curriculum itself to the skills today's students will need in the future. This organization, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills has a vision that students will not only be equipped in the content areas of education but also in skill areas that will be needed as they become the next generation of workers in our country.

This is important because the skills that are needed in the workplace today are vastly different from those needed even a decade or two ago. I found that this site provided many great tools to help inform schools, businesses, leaders etc... about how they might be involved. I was surprised by the amount of information and appreciated that some of it was broken down by state to give more specific information.

This is helpful to me as an educator so that I can see where my students are as compared to where they should be concerning skills they will need to be able to perform. I can then make more informed decisions about areas where I can improve my teaching of these essential skills to my students so they can achieve success!

Blogs in the Classroom

I have recently discovered blogs for myself, and today I have been exposed to various ways that blogs can be utilized in the classroom. I would love to see my students having the opportunity to participate in such a collaborative community of learners.

I currently teach 4th grade language arts and social studies and I think that a blog would be a really neat tool to use for either one of these content areas, or both! If I set up a blog for my classroom it would be used to give my students the opportunity to communicate and interact with each other about the content of the class. I would also like to see it be used as an online journal of sorts for the students to respond to questions that I would post or to simply share their thoughts with each other. This would enable the students to challenge each other in positive ways and would allow them to express themselves both factually and creatively.

Having a blog for my class would also allow me to occasionally comment back to them or challenge them to think further on specific topics. I also see that this would be a great way to communicate more specifically on assignments and offer more feedback to my students.

Experiences

As I consider the opportunities I had to use technology in elementary school compared to what my students have now, I am amazed by the progress. My computer classes in elementary school consisted of playing educational games once, maybe twice, a week. My students are learning how to type and use word processing, how to use photoshop programs, how to create PowerPoint presentations, and much more! Most recently, my students have been able to use technology to communicate with students from an international school in Mexico. In the near future, they will have the opportunity to video conference with these students to do a project concerning global issues. The fourth graders have been able to "meet" their peers from Mexico through a PowerPoint presentation and are looking forward to learning and working with these students this year!

We have definitely progressed from the days of having computer opportunities once a week simply to play learning games. I am so excited to see what my students are able to do and even more excited to learn new ways to incorporate technology into my lessons. Any ideas for incorporating technology in the classroom would be appreciated!