21st Century Skills Website

After exploring the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website for quite awhile, I found it to be full of useful information for myself as a teacher. I feel it was very organized and easy to find information on specific topics. It also provided a lot of useful resources. I especially liked the video portions. At times, I did find it a bit overwhelming with the amount of information I was looking at just for browsing purposes.

Something on the site that surprised me was that only fourteen states at this point have developed standards and initiatives toward 21st century skills. Eventually, I am sure more states will join in, but for now, we are saying that only fourteen states are committed to supporting teachers by providing initiatives for our students gaining 21st century skills.

Ken Kay stated that more professional development is needed for teachers to learn how to teach and assess 21st century skills. I agree that this is needed if teachers are expected for students to be exiting school with 21st century skills as well as the “3 r’s”. However, I feel that all states need to be included in this. If some states do not even have initiatives outlined for the public, how will they commit to providing training to educators who will be teaching these skills?

I think this website is showing how serious we need to be about the need for 21st century skills. Many educators are focused on the test scores, etc. However, we need to look at what is going to benefit the whole child. Does one or two standardized tests prove what they will provide in the workforce? Probably not. We need to be teaching children to be more skillful in communicating, creativity, collaborating, and critically thinking. Educators can do this by infusing these skills within the current curriculum.

March 9, 2010: Options for blogging in a 2nd grade classroom

There are many different uses for blogging in the classroom. Once students understand how to blog, it can be a very powerful tool. O

ne way that I plan to use blogging in my classroom within the next few weeks is to answers journal prompts after watching a story online. It would be more of a reaading response journal entry (something my students are already familiar with) but with a new twist (technology).

Another way I would be able to use blogging in my second grade classroom is to implement character education. It is very hard to find time to teach specific behaviors such as honesty, respect, etc. other than modeling and teachable moments. I would like time to read books, discuss situations, and have students complete follow up activities. If I use Audacity to record the book, they can listen to that as a reading center. Next, they can log onto our class blog and answer a question about the character trait we are focusing on. They will be able to respond directly to my question as well as comment on other students' ideas. I think sutdents will be much more eager to respond via blog than having a conversation within the classroom. This also makes all students accountable for having an opinion and idea to contribute to the discussion. This is also a way of getting things into the curriculum that most of us do not have time to squeeze in.


Both of the above would be a way for students to showcase their knowledge of certain topics but also have meaningful conversation. It is also a helpful tool for the teacher that wants to incorporate further learning and investigation but cannot find the time to squeeze it in during the day.