The Partnership for the 21st Century Skills is a comprehensive website that addresses many of the complex issues of incorporating technology in the classroom. The website is looking beyond the traditional educational setting commonly found in the classroom and encourages re-evaluation of pedagogy, curriculum and access to information via the new technologies available. Technologies can no longer be used as just a simple tool to access information as in Web1, but can be a vehicle to collaborate with others and function in a team setting to address real and authentic issues more commonly done with Web2.
The partnership was founded in 2002 with a mission “to build a collaborative partnership among education, businesses, community, and government leaders” to address the gap between what students are learning in the classroom today to what they will need to know in order to function in the 21st century work environment. There is a long list of supporting partners such as U.S. Department of Education, Apple Computers, Dell Computers Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, National Education Association and others. The skills that the partnership focuses on include genuine problem solving, critical thinking skills, collaborative discussion, project-based learning, global awareness and social responsibility.
Welcome to Route 21 is the interactive part of the website. While exploring here I came across snapshots of ICT/Global Awareness. There I found Implementing ICT literacy in a science curriculum. An edutopia video clip demonstrated the processes that an elementary school used to collaborate with students in
Another example, of collaborative project-based problem solving was a high school engineering freshman class working in teams to engineer a structurally viable wing and present there findings to actual engineers. Under Critical Thinking in Math and Science and Implementing a Science Design Project there is an explanation and an edutopia video clip of the students progressing through their project testing stresses on the wing span to determine the best design.
The students indicated that the hands-on collaborative experience was profound and more impactful. An engineer offers, “Reflection is equated with retention.” These examples confirm that a collaborative project-based learning experience conducted with the aid of technologies and information literacy’s can demonstrate actual student learning.
As a contemporary educator, I plan to modify my teaching practice to more fully incorporate project-based learning in order to facilitate more comprehensive student learning. For example, as part of our Science curriculum, we explore sinking and floating. We use different objects in the classroom to predict then observe results. We use our results to draw a conclusion about what causes some objects to float and others to sink. This is a great learning experience and we will share our information and look forward to hearing from others.
