Before we start working with Web 2.0 tools, let's review what we mean by 21st century skills. 21st century skills are those abilities that enable students to access, analyze, manage, synthesize, evaluate, create and share information in a variety of forms and media that incorporates a global perspective. Educators can leverage these skills to support 21st century learning outcomes that are associated with preparing students to meet the needs of an ever evolving workforce. These skills are not associated directly with particular content areas, but rather encompass skills that students need to be successful lifelong learners in an increasingly interconnected world. 21st century skills refer to competencies in creativity, communication, collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem solving. We've also added skills in reflection and feedback as well. Education experts, however, do not agree on a universal definition of 21st century skills. And they also disagree on whether technology skills should be taught, and what learning environments should be developed to support their acquisition. Some professionals say basic skills like reading and mathematics should be emphasize and there is little evidence that classroom technologies have improved student learning. They urge society to focus on a broader, more liberal education, not one narrowly focused on preparing the workforce. The idea of teaching students how to find and interpret information, and apply critical thinking skills to a real-world tasks is not a 21st century idea. Most of the skills had been an integral part of the progressive education movement since the early days of the 20th century. In 1915 John Dewey and his daughter Evelyn wrote a book titled Schools of to-morrow. In this book, they described the changes needed in education and emphasized that students did not need to add more information, but rather needed to connect what they learned with their lives. Many education experts feel that 21st century skills are only an echo of progressive education ideas. Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge or TPACK for short, is a conceptual framework developed by Matthew Koehler and Punya Mishra. It describes how technologies can be best employed in different pedagogies for facilitating the acquisition of content knowledge. TPACK identifies three primary forms of knowledge, content, pedagogy, and technology, and emphasizes the new kinds of knowledge that occur in the overlapping areas. The TPACK model emphasizes the need for all three areas, content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and technological knowledge to be integrated in instruction. We hope that this brief look at 21st century skills was helpful to you in providing more information and foundational knowledge in this area. We will talk more about 21st century skills in our discussion groups related to Web 2.0 tools. I hope that you will join us.
