Partnership for 21st Century Skills Website

This site when I first began to explore it was frustrating. None of the pictures showed up on my page which was frustrating, with how many times they referred to this rainbow that I was not able to see, until using the pdf file from our class resources. I had a difficult time navigating the site. A number of links did not work and the ones that did typically linked to pages with a short description. I did find some great resource links and great examples of what a 21st century classroom should look like. Overall I would have to say I like the idea of the site and its collection of 21st century ideas for teaching. I am not sure that I disagree with this statement but I did find it somewhat odd “Teaches 21st century skills discretely in the context of core subjects and 21st century interdisciplinary themes”(Partnership 21st) Are students not supposed to know they are using technology or learning 21st Century skills. What I did disagree with is the idea that what they are presenting is new. Most of the skills they are expressing as 21st century are skills teachers have been teaching for years. Creative thinking, problem solving, civics, economics literacy, health literacy, if teachers have not been working to teach these in school we have much further to go than I thought. Of course the use of technologies to teach these skills is new to most teachers but these fundamental skills were taught to me and the generations that came before me. This site to me shows that there will be a change in the way teachers teach and how students learn these skills. Will the fundamentals of teaching change because of this? I do not believe so, I really believe that with all that technology has accomplished and achieved, we as teachers are being asked to do more for students than any teachers have ever been asked to do prior. This thought is based on how schools are still structured; state exams, paper, pens, scantrons, and all the other ancient techniques still held onto in our schools. Pens, pencils and paper cannot be tossed aside but at some point teaching cursive has got to go and until teachers are allowed to abandon these it will continue to be a struggle to incorporate the 21st century skills into an 18th century school model.
(2004). Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Retrieved from
http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/index.php