Partnership for 21st Century Skills

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has emerged as the leading advocacy organization focused on infusing 21st century skills into education (Partnership for 21st century skills, 2004). Their website http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ is full of great information explaining 21st century skills and technology in the classroom. Again, they have a great amount of information that is well organized (even graphs). However, I felt their website to be very boring and unappealing! I felt “forced” to read it, although I wanted the information.

I was surprised by the low number of states participating in the PL2 Leadership State program. According to the website (Partnership for 21st century skills, 2004), “the programs prepare students with the 21st century skills they need to be successful in school, work and life.” Why hasn’t every state signed up yet? I wasn’t surprised that Indiana isn’t participating. We seem to be the last state to do anything helping education!

I did not agree with the list of Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes. The website (Partnership for 21st century skills, 2004) states, “ Mastery of Core subjects and 21st century themes is essential in the 21st century”. I don’t think that World Languages or Arts are essential in the 21st century. Even though I was involved in arts (band/music) in High School and College, I don’t think that was essential for my teaching degree.

I do feel that our school is doing a wonderful job at teaching the Core Subjects & 21st Century Themes. We also teach Learning and Innovation skills, even at the elementary level. Our High School teaches Life and Career Skills. I can’t say how well, because I’m not in the building. However, the whole corporation is failing to teach Information, Media and Technology Skills. We do have a few classes in place. Unfortunately, they are not using updated technology or teaching the students 21st century technology skills.

Is Blogging Appropriate for my Classroom??

I am currently the Reading Recovery teacher at my elementary school. I work with Tier 3 students (one-on-one) these are my RR students. I also work with Tier 2 students (group work) these are my CIM students. RR lessons and CIM lessons are very scripted. I have a 30 minute block of time to work on reading and writing. My goal is to help these struggling students get back on grade level - so they are not referred to special education.

Here is a picture of my RR part of the classroom….















I feel that using a blog as a class portal is appropriate for my classroom. From a teaching standpoint, having a place to publish the course curriculum, syllabus, class rules, homework assignments, rubrics, handouts and presentations makes Web log a powerful course management tool (Richardson, 2009). We are currently required at East Washington to keep a website showing a continuum of education. We use the websites to prove that we are still educating students if we are shut down for the H1N1. I think that blogs would be a much better way to prove continuing education.


Knowledge management and articulation is also an appropriate use of blogging in my classroom. I attended a workshop today with the RTI team at our school. We loved all the ideas that the presenter had for our team, but our biggest issue was time. When will we possibly have time to have these extra meetings - we are already out of the classroom enough! According to Richardson, (2009) “ School committees and groups that meet on a regular basis can use a blog to archive minutes of meetings, continue dialogues, share lings to relevant information, and store documents and presentations for easy access later on.” What a great idea! However, this does mean that my colleagues would have to “buy” into blogging.

At first grade level, I don’t think that blogging is appropriate for my students. However, it is appropriate for me to use to contact parents, and collaborate with colleagues.
Do you have any suggestions on other ways I can incorporate blogging into my classroom?