21st Century Skills in the Classroom
Notes for the Celebration of Teaching & Learning 2011
blake.west@knea.org

One excellent guide for planning any teaching and learning experience can be found in the work of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe and their book Understanding by Design.  That work was the springboard for multiple other books, workshops, websites, and served as a guide for countless educators.  Here are a few ideas that connect with 21st century skills in the classroom.

What is worth uncoverage?  Look at the standards and curriculum to identify the cornerstones, the most important knowledge, skills, or attitudes that deserve the time for students to gain deep understanding.

How will we know when they know it?  Designing meaningful assessments is the second consideration in the planning process... but it is inexorably tied to the third element.  Ideally, they intertwine with assessment infused throughout the learning activities and experiences of a student.

How will they learn it?  Designing meaningful learning experiences is at the heart of work in the 21st Century Skills classroom. In these classrooms, students collaborate with each other, think critically, exhibit creativity, and communicate their learning in authentic, meaningful ways.  In fact, students are even players in the selection of project elements and help to design activities and even participate in assessment.

Resources abound... Professional journals, books, and countless web sites are overflowing with ideas for projects, tools for research and productivity, connections for collaboration.  The job of the 21st century educator (like their students) is to become an intelligent consumer of these resources, tapping a deep professional knowledge of pedagogy, child and adolescent development, content knowledge, and information literacy. 

More powerfully, regardless of whether the building, district, or state encourages implementation of 21st century or puts systems in place for collaboration, individuals within a school (or using virtual networking tools) can collaborate, integrate, innovate, and build interdisciplinary projects.  Professional Learning Communities or Professional Learning Networks may wish to use Curriculum Guides from the P21 website (link below) to motivate their discussions on how to move their professional practice forward.

Traditional journals and books  can be a great starting point for ideas and collaboration.  Consider a few publications:

• Educational Leadership (Feb 2011) focused on teaching "screenagers."  The article "Using Websites Wisely" by Coiro and Fogleman includes a nice section on using websites to learn.
• Educational Leadership (Mar 2009) was dedicated to utilizing web 2.0.
• Learning & Leading with Technology is the publication of the International Society for Technology in education... every issue is a tremendous source of ideas and challenges to create the 21st century classroom
• Understanding by Design is over a decade old, but Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe's work is still a wonderful starting point for
• Focus (2011) by Mike Schmoker aligns beautifully with Wiggins and McTighe... and reinforces a case for fewer standards with deeper study, more meaningful projects.

Here are a few web starting points that MAY be worth your consideration:

Partnership for 21st Century Skills - www.p21.org.  Especially investigate the area called "Route 21" - a searchable database of resources including video examples.  Curriculum resources developed in collaboration with such partners as NCTM, NSTA, NCTE, and other specialized professional associations provide ideas on how to infuse 21st century skills across the curriculum.  Look under resources.

iEARN (International Education And Resource Network) - largest non profit organization paring students and teachers around the world for a wide variety of projects:  http://www.iearn.org/

 ePals… This, too, is a safe source of connections to classrooms around the world www.epals.com

Teach Connect teachconnect.ning.com - a global website that pairs teachers working on collaborative projects.oops, this is now offline.  Visit the ning and let the site founder know if you'd like to see it revived.

E-zines, organizations, and compilation sites:

www.edutopia.org - The home of the George Lucas Foundation's education resources.  Rich in media content (and also much of their content is catalogued on the Route 21 are of the P21 website (above).

http://www.techlearning.com/ - Tech Learning also has free newsletters and publications for educators.  They compile top ten lists of resources and ideas on a frequent basis.

ISTE - International Society for Technology in Education.  This is a membership organization that is responsible for developing both the student standards and teacher standards for technology literacy.  Standards can be accessed online even if you are not a member.

www.webquest.org - this is Bernie Dodge's original web site featuring the project design that grew at San Diego State University.  Since then, numerous other sites compile web projects, but this one also includes some guidance for project design.  It is strongly based on the work of McTige and Wiggins.

kathyschrock.net - one of the long-time collectors, cataloguers, and contributors to the database of web resources.

Gateway to 21st Century Skills - http://www.thegateway.org/ - a site hosted by NEA with teaching and learning resources focused on 21st century skills.

Discovery Channel - http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/ - another outstanding source for catalogued ideas for teaching and learning.

Sites for Video:

Teacher Tube - http://www1.teachertube.com/ - A reliable resource of classroom videos for many years.

School Tube - http://www.schooltube.com/ - another great place for students and teachers to access academic video resources..

WatchKnow -  http://www.watchknow.org/default.aspx - This site provides a clear organization of resources right on the front page... and extensive resources, at that..

Neo K-12 - http://www.neok12.com/ - Also a well-catalogued video library. But in addition to video, this site has various other tools for educators.

Other tools and resources to visit:

www.Blogger.com - This site provides free blog hosting services..

Freeplay Music – www.freeplaymusic.com - sound effects and music that you can use without breaking copyright

http://www.techsmith.com/jing/ - The Jing Project allows users to capture whatever’s happening on their computer desktop as a video with voiceover

Docs.google.com - Google provides this shared workspace free!  It's private, collaborative, and can be used to share documents for a wide variety of purposes - professional collaboration and student work are possibilities.

Edutecher.net – This site collects various tools.. no cost, ad free, with ed tech resources for teachers (Created by Adam Bellows, College Board)

KeepVid.com – download a copy of videos from sites like YouTube. NOTE This might be a way to download blocked videos from YouTube and use them in your classroom

www.Newlits.org – This is an example of a very targeted professional development wiki focused on new literacies and digital technologies for middle school educators

www.ning.com - Imagine starting with the shell of a social networking site like MySpace or FaceBook and being able to customize it for use in YOUR environment.  NING is a free social networking service that users can tailor to specific group needs.

ourmedia.org - This site is intended to advance grassroots activism for causes of meaning and substance.  To support that end, it is a free hosting site for images, texts, video and audio clips spreading grassroots creativity

wikispaces - http://www.wikispaces.com/ - a site with both pay sites and free wiki shared work space for educators

PB Wiki, pbwiki.com/academic.wiki – another option for a free wiki platform... This one hosts 300,000 projects right now!

Podmatic podmatic.com is a free hosting site for podcasts and tools for use by people who create podcasts, as well.

www.shambles.net/web2 and www.zamzar.com as a free online file conversion program.