Sunday, July 26, 2009

Evaluating 21st Century Skills

The Partnership or 21st Century Skills is the leading advocacy organization ( focused on infusing 21st century skills into education. My reaction is still that of amazement that this is what is going on and I was unclear of all the ins and outs of this. It was a user friendly website and did give quite a few snap shots of how these particular things work, just not as detailed as I would like.

Just as students can deepen their knowledge when teamed with their peers in the classroom, students can broaden their prospective of the world through relationships with international counterparts. ( This will allow them to navigate globally later in life.

The thing that I disagreed with was the states that were associated with this and that only 11 states were on this list. Looking at this for the first time, and reading all the emphasis they are doing to coordinate government and schools and get everyone together, one would assume that all 50 states would be applicable to this. Once these 11 get with the program what will happen to the other 41 states? Who will catch them up while the first 11 get ahead?

Georgia is not on the list of 11 states, but there is no reason why I cannot go ahead and start implementing these strategies in my classroom. Once Georgia gets on the list, I would like to think that because I advocated being a contemporary educator, my students (regardless of what grade they were in) would be a step above the learning curve of technology wherever it may fall at that moment. The ICT/Global awareness is something that will be implemented in my class next year; it can be achieved at different levels and made age appropriate. My students will benefit greatly from these new skills and I feel as they go to middle school, highschool and college, they will feel more confident in themselves and the amount of technology they have been taught to better them for their future.