Checking out the Partnership for 21st Century Skills

One of the assignments this week was to peruse the Partnershipfor 21st Century Skills website. This Partnership for 21^st Century Skills provides tools, resources and information to educators, policy makers, and parents and communities for the purpose of readying students to perform and compete in a global economy. My first reaction was that of being overwhelmed with information. It is organized well and is fairly easy to maneuver through; however, it is tempting to just start clicking links. I recommend a person begin by looking over the home page. The Announcements and Latest News sections provide several places for both newbie and veteran P21 users to look for up-to-date information. There are a wide variety of offerings from Webinars to podcasts of interviews to online access to publications. Many of the resources that I looked at were developed collaboratively by professionals and organizations across the country. I was amazed by that. Think of the amount of time and effort that has gone into the ongoing development of the resources on this website. The members of this organization are vast and are committed to providing support and resources so that every student can become 21^stcentury ready. I found it quite interesting that the skills deemed crucial for student success in the 21^stcentury were the very same skills that Dr. Thornburg mentioned in the video our class was assigned this week (Laureate Education Inc., 2010a). Collaboration and critical thinking as well as creativity and innovation come up over and over again in our readings.

It was no surprise to find a blog on the site. Every month, two well-known educators are selected and given a question to respond to on the blog that pertains to the challenges of providing 21^stCentury Skills to everyone. What did surprise me though, was I could not identify a way to subscribe to the blog or to access an archive in order to read past posts. That was disappointing. Another thing that surprised me was that the Exemplars section called Route 21 had not been updated since 2010. I found the P21 Common Core Toolkit, accessible under Educator resources, especially usable because we are implementing the ELA Common Core Standards in our district and having a resource that has already aligned 21^st Century Skills to those standards is a no-brainer, in my opinion. I was a bit taken aback by the fact that only 16 states are implementing the 21^st Century Skills initiative and Wisconsin is one of them. I live in Minnesota and I would like to think that we are on board with our neighbors. We share boundaries and our students cross those boundaries to attend universities, everyone needs to be prepared for the future.

Even though I didn’t find any information or opinions that I disagreed with, I did find myself wondering if there was any political agenda behind this initiative. There are a lot of big corporations that are involved in supporting this organization. I do not profess to be too involved in the drama of politics and the influence of big money from corporations, but it made me wonder. What do you think? Even if there is, would it be a bad thing? What would be the motive other than preparing the young people of our country to compete on a global level?

As an educator that is highly engaged in learning about technology and in implementing innovative ways for my students to participate in their own learning, I am very interested in the message behind the 21^stCentury Skills initiative. One of the issues, of course, is how do we get everyone on board so that we can prepare our students for the future. According to Levy & Murnane (2006) the jobs of the future are going to require expert thinking and complex communication (p. 62). Dr. Dede (Laureate Education, Inc. 2010b) states the same thing when he talks about the expert thinking and complex communication skills required to solve some of the wicked problems that are in our future. There is no doubt in mind that we need to motivate our students to become impassioned and engaged in caring for our world. The questions I have for my fellow bloggers is are you scared? How urgent is this matter? How in danger is the United States of falling behind and being left in the dust by other countries? Does it mean the difference between our economic survival and failure? We have read a lot about global collaboration on some of those wicked problems we are already dealing with such as global warming, tsunamis, and hurricanes. Can we have faith that our world will shrink and boundaries will disappear as we collaborate on big world problems? I am probably thinking too hard.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010a). Program eleven. Skills for the 21st century [Webcast]. Understanding the impact of technology on education, work, and society. Baltimore, MD: Author

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Program twelve. Technology interfaces [Webcast]. Understanding the impact of technology on education, work, and society. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Levy, F., & Murnane, R. J. (2006). Why the changing American economy calls for twenty-first century learning: Answers to educators' questions. New Directions for Youth Development, 2006(110), 53-62.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2011.). A framework for 21st century learning. Washington DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/overview/skills-framework