The skills students need to learn now in the 21st century aren’t the same as they were 20 years ago; just knowing the 3 Rs isn’t enough. According to a survey conducted last fall, 88% of voters “believe that schools can and should incorporate 21st century skills” into their curriculum. You can read the key findings yourself. The skills required to be literate in today’s global economy have changed.
But what are the skills that make up 21st century literacy? Survey respondents ranked computer and technology skills second most important, behind only reading comprehension. Other important areas are critical thinking, problem solving, ethics, communication, and collaboration.
Both the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and enGauge have developed frameworks to identify components of 21st century literacy.
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills divides their framework into four categories:
- Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes
- Learning and Innovation Skills
- Information, Media and Technology Skills
- Life and Career Skills
The enGauge skill list also uses four categories:
Within Digital-Age Literacy, they list these literacies:
- Basic Literacy
- Scientific Literacy
- Economic Literacy
- Technological Literacy
- Visual Literacy
- Information Literacy
- Multicultural Literacy
- Global Awareness
One question that often comes up when discussing these skills, especially technology and media skills, is whether these skills should be taught as separate courses or whether they should be integrated within existing subjects. For example, read David Warlick’s post What about Computer Applications, including the numerous comments and the follow-up post, to see several perspectives.
Whether we integrate these skills in all courses or teach them separately is a very relevant question for PLS. Teachers can’t help their students with these 21st century skills if they don’t possess them, but what’s the most effective way to teach the teachers? What do you think—should we restrict technology skills to courses like Building Online Collaborative Environments, or should we integrate them in all of our courses? Should visual literacy be left to courses like MEGA and the upcoming Infusing Arts into the Curriculum, or should visual assignments be part of a broad range of courses? I know that several of you have strong opinions on this subject, so please comment on the post and share your perspectives. You are also welcome to disagree—don’t feel you can only post if you agree with everything posted by our team in the past.
Further Reading
We’ve written about a number of these themes previously here. Check out these posts for further reading, or use the categories list on the right to browse the archives:
Christy, in my humble opinion . . . ALL OF THE ABOVE. And I don’t think that is overkill.
Interestingly enough, I just finished watching this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oILzoYpbj6M&NR=1
Just sharin’
Lee Anne
I agree–I don’t think this has to be an either/or decision. It can be both/and. If you noticed in David Warlick’s follow-up post, he quoted my complaint about his poll that forced a choice. He didn’t offer “All of the above” as a choice, so I didn’t answer the poll. (Aren’t I a stinker?)
I think we do need some courses like BCE that focus explicitly on technology, especially ones that dig deeper into the pedagogy that accompanies that technology. But I don’t want to see a partition that prevents us from integrating the tools in all of our courses. To paraphrase Chris Lehmann, pencil and paper are tools for learning, but we don’t go to a “pencil lab” to use them. Instead of just the computer lab or technology courses, the technology can be used as tools for learning everywhere.
As for the video, I’d heard of the 2 million minutes, but hadn’t seen anything about it. My one disagreement with what I saw is that I think it focuses too much on engineering and science. I didn’t hear anything about visual literacy, or music, or art, or storytelling–those skills will be important for the 21st century too.
If you view the video on King Middle School, featured in the post on 3/21, you can see an example of a school that integrates technology well into their curriculum. They see technology as a means to achieving their goals in educating students to work as a community and team to develop awesome products! They do not see it as a course or skill for it’s own sake. This is how it should be and the King School provides living proof. Technology can be seamlessly integrated into the regular curriculum.