The Partnership for 21st Century Learning Skills

When sifting through the information on The Partnership for 21st Century Learning Skills http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/index.php, I was immediately overwhelmed by all of the information that has been compiled onto their website. I then began to narrow my search and begin at the beginning. It was surprising how much information that had been placed on this website. The overview of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills is designed around maintaining basic core curriculum (math, science, language arts, history…) with the infusion of:
· Global Awareness
· Financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy
· Civic literacy
· Health literacy
I think that this is fabulous! I think that at some times it may be hard for teachers to incorporate everything that may be going on in the world while maintaining the core curriculum. However, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills curriculum is designed around these interdisciplinary skills that should be taught in schools. The Partnership has many household member names such as Dell, Apple, Scholastic, and McGraw-Hill among many others.

There was not any one thing that I really disagreed with on the website that I found. I do wonder how the curriculum would be implemented into each states curriculum. However I found this site to be very informative and it is one way for us as educators to stay abreast of up and coming advances in the educational world.

Summertime Blogging

Currently I do not have my own classroom rather work one on one with students as a tutor and/or consultant teacher. I have talked with and worked with other teachers on what might be some good ideas for blogging within their classrooms.

One way for teachers to use blogging is during the summer months when students may not be present in schools. A lot of times schools assign summer reading throughout the summer and with the use of blogging, students can keep in touch throughout these months and discuss their readings. Teachers can post various questions through the summer on topics from various reading such as themes or a character analysis and have students respond over the summer months (perhaps every two weeks or so-- it is summer after all!). Teachers can use the posts as a participation grade for the class. This way of blogging might work better in upper grade levels such as middle school or high school.

Using blogging in this way allows students to have conversations with each other on a scholarly level especially if you call for blogging to other's posts. I think that students would enjoy this form of blogging as it is bringing in different technologies that the students may be using on a daily basis as well as calling for them to read more books!

First Time Blogger!

This is my very first blog! I know that blogging has many different uses and I am excited to learn about many of them and continue to share things with all of you!