What are the 21st Century Skills?

A group of businesses has come together to improve education. Their mission statement is "To bring 21st Century Skills to every child in America by serving as a catalyst for change in teaching, learning, and assessment and as an advocate among education policy makers through a unique partnership among education, business, and government leaders."

The rationale for this innovation is "There is a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces. To successfully face rigorous higher education coursework, career challenges and a globally competitive workforce, U.S. schools must align classroom environments with real world environments by infusing 21st century skills."

The area we are concerned with in this institute is defined as "Learning and Thinking Skills:"

• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills
• Communication Skills
• Creativity and Innovation Skills
• Collaboration Skills
• Information and Media Literacy Skills
• Contextual Learning Skills

In this session, we begin an exploration of the possibilities of educational technology for increasing student skills in all of the above areas.

We'll focus on five tasks, after an overview of some useful hardware.

Follow the navigation links at the left to jump to the sections of this presentation.

Overview: Tech Survey results, Goals, Hardware
Choose one or more tasks to accomplish in this session.

Task 1 (Communication Skills) : Record an audio clip to be used in a class. Convert it to a smaller file that will fit on your flash drive or can be emailed. See the Podcasting page.

Task 2 (Media Literacy Skills, Creativity:) Find online video or audio (music or spoken word) content that is suited to the level of your class. See Music, Video and Audio pages

Task 3 (Problem-Solving, Collaboration, Communication): Create a PowerPoint presentation with additional multimedia content: narration, audio, or video. See the Presentations page

Task 4 (Information & Communication Skills): Start a blog for your class. Follow instructions on the Blogs page.

Task 5 (Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Creativity, Innovation): Develop or Adapt a Webquest suitable to the level of your class. For examples and guidance see the WebQuests page