Putting it all together

In reviewing the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, I am amazed at all the groundwork that has been put in place and the research that has been involved in developing this partnership. I am a bit overwhelmed at how far we need to go to achieve our goals and to prepare our students for the new times that are rapidly approaching and are in fact already here. I really enjoyed the graphic that was a bridge with the outer circles of professional development and learning environments holding up the Core Subjects and 21st century themes which are supporting life and career skill, learning and innovation skills, and information, media & technology skills. I think that the diagram helps to bring all the aspects of the program together.

I thought it was interesting as the partnership identified the 6 elements of a 21st century education that the first focus was on core subjects, I thought it was meaningful as well that they focus on incorporating basic skills and 21st century skills and that they are not to be taught in isolation. I think that is more and more important as we proceed into this increasingly interactive world we are living in.

As we proceed into this 21st century world, we need to as educators be including the skills that our students need not because we just think they are a "good idea" but because they are a requirement. Miners & Pascopella (2007) discussed that students are "spending 27 hours a week online at home, compared to an average of 15 minutes per week at school." We must teach the skills not in isolation if they are to be used effectively and that is where the Partnership for 21st century skills is so important. By having an interactive framework to develop this strategies between business (employers) and schools (educators) then we will be able to make progress towards our goal of helping students have the critical skills they need to succeed in our rapidly changing world.

The implications of this are clear for me as an educator, we can not and must not disregard all that we already do... the basic skills, core curriculum are necessary for our students but we must do much more than just teach the content. We have to help our students become literate in so many areas of information literacy. They must be able to access information that they need (especially if we are no longer requiring them to memorize it), they must understand how to process that information critically, so that they are not believing things that are not real, and they must learn how to create something new and not just wait for the information/project to be handed to them on a silver platter. Students are going to need to be more outgoing and more involved in their classes, less sitting and getting information and more discovery based learning. Of course, this should not be a huge surprise to educators, I have always enjoyed a class more when I interacted with the materials than when I was forced to just "sit and get" information. If we can involve our students more and more we are hopefully going to have better and better results with our students. This will take a long time and require a lot of commitment of time and resources in order to be done effectively.