Reaction to Partnership for 21st Century Skills

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is an organization that supports schools and students across the nation, so that they may be better prepared for the real world workplace after earning a K-12 education. This organization is supported by many businesses and school systems, and their main focus is providing students with an education that includes the 3 R's (reading, writing, and arithmetic)and the 4 C's (critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation).

My initial reaction to this website was positive. I feel that this organization falls in line with what many school systems are trying to do. Like the website said, there is a gap between what students learn in school and what they are expected to do in the real world. The question I have is, how can we close in on the gap that has been created and teach students what they'll ultimately need to know? This organization seems to provide some sort of action plan, and I feel it could be very successful. I was surprised to see that there were so many businesses in support of this organization, and so few states that were in support of this organization. I would have thought that more states would have been involved.

I didn't disagree with anything on the website, but I do think this organization could be the catalyst for change within many school systems. Most schools often have a difficult time of adopting new programs, especially when it involves large sums of money. There seemed to be enough businesses in support of this organization that could help fund this program in schools across America. This would provide today's students with 21st century knowledge and skills they'd need to know, and it would make our society more technology savvy. Implementation of this program would also require teachers to be well trained, and I feel that that might be the biggest setback to every state adopting this program.

The Use of Blogs in the Classroom

While it would definitely be challenging for me to incorporate weblogs into my classroom, I could definitely see the benefit of using it. Since most of the lessons that I teach are movement oriented (Physical Education), I could create a Class Portal as described in Will Richardson's book "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms." In his book, he explained how "weblogs can be created to communicate information about the class and archive course material...at a much lesser cost than systems such as Blackboard." I figure that I could easily incorporate this into my classroom setting, considering that I teach grades K-5. Students and parents could use this weblog to find out current classwork assignments, homework assignments, rubrics, course curriculum, class syllabus, class rules, and handouts about upcoming events. I often find it difficult to find time to communicate with parents about their students progress and answer any questions that they may have, so this would be a possible solution...maybe setting up a FAQ section would help (a.k.a. frequently asked questions).

Technology and the Future

For the past decade or so there have been many advances in the technology world, and many of those advances have spilled over into classrooms across America. It seems inevidable for teachers to continue teaching using the same methods and the same resources that were once used. With that said, which new pieces of technology do you feel are most useful in your classroom, and which new pieces of technology do you feel will become more mainstream within our classrooms in the future?