21st+Century+Skills

**21st Century Skills

I copied and pasted these in as a start.**

http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/route21/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid=8
==  People in the 21st century live in a technology and media-suffused environment, marked by various characteristics, including: 1) access to an abundance of information, 2) rapid changes in technology tools, and 3) the ability to collaborate and make individual contributions on an unprecedented scale. To be effective in the 21st century, citizens and workers must be able to exhibit a range of functional and critical thinking skills related to information, media and technology.  ==

// Access and Evaluate Information //

 * Access information efficiently (time) and effectively (sources)
 * Evaluate information critically and competently

// Use and Manage Information //
[|Browse Information Literacy Resources]
 * Use information accurately and creatively for the issue or problem at hand
 * Manage the flow of information from a wide variety of sources
 * Apply a fundamental understanding of the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information

// Analyze Media //

 * Understand both how and why media messages are constructed, and for what purposes
 * Examine how individuals interpret messages differently, how values and points of view are included or excluded, and how media can influence beliefs and behaviors
 * Apply a fundamental understanding of the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of media

// Create Media Products //
[|Browse Media Literacy Resources]
 * Understand and utilize the most appropriate media creation tools, characteristics and conventions
 * Understand and effectively utilize the most appropriate expressions and interpretations in diverse, multi-cultural environments

// Apply Technology Effectively //
I copied and pasted this in as a starting point. I copied and pasted these in as a starting point.
 * Use technology as a tool to research, organize, evaluate and communicate information
 * Use digital technologies (computers, PDAs, media players, GPS, etc.), communication/networking tools and social networks appropriately to access, manage, integrate, evaluate and create information to successfully function in a knowledge economy
 * Apply a fundamental understanding of the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information technologies

Here's my start. I'll work some more on it tomorrow. - Bob

Flat Earth The growth of the fields of aviation and communication have made the concept of distance increasingly irrelevant. As a result, US citizens who were once accustomed to competing only within their community must now compete with candidates throughout the world. These international candidates while once not considered are now numerous, highly motivated, increasingly well educated, and willing to work for a fraction of the compensation traditionally expected by American workers. If the United States is to offset the latter disadvantage, it must be able to provide it’s citizenry with opportunities for high paying jobs. This feat would require our nation to lead the world in innovation. Innovation must include new products, new services, and new jobs that create and apply new knowledge. Thus, citizens must possess the ability to discover, create, and communicate those skills while our nation must continue to lead in the fields of science and technology. Current indicators of these trends are at best disconcerting if given global competition. While there are many factors that warrant our attention, the two most critical would be that, a. We must change and innovate in our K-12 educational system, particularly in the areas of mathematics and science. This can only be done through providing more teachers qualified to teach those subjects. Thus, trends represent deficiencies in both our K-12 classrooms and our teacher education programs; b. the federal government must play a role by making an increased investment in basic research of teaching and learning or the development of new knowledge or skills. Only by providing leading edge human capital and knowledge capital can America continue to maintain it’s standard of living-including providing national security for its citizens. Future Employment Employers and future employers will be looking for workers who can recognize what kind of information matters most, why it matters, and how that knowledge connects and applies to other information or disciplines. We need human assets that have the abilities to consider the wider context of decision making and related actions—these actions that marry the need for basic literacy (which we have now) to essential deep conceptual understandings (where we are losing competitiveness). Deep conceptual understanding depends on skills that involve to, create, evaluate, and analyze. Content is not explicit where a process or product is being created. Create requires a student to use existing information, to come up with something entirely original, a new idea, a unique product, a novel solution but tied to a specific purpose. Changing our educational system In trying to qualify skills or processes that have implications for the 21st century and for changes to teaching and learning, initial thinking has involved the following ideas. Ideas that are certainly not inclusive but that do begin the conversation about what changes might be made in our institutions of teaching and learning. 21st Century Skills In today’s schools it is essential for student to master core content areas. Some of these include English, reading, language arts, modern languages, arts, mathematics, economics, science, geography, history, government, and civics. However, schools must move beyond basic competency in order to compete globally. Learners need to be able to create, to innovate. Deep understanding is not found in knowledge of one subject but rather how subjects are intertwined, how they are in authentic contexts. These changes call for changes in our perspectives. For instance, we might include global awareness, financial, economic, business, and/or entrepreneurial literacies, civic literacies, and health literacies. Students must be to create new knowledge, to innovate, to apply their new knowledge. Thus, learning and innovation skills help learners to be prepared for increasingly complex life and work environments. Some of these skills include those of creativity and innovation, critical thinking and innovation, and communication and collaboration. The 21st century will increasingly be one in which their environment is driven by media and technology. Their lives will be marked by abundance to information, exponential changes to technologies and technology tools, the ability to collaborate and make individual contributions, etc. To be innovative, these new learners and workers will need to exhibit a range of functional and critical thinking skills. In order to do this they will need to be information literate, media savy, literate in information, communications, and technology, and able to apply life and career skills. The 21st century work environment and educational instiutions will need to exhibit far more than thinking skills and content knowledge. It will require the ability to navigate complex life and work environments that are increasingly more globally competitive requiring students to attend to developing skill such as flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural skills, and productivity and accountability skills. Chris Dede, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education published in 2003 a similar set of 21st century skills. They include: • The most important challenge the U.S. educational system faces is not preparing students to do well on high stakes tests, but rather fostering 21st century skills and knowledge in learners so that they are prepared to participate in our global, knowledge-based civilization. This challenge requires both that teachers understand what types of knowledge and skills are required in leading edge workplaces. • Current professional development that focuses on how to optimize teachers’ knowledge and skills within the current high test stakes environment is tactically useful, but strategically inadequate. To fully prepare students for 21st century work and citizenship, the U.S. educational system must transform to provide support for inquiry-based learning in classrooms, in homes, and in communities, since this is how complex skills such as systems thinking, creativity, and collaboration are acquired. • A major challenge in professional development is helping teachers “unlearn” the beliefs, values, assumptions, and cultures underlying schools’ standard operating practices. Intellectual, emotional, and social support is essential for “unlearning” and for transformational re-learning that can lead to deeper behavioral changes to create next generation educational practices (Dede, 1999). • “Learning communities” are a model of classroom instruction and teacher professional development that enables a shift from the traditional transfer and assimilation of information to the creation, sharing, and mastery of knowledge. Shifting from communicating information to collaborating on extending knowledge increases both the speed and the effectiveness of applying, refining, and generalizing research and evaluation findings. Similarly, professional development processes based on “learning communities” mirror the types of shifts desired in educational practice, moving from passive assimilation of information to active construction of knowledge, so that the innovation process is consistent with its content (Dede, 2001). • “Distributed learning” is a term used to describe educational experiences that are distributed across a variety of geographic settings, across time, and across various interactive media. Professional development via distributed learning involves an orchestrated mixture of face-to-face and virtual interactions, often centered on a “learning communities” model. • Learning communities based on distributed learning strategies (“distributedlearning communities”) are a powerful mechanism for this type of knowledge diffusion (Dede & Nelson, in press). Professional development initiatives should include all the information necessary for successful implementation of an exemplary practice, imparting a set of related innovations that mutually reinforce overall systemic change. 21st century skills and the learning sciences Research on learning and compiled in the National Academies report, How People Learn (2003) can be summarized by several basic conceptions on learning and other key findings. Learning environments have four major dimensions, Community, Learnercentered, Knowledge-centered, and Assessment-centered. The four dimensions are almost always conceptualized as dimensions that intertwine. For example, if a teacher focuses on techniques that facilitate a community of learners within the classroom, he/she is also considered to be learner-centered. If a teacher is seeking feedback from a student from a particular classroom activity, he/she is generally going to use that data to revise and improve instruction and to help the learner identify and correct any misconceptions. As an instructor using the HPL dimensions, instruction would be very studentcentered, allowing students to define their own learning goals, by helping them to understand what they know or don’t know or what they misunderstand. As teacher, in this classroom, my assessment methods would target clearing up student misunderstandings or misconceptions, on modeling the behavior students should use to monitor their own understanding so that in the future they can monitor their own understanding and take ownership of their own learning. My assessment acitivites might be designed soley to make student thinking visible and thus informative to my instruction and informative on what level of understanding that my student may or may not have. While my instruction may be student centered by providing hands on learning activities or project-oriented teaching it would be based on a student’s indepth understanding of facts and concepts and the ability to apply that knowledge to new and nove situations. Some of the major tenets of the model include the following. Developing expertise in learners who are novices. Making their thinking visible in order to measure prior knowledge and to instruct my own teaching. Providing content and learning resources in a problem – centered, inquiry related way to teach students who to apply that knowledge in novel situations. Helping students to monitor and reflect on their depth of understanding then taking corrective action if necessary. The mind imposes structure on knowledge gained through experience, thus the closer the experience to reality the easier it is to apply the knowledge. Learning is a social endeavor thus the idea of multiple perspectives is a powerful and effective learning and assessment tool. Methodology and Applications of Technology When the strategies that help students learn effectively are combined with technology, the learning potentially can become more powerful. When technology facilitates the learning processes, facilitates learning of content, supports the 21st century skills, learning benefit. Traditionally, classroom technology has been used as a tutorial tool and/or teacher-centered tool. Students used tutorial software as a means for remediation, or used technology to play games as a reward within the classroom. Technology was focused on teachers making presentations, keeping student records and the like. Technology in the classroom then evolved into the use of productivity software. The point of focus was to prepare students for the business world. So the emphasis became software and technology literacy. Instruction focused on teaching the parts of a computer, how to use the computer, how the software works etc. In the third evolution of technology in the classroom, the use of the Internet became much more prevalent. The Internet allowed students and teacher to research topics or to expand the instructional resources within the classroom. This included subscription based online services, games, and information resources such as the newspaper or other electronic media. The fourth step of classroom technology involved the expansion of applications involving digital hardware and software. Examples include the ability to create, edit, and produce video, digital data such as the use of digital still, digital probes, digital microscopes, handhelds, the creation and use of sound files, sound related hardware and media. Today’s classroom digital media, technologies, and the internet are quickly evolving again. The latest evolution is the development of web-based digital tools that allow the user to create their own digital media. These include but are not exclusive of wiki’s, blogs, nings, tools that allow the user to create or represent their own understanding and knowledge. These forms of technology promote collaboration among users, to create social networks of other users, to express their ideas, to represent their ideas, to share media in all forms, video, still, music, etc. Wikis, blogs – making thinking visible, prior knowledge check, misconception alert. Web 3.0 – Knowledge building, learners have control, represents what they understand, provide learners with feedback, enables the ability to monitor undestanding. Digital media – enables both project based and problem based learning as resources used for solving problems or as part of projects can be digitally created by the student on their own. Enables the learner to monitor their understanding thus can be used as an assessment tool. Internet resources remain a resource for knowledge based resources and to understand other perspectives, to develop understandings or literacies. Enables student to compare their understanding versus their classmates. Social networking allows students a technology resource for collaboration, as a tool for resource sharing, as a means to represent their understanding. All these technologies when used in these ways help students to develop and refine 21st century skills. distance increasingly irrelevant. As a result, US citizens who were once accustomed to competing only within their community must now compete with candidates throughout the world. These international candidates while once not considered are now numerous, highly motivated, increasingly well educated, and willing to work for a fraction of the compensation traditionally expected by American workers. If the United States is to offset the latter disadvantage, it must be able to provide it’s citizenry with opportunities for high paying jobs. This feat would require our nation to lead the world in innovation. Innovation must include new products, new services, and new jobs that create and apply new knowledge. Thus, citizens must possess the ability to discover, create, and communicate those skills while our nation must continue to lead in the fields of science and technology. Current indicators of these trends are at best disconcerting if given global competition. While there are many factors that warrant our attention, the two most critical would be that, a. We must change and innovate in our K-12 educational system, particularly in the areas of mathematics and science. This can only be done through providing more teachers qualified to teach those subjects. Thus, trends represent deficiencies in both our K-12 classrooms and our teacher education programs; b. the federal government must play a role by making an increased investment in basic research of teaching and learning or the development of new knowledge or skills. Only by providing leading edge human capital and knowledge capital can America continue to maintain it’s standard of living-including providing national security for its citizens. Future Employment Employers and future employers will be looking for workers who can recognize what kind of information matters most, why it matters, and how that knowledge connects and applies to other information or disciplines. We need human assets that have the abilities to consider the wider context of decision making and related actions—these actions that marry the need for basic literacy (which we have now) to essential deep conceptual understandings (where we are losing competitiveness). Deep conceptual understanding depends on skills that involve to, create, evaluate, and analyze. Content is not explicit where a process or product is being created. Create requires a student to use existing information, to come up with something entirely original, a new idea, a unique product, a novel solution but tied to a specific purpose. Changing our educational system In trying to qualify skills or processes that have implications for the 21st century and for changes to teaching and learning, initial thinking has involved the following ideas. Ideas that are certainly not inclusive but that do begin the conversation about what changes might be made in our institutions of teaching and learning. 21st Century Skills In today’s schools it is essential for student to master core content areas. Some of these include English, reading, language arts, modern languages, arts, mathematics, economics, science, geography, history, government, and civics. However, schools must move beyond basic competency in order to compete globally. Learners need to be able to create, to innovate. Deep understanding is not found in knowledge of one subject but rather how subjects are intertwined, how they are in authentic contexts. These changes call for changes in our perspectives. For instance, we might include global awareness, financial, economic, business, and/or entrepreneurial literacies, civic literacies, and health literacies. Students must be to create new knowledge, to innovate, to apply their new knowledge. Thus, learning and innovation skills help learners to be prepared for increasingly complex life and work environments. Some of these skills include those of creativity and innovation, critical thinking and innovation, and communication and collaboration. The 21st century will increasingly be one in which their environment is driven by media and technology. Their lives will be marked by abundance to information, exponential changes to technologies and technology tools, the ability to collaborate and make individual contributions, etc. To be innovative, these new learners and workers will need to exhibit a range of functional and critical thinking skills. In order to do this they will need to be information literate, media savy, literate in information, communications, and technology, and able to apply life and career skills. The 21st century work environment and educational instiutions will need to exhibit far more than thinking skills and content knowledge. It will require the ability to navigate complex life and work environments that are increasingly more globally competitive requiring students to attend to developing skill such as flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural skills, and productivity and accountability skills. Chris Dede, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education published in 2003 a similar set of 21st century skills. They include: • The most important challenge the U.S. educational system faces is not preparing students to do well on high stakes tests, but rather fostering 21st century skills and knowledge in learners so that they are prepared to participate in our global, knowledge-based civilization. This challenge requires both that teachers understand what types of knowledge and skills are required in leading edge workplaces. • Current professional development that focuses on how to optimize teachers’ knowledge and skills within the current high test stakes environment is tactically useful, but strategically inadequate. To fully prepare students for 21st century work and citizenship, the U.S. educational system must transform to provide support for inquiry-based learning in classrooms, in homes, and in communities, since this is how complex skills such as systems thinking, creativity, and collaboration are acquired. • A major challenge in professional development is helping teachers “unlearn” the beliefs, values, assumptions, and cultures underlying schools’ standard operating practices. Intellectual, emotional, and social support is essential for “unlearning” and for transformational re-learning that can lead to deeper behavioral changes to create next generation educational practices (Dede, 1999). • “Learning communities” are a model of classroom instruction and teacher professional development that enables a shift from the traditional transfer and assimilation of information to the creation, sharing, and mastery of knowledge. Shifting from communicating information to collaborating on extending knowledge increases both the speed and the effectiveness of applying, refining, and generalizing research and evaluation findings. Similarly, professional development processes based on “learning communities” mirror the types of shifts desired in educational practice, moving from passive assimilation of information to active construction of knowledge, so that the innovation process is consistent with its content (Dede, 2001). • “Distributed learning” is a term used to describe educational experiences that are distributed across a variety of geographic settings, across time, and across various interactive media. Professional development via distributed learning involves an orchestrated mixture of face-to-face and virtual interactions, often centered on a “learning communities” model. • Learning communities based on distributed learning strategies (“distributedlearning communities”) are a powerful mechanism for this type of knowledge diffusion (Dede & Nelson, in press). Professional development initiatives should include all the information necessary for successful implementation of an exemplary practice, imparting a set of related innovations that mutually reinforce overall systemic change. 21st century skills and the learning sciences Research on learning and compiled in the National Academies report, How People Learn (2003) can be summarized by several basic conceptions on learning and other key findings. Learning environments have four major dimensions, Community, Learnercentered, Knowledge-centered, and Assessment-centered. The four dimensions are almost always conceptualized as dimensions that intertwine. For example, if a teacher focuses on techniques that facilitate a community of learners within the classroom, he/she is also considered to be learner-centered. If a teacher is seeking feedback from a student from a particular classroom activity, he/she is generally going to use that data to revise and improve instruction and to help the learner identify and correct any misconceptions. As an instructor using the HPL dimensions, instruction would be very studentcentered, allowing students to define their own learning goals, by helping them to understand what they know or don’t know or what they misunderstand. As teacher, in this classroom, my assessment methods would target clearing up student misunderstandings or misconceptions, on modeling the behavior students should use to monitor their own understanding so that in the future they can monitor their own understanding and take ownership of their own learning. My assessment acitivites might be designed soley to make student thinking visible and thus informative to my instruction and informative on what level of understanding that my student may or may not have. While my instruction may be student centered by providing hands on learning activities or project-oriented teaching it would be based on a student’s indepth understanding of facts and concepts and the ability to apply that knowledge to new and nove situations. Some of the major tenets of the model include the following. Developing expertise in learners who are novices. Making their thinking visible in order to measure prior knowledge and to instruct my own teaching. Providing content and learning resources in a problem – centered, inquiry related way to teach students who to apply that knowledge in novel situations. Helping students to monitor and reflect on their depth of understanding then taking corrective action if necessary. The mind imposes structure on knowledge gained through experience, thus the closer the experience to reality the easier it is to apply the knowledge. Learning is a social endeavor thus the idea of multiple perspectives is a powerful and effective learning and assessment tool. Methodology and Applications of Technology When the strategies that help students learn effectively are combined with technology, the learning potentially can become more powerful. When technology facilitates the learning processes, facilitates learning of content, supports the 21st century skills, learning benefit. Traditionally, classroom technology has been used as a tutorial tool and/or teacher-centered tool. Students used tutorial software as a means for remediation, or used technology to play games as a reward within the classroom. Technology was focused on teachers making presentations, keeping student records and the like. Technology in the classroom then evolved into the use of productivity software. The point of focus was to prepare students for the business world. So the emphasis became software and technology literacy. Instruction focused on teaching the parts of a computer, how to use the computer, how the software works etc. In the third evolution of technology in the classroom, the use of the Internet became much more prevalent. The Internet allowed students and teacher to research topics or to expand the instructional resources within the classroom. This included subscription based online services, games, and information resources such as the newspaper or other electronic media. The fourth step of classroom technology involved the expansion of applications involving digital hardware and software. Examples include the ability to create, edit, and produce video, digital data such as the use of digital still, digital probes, digital microscopes, handhelds, the creation and use of sound files, sound related hardware and media. Today’s classroom digital media, technologies, and the internet are quickly evolving again. The latest evolution is the development of web-based digital tools that allow the user to create their own digital media. These include but are not exclusive of wiki’s, blogs, nings, tools that allow the user to create or represent their own understanding and knowledge. These forms of technology promote collaboration among users, to create social networks of other users, to express their ideas, to represent their ideas, to share media in all forms, video, still, music, etc. Wikis, blogs – making thinking visible, prior knowledge check, misconception alert. Web 3.0 – Knowledge building, learners have control, represents what they understand, provide learners with feedback, enables the ability to monitor undestanding. Digital media – enables both project based and problem based learning as resources used for solving problems or as part of projects can be digitally created by the student on their own. Enables the learner to monitor their understanding thus can be used as an assessment tool. Internet resources remain a resource for knowledge based resources and to understand other perspectives, to develop understandings or literacies. Enables student to compare their understanding versus their classmates. Social networking allows students a technology resource for collaboration, as a tool for resource sharing, as a means to represent their understanding. All these technologies when used in these ways help students to develop and refine 21st century skills.