21st Century Skills

Have you ever considered the importance of teaching 21st century skills? Should educators place more or less emphasis on these skills?

After reading through the articles, links, and resources on the web site for, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, I would like to start a discussion as to whether or not more emphasis should be placed on 21st century skills. In other words, do you think this should be a state mandated standard? Should school districts integrate a curriculum that requires thorough integration of technology and 21st century skills into the lessons?

Here are a few thoughts I shared with some other colleagues on their blogs:

This has been one of my biggest concerns, is how educators can help our students achieve these skills, when many teachers do not have the support or resources. The key seems to be beyond integrating technology in the classroom, but integrating it into the school curriculum, instruction, and assessment, as suggested by Route 21.

As educators, we need to focus on teaching the core knowledge, such as teaching English, but find ways to connect the content to technology related lessons. I found this interesting note on-line, when delving through the 21st Century Partnership Skills web site, and came across the following link, http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/node/2343, and took notice with this statement, "Take, for example, the issue of transferable skills. Critics of twenty-first century skills argue, quite reasonably, that such skills are not "all-purpose muscles" that are effective in any content domain. The critical thinking skills I nurtured in humanities classes will not help me figure out why my car stalls when I step on the brakes, because I don't know the first thing about cars. Critical thinking skills depend on content knowledge" by Claus Zastrow, posted March 2, 2009.

First, to better integrate 21st century skills, teachers need to have access to the resources and support from their schools and districts, in order to fully integrate technology into the lessons. Many of my colleagues have expressed a concern for limited resources within their schools.

Reference for Links accessed March 29, 2009:

Partnership for 21st Century Skills

http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/

http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/route21/

http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/node/2343