Parnership for 21st Century Skills

While I was navigating around on the web site for Partnership for 21st Century Skills http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ I was overwhelmed with all the information. P21 has several well renowned businesses in partnership. I noticed they had wonderful videos and great ideas. They had a video on how they built a car using all the core subjects. No where, did I find anything about how to implement those wonderful ideas into the curriculum.

P21 believes every student, every district, every school, and every classroom is unique. They have set up guidelines using technology in the classroom. It is up to educators and school districts of how to use technology in core subjects. The only guidelines I seen was for Social Studies and English, and then it was only for 4th, 8th, and 12th grade. P21 explained that the learner needs to be a master at their core subject in order to do well with technology. It was unclear of what makes a master. Is it mastering the concept at 70%, 80%, 90% or 100%? What is a master?

I need to teach my students to be critical thinkers, problem solvers and to collaborate according to P21. P21 vision is not based on how students think; instead it is all about skill. Nothing about knowledge.

P21 has wonderful ideas, but in reality I do not see any support on how to train the students to be masters and how to train students to be critical thinkers.

My Dream

I want to create a blog for my 6th grade students to share their stories they wrote on a global aspect. The name of the blog would be Stories from Rm 16. The purpose behind the blog would be for my students to share their writing with other students around the world. In addition, parents could read their child’s stories. It would greatly benefit those parents that travel a lot or parents over in Iraq. This is one way parents could stay connected with their child’s schoolwork. My students would take blogging more serious than writing on paper, because they would know the world would see their story. This alone would enhance the lesson. They would be careful about their word choice, conventions, and organization.

Blogging is a skill a student will use through their life, either on a personal basis or for a school assignment, including college. Students need to be taught what is appropriate and what is not appropriate on a blog. I would post guidelines on the blog for my students to refer too and for the audience to have reference for what is accepted and what is not accepted.

I know I have to protect my students from the outside world. I am currently researching safety issues for my students so they can blog. I also, have to consider my safety net, my job. There is always someone in our society that spoils it for everyone. Safety is the biggest issue I perceive for blogging in the classroom.

I thought I had everything done on my blogger account. I was missing the most important part, the comments. So here is my comment, isn't technology fun! I mean, I could stay in my comfort zone which is away from the computer. Instead, I venture out into new areas on my computer, then TRY to learn from my mistakes. Leason learned, go to bed when I am tired, inorder, to stop myself from making more mistakes.