Today I visited the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. My first reaction to the website is that it was a bit plain and not eye catching. I thought when I was going to pull up the website it would we full of videos, podcasting, and full of the technology that they are promoting. I was surprised that Ohio is not part of the state work listed in the state initiatives. I feel like the education I am teaching and the state curriculum in Ohio is promoting these 21st century skills. On the first day of school, our principal, talked about what skills our students needed when they graduate and we were to make sure that these initiatives were included in our lessons. These 21st century skills are very similar to what he was talking about.
I did not find anything on the site that I disagreed with and I actually welcome the effort of the government, business leaders, and schools working together to help the students. I teach a career and technical education program in Dayton, Ohio. My pathway is business management. The lessons I am teaching now and have been teaching promote most of these initiatives given on this website. The two I focus on the most are communication skills and business literacy. Having this website as a recruitment tool is going to be huge. I am always telling my students what they need to know when they graduate and this will give me one more place to send them to reiterate what I have been preaching to them so far. The website will also give me a place to turn to as the initiatives change. In 5 or 10 years they may be different so I can check and see what has changed and how I need to change my lessons to incorporate anything new.
