Partnership for 21st Century Skills

I recently visited a blog titled Partnership for 21st Century Skills where there mission is to help schools collaborate with business, community, and government to get 21st Century Skills into the classroom. The 21st Centruy Skills include:

Information and communication skills (information and media literacy skills; communication skills)
Thinking and problem-solving (critical thinking and systems thinking; problem identification, formulation and solution; creativity and intellectual curiosity)
Interpersonal and self-direction skills (interpersonal and collaborative skills; self-direction; accountability and adaptability; social responsibility)
Global awareness
Financial, economic and business literacy, and developing entrepreneurial skills to enhance workplace productivity and career options
Civic literacy

The problem that these people are seeing is that students are not prepared for buisness standards, and even college, when they leave high school. I was surprised to see that there are so many buisness involved with 21st Centruy Skills. Some of the buisnesses involved include Pearson, Intel Corporation, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Apple, Dell, and LEGO Group to name a few. What helps 21st Centruy Skills market themselves is to have name brand buisnesses get involved and support them.

The idea behind 21st Centruy Skills is great. An issue that I see is some of the skills they accept schools to perform are unable to due to the lack of teachnology. For example, one of the skills frame work is Media Literacy. They expect students and teachers to understand both how and why media messages are constructed, examine how individuals interpret messages differently, and apply a fundamental understanding of the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of media. Than it is expected that the students understand and utilize the most appropriate media creation tools, characteristics and conventions. I use to teach video technology and there are teachers in my school that expect students to create videos for an assignmnet. I would have a hand full of students come to me each year to eighther help them with creating a video, transfer the video to a computer from the camera, and/or create a DVD for them when they were finished. Teachers have to understand that not all students have access to a camera and/or the proper software to produce a video. What the teachers are expecting the students to do is great but they have to be very careful with what they are asking. Maybe they can team groups together so every group has atleast one person with access to a camera and one person with access to video software (and not the video technology equipment.

Here is a link to 21st Century Skills:
http://www.21stcenturyskills.org