Blog #4 21st Century Skills and Lifelong Learning

There is a lot of talk of 21st century skills and how we, as teachers need to apply these in our class room. Some of these skills really are not new skills, and they my have even been taught all along in the classroom at some level. These skills just evolve (or at least need to evolve) to include the tools and technologies that are available today as well as prepare for what may develop in the future.

According to the frameworks on the Partnership for 21st Century Skills web site

www.21stcenturyskills.org the elements in the student outcomes are core subjects and 21st century themes, learning and innovation skills, information, media and technology skills and life and career skills. Having graduated from high school prior to the vast use of the internet, and reflecting back to my learning, I recall pieces of these skills in my class. The only major change is we were not discussing 21st century themes. We did learn research and media aand all of the other skills provided in this framework. A standard that should be focused on in this framework is not how to get information and test on it but to teach students how to use the information and think and problem solve. These skills need to continually upgrade with the tools available and culture we live in.

This leads to the aspect of lifelong learning. Educators and parents need to also keep up with evolving technologies. Workers will have to learn new tools for their jobs and be able to keep up to date for their market. Knowing that we are all continually students of these tools makes it all the more important to instill the value of thinking, problem solving and learning in our young students. These are the skills that will make the largest impact for continued success.

I see lifelong learning on a regular basis in my work with musicians. In private teaching I have stunts in age range of 8-80. The older students are going back to re-learn something they enjoyed in school but lost touch with. A successful program in my area is a community education program called Explore Adult Education. This program offers various small classes in computers, the arts, cooking and accounting, just to name a few. It holds to the idea that we should try to learn something new every day. The joy of this learning is demonstrated in my field through a magazine called Making Music. www.makingmusicmag.com Each month there are articles from people who are in other professions other than music telling their stories and offering tips to those who decided to continue their musical education.

These are the skills and values that will last our students longer than teaching how to take a standardized test. If our students can gather the information and think out how to solve problems on their own, the tests will be easy for them to pass if they remain a necessity in our education system.