Thursday, November 26, 2009
21st Century Skills
One of the assignments this week for the course I'm taking is to visit the Web site of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and post my reactions and thoughts to my blog. I've seen references made to this organization in various print and Web resources but this was the first time I had gone to their Web site myself. I found their message to be uplifting yet sobering at the same time. What could be better than businesses and industries that have a stake in the global marketplace teaming up with policy makers in education to devise strategies to prepare students for the 21st century workplace. As I navigated the site I became increasingly frustrated. The information seemed so general and abstract, nothing concrete I could use in my classroom. Even using the search engine in the Route 21 section to search for resources specific to mathematics resulted in hundreds of results but nothing I could put to use as a classroom teacher.
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Hi Brenda-
ReplyDeleteYou made some valid points about the website with 21st century skills. I was also excited to learn the companies that have teamed up with education and I felt the mission statement was informative. I too however had a difficult time navigating the site and the information on the site was limited in its usefulness. I thought that maybe because my state does not participate that maybe I did not get the full picture of the site has to offer. I was surprised to read your statement about math and the site. One would think that with math there would be several classroom applications. Just a thought.
Brenda,
ReplyDeleteAs a fellow math teacher I agree that there was very little concrete material that I could use related to high school math. This is a problem many times in all teaching resources. I do agree that we need to have students that are problem solvers and self motivate and collaborators but I feel that I am getting my students ready for the business world.
Hi Brenda. When I first began reading the mission statement, I too was very excited. But the point you bring up of difficulty navigating, it very valid. I found the site to be very overwhelming. There were so many links found when doing a search, it was extremely time consuming sorting through them all.
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