While looking through the website "Partnership for 21st Century Skills" it was interesting to see the resources that were available on this website. One link that I clicked on took me to another website called Edutopia which was created by The George Lucas Educational Foundation. On this website were tons of resources to help teachers integrate technology. It also has videos of teachers using different technology, or a variety of good teaching practices, in the classroom.
http://www.edutopia.org/
http://www.edutopia.org/video
On the website "Partnership for 21st Century Skills," I found a list of the states that have adopted this program and was surprised to not see California as one of these states. It was interesting to read that its focus is on implementing skills in the following areas, critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation, within standard assessments and professional development programs. It is so important for educators to incorporate activities that develop these skills into the classroom environment in order to prepare students for the professional world. However, I am not fully aware of how to successfully do this within my own classroom environment. Some of the resources from these websites give me an opportunity to understand them and see how they are used with students.
It was interesting to read how information about the skills students will need in the professional world was developed based on the assistance from many businesses. After watching the videos from our resources this week, it was also interesting to see how aligned the intitiatives on this website are to the skills Dr. Thornburg discussed.
There are a ton of resources through this website that I would like to look into further. The Edutopia website is also a great one for resources. Spending time to look through these resources will help me to understand how to better implement critical thinking skills into the classroom environment.
Heather,
ReplyDeleteYour post gives a nice overview of this site. I found the site to have a lot of information and I honestly thought it was a little overwhelming. However, I agree that there were many places to find good information and even some resources. I am going to look at the edutopia.org which I have actually heard about at my school but I have never actually looked at.
The skills you mentioned that is posted on the website in many places, including the visual chart are really good skills to be incorporated into curriculum so that students are ready for the 21st century. I agree that it is difficult to think of how to incorporate it all into the classroom environment. However, many of the skills can be incorporated at the same time and many are easy to work in, the problem is simply laying the ground work and planning it so that the skills are integrated. My district has created a wonderful integrated curriculum that crosses curriculum areas and is still being developed (they are up to third grade) but as a kinder teacher, I have used it for two years and it is so nice. While these 21st century skills are not a part of this curriculum, I feel that it does incorporate many of them just because of the way it is set up. I think the idea of districts and states creating some type of integrated curriculum using these 21st century skills could be very helpful to teachers and fruitful for students!
Nicole deMoll
PS- Your blog is lovely!
Hi Heather,
ReplyDeleteA thoughtful posting.
One way that I find can help to draw on creativity and problem solving to a greater extent, as well as collaboration, is to include a problem-based project as a synthesis activity or research activity. Even very young students might be able to work together toward a goal--creating a mural--making a model of a community--if students have decisions to make and must negotiate as a group, they are going to get valuable experience developing these higher order communication and problem solving skills so prized in a 21st century workplace.
I enjoyed reading your blog. Beautiful background.