http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/

http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/

The 21st Century Skills website was an interesting read. I took some time today to explore the site and read through its articles and qualifications.

First impression: I was a little worried when the first headline posted on the site mentioned that they had trained 50 people. I'm always skeptical of sites that have big mission statements and goals, but in reality reach very few people. However, after looking at this I immediately went to their FAQ page and looked at the members. Big names! I was impressed with the national scope of the members in this program. So I went back to read the full article about training people and found that this was a program recently started. Fifty people isn't too bad for that.

Looking under their state initiatives section I noticed that they only had 10 sates signed up under their initiative so far. For a program that appears to have been around since 2004 this is not bad, but neither is it anything amazing.

I began going through the resources the site had posted. There were a lot there. The tool they used for their route 21 program with the rainbow and pools was interesting, but a little confusing. Once you chose your section of the tool though there was a lot of useful information to browse through.

I had little to no significant problem with anything I saw on the site. There was a lot of information to go through, but it seemed pretty standard to me. My students wont be affected by this directly yet, as they are in Maryland which isnt one of their states. However it could be in then future so its good to browse through all this program has to offer. I hope to look more at this in the future.

Blog Possibilities

Creating this blog last week made me think a lot about how I would use it in a classroom. In a lot of ways I could see it truly benefiting students. It would be great to have kids conversing with one another over a blog on any sort of topic. I don't really see a blog being used as anything other than a discussion board, but it would be fantastic at that. I could envision students posting their views on current issues, talking with one another about the best way to approach situations, or complimenting one another's work. I teach technology to 6th 7th and 8th graders. I find it is most difficult for them to explain what they think or feel about something. These blogs would greatly assist students in learning to convey feelings and ideas.

Testing Blog

This is a test for my first blog