The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/) is a coalition of community, business, and education groups with a mission of implementing 21st century skills into today's school classrooms. I applaud their mission because I think it is necessary to get broad support to push this kind of agenda. After looking at their site, there really isn't anything that I disagree with.
One of the first things I noticed is that Colorado (the state in which I live) is not yet a member of the partnership. This is disappointing, though not surprising to me, since I believe that Colorado's education department is behind the times regarding technology and education. I am convinced that legislators must take the lead in changing education because they set the policies that govern what the rest of the educators do.
The partnership of educators, businesses, and policymakers seems like a good group to improve the education in the classrooms. However, I think it is the policymakers who are the furthest away from knowing what students need and making the necessary changes to make it happen. Unfortunately, they are the ones who actual control what is taught (standards) and what is assessed (state assessments). The policymakers need to get up to speed with what educators and businesses already know.
I will be curious to see what the self assessment tool that the P21 initiative is developing looks like and if they will provide it to educators to determine what we need to work on. I'll also be curious to see what type of assessment it is, since technology skills can best be tested using project or peformance based assessments.
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I think it is wonderful that this community has taken the initiative to provide teachers with a place to go where they can find information and resources on ways to integrate skills for the 21st century with core subjects.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the policymakers need to realize the importance of technology and do something to initiate change at the state level. Since they are the ones who ultimately decide what the standards and assessments are, they need to be visiting school districts and holding forums where teachers, administrators, and parents can express their thoughts on education and what seems to be lacking in public schools.
It will be nice to have assessments that test the skills that students need to have for the future and are not pencil/paper tests. It would be great to have project or performance based assessments that actually test the skills students will need for the future.
It would be nice to see either a project based project, or something that can be done completely on the computer. Technology skills are difficult to assess because they are more process oriented than content oriented. Multiple choice tests don't accurately assess technology skills, yet those are the easiest types of tests to give and get quick results. We can't afford to take the easy way out on technology assessments if they are going to be accurate. Additionally, the assessments should show us which NETS standards we need to work on to improve the 21st century skills that students need.
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