Evaluating 21st Century Skills

Literacy of 21st century skills will ultimately determine whether today’s students will have the knowledge to be prepared to live, learn, work and interface in an environment drenched with technology. The partnership for 21st century skills suggests that educational decision makers must acknowledge that the academics of yesterday are not adequate for preparing students to be proficient when using technology of today.

“In education we need to think about preparing students intensively to collaborate” (Laureate Education., Inc., 2008). The mission of The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is to form collaborate efforts of several educators, businesses, communities and government leaders to inspire action within classrooms across the United States with 21st century skills. Those skills include critical thinking, problem solving, communication skills, teamwork/collaboration, leadership, creativity/innovative thinking, lifelong learning, self-direction, professionalism, ethics, and social responsibility among other such skills. It is fundamental that they added these skills that are necessary for the 21st century with the core subjects that need to be taught and that also correspond with what students are already learning.

I am surprised to see that only 14 states are considered to be P21 Leadership States which are committed to revising state standards, assessments, and professional development to incorporate the teaching and practice of these 21st century skills. On a positive note, I was pleasantly surprised to see the resources that were available to teachers. This organization has provided teachers with tools that will help us integrate 21st century skills into education without having to rewrite the curriculum. They have supplied educators with standards, assessments, student outcomes, and support systems. (www.21centuryskills.org)

This inspires me to provide my students with an education that promotes the 21st century skills they need for the future. We cannot expect students to leave school with simply basic knowledge skills. We educators need to encourage expert thinking and communication. “If you’re going to change schools you have to have a vision for it” (Miners & Pascopella, 2007, p.2).
Students today are expected to know more than just reading, writing, and math skills. We need to encourage students to become lifelong learners and focus on their creativity, expert thinking skills, communication, and collaboration. Technology can effectively teach these skills so our students can be successful in today’s workforce and economy.

Resources:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). Skills for the 21st century. [Motion Picture]. Understanding the impact of technology on education, work and society. Baltimore: Author.

Miners, Z., & Pascopella, A. (2007). The new literacies. District Administration, 43(10), 26–34.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2009). http://www.21stcenturyskills.org

Utilizing Blogs in Health and Physical Education

Many subject areas offer students numerous avenues to use technology daily. PowerPoint’s, laptop computers, interactive white boards, podcasts, and flip cameras are some examples of the technology that has become part of a student’s school experience. With the creation of blogs available on the web, I am now able to incorporate this form of technology into my ninth grade health and physical education classes as well.
Our county along with many others take advantage of a web based software portal, or Edline, that allows teachers to communicate with students and parents about grades, assignments, test/quiz dates, project guidelines, and classroom announcements, etc. I can use Edline to introduce blogging into my classroom by creating a blog and attaching the link to the class portal. In our school would actually have to create a wiki space with the other health and physical education teachers since weblogs are blocked from our county’s network service.
An idea for blogging in my health classes would be to a place where students can reflect on an article that I posted on the web to pertain to our current topic. My classes currently turn in current event articles after each unit of health, this way we can focus on one sub-topic and create a discussion about it, a great way to encourage more reading and writing. Blogging can also be used for discussion topics or even be set up where students are anonymous and can ask questions they were too embarrassed to ask in class. The topics in health can be very personal so they can use this portal to seek support and communicate with their peers. Of course in order to promote participation, the students would need to be anonymous.
In Will Richardson’s book, Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms, I was introduced to another great idea for the use of an RSS aggregator in my own class. For the same assignment on current events, they are able to plug in topics where the RSS feed will bring the information to them. This can also be used for research projects where they add a site from google that will bring the research to them regarding a specific disease, like Avian Flu, as Richardson used as an example in his book (p.78).
I am currently looking for ways to incorporate the use of blogs in my PE classes. Richardson’s example from his book was to have student’s “log their workouts or diets” (p.32). This is one option but could see an issue where students may be embarrassed to post that information.
I look forward to incorporating a form of blogging, whether it is through a wiki, into my courses next semester.
Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand oaks, California: Corwin Press.

A whole new world for me

Welcome to my very first blog! This blog is a very exciting accomplishment for me since I often fear the unknown in the world of technology. So far it has been nothing to fret about and is extremely user friendly. I look forward to collecting and sharing ideas to keep me on this path of exploration and enlightenment.