21st CENTURY SKILLS IN KANSAS
"Kansas is focused on creating opportunities for stakeholders to work together to ensure student success by looking at more than the current content area measures of learning and identifying new ways to measure success that incorporate the skills and competencies students will need to live, learn, and thrive in a 21st century environment that demands innovation and creativity.
Accelerating technological advances, a rapidly changing knowledge base, an interconnected workforce, and an increasingly global society have combined to create the need for students to develop essential 21st century skills. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills brings together the business community, education leaders, and policymakers to define a powerful vision for 21st century education to ensure every child’s success as a citizen and a worker in the 21st century."
-Kansas State Department of Education
As stated above, the need for schools to change has never been greater. As an institution, education is one of the slowest to change. The 21st Century Initiative was started to help schools make the change from the industrial model most schools still follow, designed to help students prepare for a factory-based or agricultural workforce that is largely non-existent today, to the creative and innovative thinking centers students will need in order to learn to work collaboratively, solve problems, and work in jobs yet to come into existence.
The Kansas State Board of Education has set these specific goals for Kansas schools:
Resources:
Profiles of the 21st Century Learner
2009 MILE Guide: Milestones for Improving Learning and Education
Partnership for 21st Century Skills
Eduvision: Videos of 21st Century Classrooms at work
*DISCLAIMER: Some of the videos featured on Eduvision are not very good examples of 21st Century classrooms. When you watch, look for 21st Century themes and higher order thinking embedded.
Edutopia (George Lucas Education Foundation): What Works in Education Video Series
Getting Started (pdf)