21st Century Skills & Project Based Learning

21st Century Skills - We have long been told by the business community that we as educators are not preparing our students for life past formal education. In recent years the name given to these lacking skills is 21st skills but if you have been around you might have heard them refered to as soft skills. While we can make changes to the way we educate our kids, educators themselves are not fully to blame for this expanding knowledge void amoung many of our students. If those doing the work are the one's doing the learning, it is necessary that we place more responsibility on our students for their own learning. Educational tech guru Alan November says that, "Students must own their learing." Whether this is through Project Based Learing, increased empahaisis on studnet friendly leaning objectivies, more differientated instruction, flipped classrooms or less whole group instruciton, we must place more responsibilty with our students for their learning in order to make them college and career ready, or as we used to say, life long learners. Reguardless of the catch phrases you want to use, students will not succeed past high school unless they take responsibility for themselves and their learning. This site contains some resources to help with this task.

Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills - The Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills is a research project that proposes ways of assessing 21st-century skills and encourages teaching and adopting those skills in the classroom.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills - The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) was founded in 2002 as a coalition bringing together the business community, education leaders, and policymakers to position 21st century readiness at the center of US K-12 education and to kick-start a national conversation on the importance of 21st century skills for all students.

ASCD - 21st Century Skills: Educating Students in a Changing World As educators in the 21st century, we are charged with eduationg students to be successful in a complex, interconnected world. This responsbility requires schools to prepare students for technologicla, cultural, economic, informational and demographic changes.