A Review of Partnership for 21st Century Skills

As an assignment this week, each member of the class had to review the website for Partnership for 21st Century Skills. When first logging on to the site, there is a statement telling a little bit about this organization and what they are striving to achieve. It states that "P21 its members provide tools and resources to help the U.S. education system keep up by fusing the three Rs and four Cs (critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation)" (The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2010). Many districts today, many would think, would take the initiative to fuse these concepts and skills together on their own. My district encourages us to do just this, to place critical thinking within our reading, math, science and writing. My district trains us and expects us to use collaboration amongst our students as part of our lessons, and also to collaborate amongst teachers within and outside of the district. Even though many districts are trying to combine these items in their schools, maybe more help is needed in figure out how to to this. Therefore, this site would be able to greatly help by giving ideas and techniques to those districts and teachers struggling to combine all of these skills within the classroom.

When looking at the core subjects with 21st century themes, they seem to match the subjects many school districts require within their curriculum. Then when viewing the aspect of the 21st century themes, they are issues and views that should be important to all teachers and students, as they are topics they will face when they go out into the world after school. This is all distinguished in the framework which is in the shape of a rainbow. As I entered each section of the framework, the website supported their view with what the concept meant, ideas for implementing the concept, and additional resources for this concept. This would be very helpful to any teacher that is implementing the idea of place the 4c's within their curriculum.

Upon further investigation of the site, I did become a little disappointed. I found that my state of Pennsylvania was not part of the states that supported and were a part of this program. I would be interested in knowing why my state is not part of the program as well as being interested in knowing if some day we will become a part of the program. Something else that I was confused by, is if it has to be by state, or if individual schools could apply. The site stated that anyone could be a member or join P21, yet on another page it stated that the state had to write initiatives and how they were going to combine the three R's with the four C's. I think that my school would enjoy and jump at the chance to be a part of this, as many of the goals and statements on the website coincide and match those that we have at my school.

"There is a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces." (The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2010) As many teachers and community members talk about, this gap that is still occurring between knowledge and skills, what can be done to close it? It seems that when my districts takes steps forward to correct and close this gap, technology increases and becomes better, so therefore, we still end up with the gap. How can a school district successfully close the gap and not spend all of their budget money on the new, expensive technology and training for the technology?

Overall, I found the website to be very helpful. It contained great ideas about how to combine the concepts and teach the four c's while teaching the three r's. Many of the ideas are supported with reasons and resources for helping any teacher. This website would be helpful to anyone that wants to make sure their students are ready for the 21st century.

Reference:

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (n.d.). Retrieved September 28, 2010 from http://www.p21.org/

Utilizing Blogs in the Classroom

I have been wondering for a while how I could utilize a blog within my classroom. Being that I teach all subjects in a second grade classroom, I don't think my students would be able to contribute to a blog, at least not in the beginning of the year. Since a blog "engages readers with ideas and questions and links" (Richardson, pg 18), I continued to think of how the classroom itself might benefit from a something like this, and I came up with a few ideas.

My first idea, is to set the blog up for parents. The school district in which I teach, has very involved parents. I think that I could set up a blog in order to communicate with parents, and for the parents to communicate with one another. In this type of blog, I would set up questions and concerns that deal with classroom issues, decisions, and projects. Parents could communicate with me about something that may not be working with homework, or a strategy that helped their particular child that may help another child. Also, in this type of parent blog, I could share students work with the parents of the class. Since it would be primarily for this group of parents, and with parent permission of course, I could attach voice threads, power points and more for the parents to view of what their child has made. One other item for a parent blog, would be to coordinate "elementary" type items, for example holiday celebrations, field trips, and any parent that would like to come to read or speak to the class. In creating this type of blog, I could connect it to my school's website. Like many school websites, it is not "updated on a regular basis" (Richardson, pg 25), so attaching my blog to the site would ensure that at least my site in particular would stay current and active for the parents.

My other though for a blog for my classroom would be for other elementary teachers. We could use the blog as a communication tool and to share ideas, lesson plans, strategies, and more. I could post a question for the week about behavior plans, for example, and invite other teachers to share their strategies and ideas. Also, we could share items and websites that we have found that work with different curricular areas. Often teachers are willing to help one another and to share what is working for them, while also looking for ideas as to how to teach a specific skill, or to find more information to support a topic that they are teaching to their class. In communicating with other teachers, it does not just have to be with those within my school, but it could be with those in another country. Technology has the ability to "shrink space" (Thornburg, 2010)and allow us the ability to share ideas from all over the world.

My last idea would only work more towards the end of the year, most likely. By the end of the year, most second grade students would be able to answer some short comprehension questions or opinion questions in a blog type setting with some help. I could pose questions, such as what they thought of the book, or to post a summary of their favorite book. I don't think, at least not right now, that I could have the second graders answer too many questions, or too long of a question, but I am certainly willing to give the short blog questions a try with this group of students I have. Then, I could share the site with their parents and teachers for the next year, so that they can have an idea of how the child is thinking and has progressed throughout the year.

Being in a second grade classroom, I don't want to overwhelm my students, but I also do want to deprive my students of the technology that we all love so much.

References:

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Thornburg, D. (2010). Technology and Society. Laureate Education: video.

Technology in Education

Technology is expanding and becoming more advanced everyday. Society relies on technology for almost everything we do. It is a huge communication tool, as well as what is used to run our companies, businesses, homes, and more. Since technology is so important and vital in our lives, our children need to learn about and use the many different types and sources of technology available to them.

Even in elementary school, we are integrating as much technology as we are able into the classroom. This early exposure ensures that the students will be ready and able to use different tools and programs as they progress through school. Through using our interactive whiteboards, teachers can take students on virtual field trips, to places they would never have otherwise seen or experienced. Students as early as second grade are able to create iMovies, powerpoints, voice threads and much more, as they are exposed to it and instructed on how and why we use these tools. Other tools such as blogs, wikis, and podcasts are items which students of all ages can be exposed to, and as they get older, are able to create and maintain. These allow our students to communicate with others from all over the world, about information they are all learning. So, children are able to discuss the concepts with not just their classmates, but the students of classes in other towns, states, and countries. Technology is such an important item in todays' society that teachers need to be using it in their classroom, so that students are ready and able to live in todays' world.