Reflection on Partnership for 21st Century Skills

I am interested in the Partnership for 21st Century Skills’ mission. I think that, based on the emerging technologies and the changes in the work place, this organization is crucial to helping schools develop the foundation for teaching students the skills they will need for the work place.

It seems to me that the partnership has the right idea for making teaching of 21st century skills successful because they link several different parties involved: educators, businesses, and community and government leaders. Each of these four parties is involved in shaping the students’ abilities.
I was surprised to read in the mission, that the Partnership views the disparities between what students learn in school and what they need to know as “profound”. I think this is quite exaggerated. I know the education sector is behind with respect to teaching skills for the 21st century, but I do not believe the gap is profound.
I am impressed to find that one of the advisors for the Partnership is a member of the Department of Education, and relieved as well. I think the department, government officials, and educators need to work hand in hand to provide successful strategies and trainings for teachers to implement in the class.
I was especially impressed when I saw that many of the members were software companies. It makes so much sense, though! These companies are the ones making the new software that requires new skills to be taught in schools. If they are on board and supporting of schools, this will ease getting new media into schools.
I actually used the Partnership’s Plan of Action Interactive guide, Route 21 to get some ideas for my classes. The site shows examples of things one can do to address the different components of 21st century skills. It is wonderful!
Please check out the website for yourself, and let me know your thoughts on it!

Another thought!

Why not use blogging to have my students come up with their own question and answer session in the blog? Or, they could come up with their own picture prompt. (All in Italian or Spanish, of course!) I would just provide the students with the topic.

The latter part of the assignment could be to choose three classmates' prompts or questions, and reply correctly. I would certainly preview all the comments before posting them to the site, but this would be a great tool to practice.

More Technology... How?

I have done a lot of reading over the past week about the impact of technology (namely weblogs and wikis) for my graduate class. I am amazed at the things other educators are doing in their classrooms to expand the walls of their classes. Schoolwork becomes so much more relevant to students when they realize that they are connecting with someone outside of the confines of their classrooms. New technologies allow this.

On a side note, the past two weeks in my own class have been jam-packed with my students referencing technology and how they use it without my prompting! Several of my students have randomly (I swear!) mentioned their favorite blogging/sharing sites. Some of them come with disclaimers from the students (for example, fmylife.com, a website where people can vent about mishaps of their day), and many have given me some insight into what matters to my middle school students. Some examples include:

• Facebook: the [in]famous site for posting pictures, cataloging your day in status updates, and commenting on others' content shows me my students are concerned with being "in the know" about others' lives.
• PostSecret:this project was started by Frank Warren, who handed out postcards to random strangers and asked them to tell a secret and mail it in to an anonymous address. The project exploded, and I believe three books have been since published with samples of postcards. This shows me that many of my students value their privacy, but also need to vent about what is bothering them.
• YouTube: Several times a day, my students reference videos from this site for me to watch. Many of them have mentioned that they've watched some of these videos several times. Other students can go on and on with titles of videos they enjoy. I'm not quite sure what the fascination is with some of these videos...

Given these examples, I plan to use the sources that my students enjoy to find material that is relevant to our study of Italian and the culture of Italy. I would like to post this material on my blog, and open it up to student questions/comments/ connections either in Italian or English, whichever they are most comfortable with to differentiate.

For example, with my seventh grade Italian class, we are studying fashion. I could probably find a video on youtube.com of an Italian designer's runway show and post it on my blog. From there, I would pose questions about the show in both Italian and English. Students would have to either answer a discussion question that I posted or make their own observation.

The blog would serve as a forum for discussion about the Italian culture and language, as an area to broaden horizons about what we study, and also as a place to supplement our classwork since it is not realistic to fit everything into a 47 minute time block or 10 month school year period. The blog could be continued past those confines. This is a great instructional tool for middle school language learners. Many of them will not be able to experience a trip abroad until high school, college or beyond (sometimes they never will), and it is important to show them that they can have certain experiences virtually so that they may gain a better understanding of the products and practices of the culture.

My Test Blog

Below is a link to a test blog I created for my students. I had a small class where more than half of my students were out because of a field trip, so I offered the remaining students the opportunity to blog a bit. I posted some pictures and told them to just write their thoughts/ reactions/knowledge about the pictures. Each student received a laptop, and we ran the class like a distance learning lab where I sat at a computer and read, replied to, and approved their posts.
The students were engaged, and they enjoyed it. I still feel like it needs improvement.

How could I have improved this assignment?

My test blog

Blogs in the Classroom

What are some ways you have used blogs in your classroom?
I am a World Language teacher, so I know I can use this tool to show important things about the culture in the countries we are studying. Any other ideas?