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.