Partnership for 21st Century Skills- review of website

This week’s application asked for my fellow classmates and me to explore the website of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. The website explained that P21 will “provide tools and resources to help the U.S. education system keep up by fusing the three Rs and four Cs (critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation).” (Partnership for 21st Century Skills).


Upon entering the website, I was quite overwhelmed with the abundance of information applicable at just one site. I felt the page itself could have been more user-friendly in navigating a first time viewer through the site. If I had simply passed through this page on my own accord, I probably would not have navigated much further than the homepage. Luckily, this was an assignment for my masters program and I HAD to continue through the page. I was then able to find many useful tools.

While searching through the site, I was thrilled to find my state, New Jersey, in the state initiatives link. Over the last two to three years, our state mandated tests have transformed immensely and I was interested to see what ideas the site might provide. After reading through the initiatives and standards, I then found a link labeled Resources for 21st century skills, This is where the website completely engulfed me. I was able to find resources for online activities my students could use for grammar, writing, etc. and also a link for online field trips. For those of you unaware, New Jersey is currently suffering major budget cuts due to the new governor. The teachers in my district have realized that field trips might not be an option anymore and online trips may be our only way to “travel” with our students. I was able to find many online links to trips that would be a great addition to our current curriculum.

The major goal of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills is to have students and teachers connect what is being taught in the classroom to the real world they live in. The useful resources of this website would enable teachers to make that connection more tactile for the children that they teach. I was very impressed with the site and plan to continue navigating through it even though this week’s assignment is completed.

Using Blogs in English Class

During the school year I often spend many hours creating exciting, inventive ways to instruct my students in writing.  This is usually a very difficult task because majority of students do not enjoy the act of writing, especially standardized testing writing.  Often my students struggle with reading deeper into writing prompts and also expanding on their writing.  I try to vary topics that students write about so that different students will be interested with different ideas.  I feel blogs may create a different and exciting approach to writing.  Here are some ideas I think would be beneficial to use in an English classroom.

One idea I had for using blogs within my English class is to post issues in the news and have students comment on these issues.  Students often have much knowledge in issues our state, country, town are currently facing.  Many of my students are well informed about the current actions Governor Christie is taking toward budgeting in New Jersey public education.  I feel this is an issue in the news that impacts their learning and therefore they would have an opinion they could share with others.

Another way to use blogging in the classroom would be for students to write journal entries in their personal blog space.  I, as the teacher, can use the blogs as a grade, comment on their remarks and create a closer relationship with students in my classroom.  By discussing issues important to them, the student- teacher bond could be made stronger.

The last way in which to use blogging in my class would be for students to write original pieces and post to the blog.  Students would receive comments from myself as well as other students on how to improve their writing.  This is one idea that I am a little uncertain about because of student's harsh wording at times. This use of blogs would take much preparation on the part of the teacher and in discussing proper ways to critique writings with students.

Technology in the Classroom

This week's reading and use of technology has both intrigued and frightened me. I consider myself to be knowledgeable in technology and after viewing different blogs and reading other people's thoughts and uses of technology, I see I have a lot more to learn! Through this course I hope to gain a greater understanding of uses of technology both for myself and for my students. I am very excited to start blogging with my 5th graders and hope I can figure out how to complete this task through the tasks of this course. Any advice from classmates or other bloggers would be greatly appreciated!!