Connect To Understand – Part B

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What are 21st century skills?
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The 21st century skills are a set of abilities that students need to develop in
order to succeed in the information age.
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills lists three types:

I. Learning Skills
 Critical Thinking
 Creative Thinking
 Collaborating
 Communicating

Critical Thinking
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Critical thinking is focused, careful analysis of something to better understand it. When
people speak of “left brain” activity, they are usually referring to critical thinking. Here are
some of the main critical-thinking abilities:
 Analyzing is breaking something down into its parts, examining each part, and
noting how the parts fit together.
 Arguing is using a series of statements connected logically together, backed by
evidence, to reach a conclusion.
 Classifying is identifying the types or groups of something, showing how each
category is distinct from the others.
 Comparing and contrasting is pointing out the similarities and differences
between two or more subjects.
 Defining is explaining the meaning of a term using denotation, connotation,
example, etymology, synonyms, and antonyms.
 Describing is explaining the traits of something, such as size, shape, weight, color,
use, origin, value, condition, location, and so on.
 Evaluating is deciding on the worth of something by comparing it against an
accepted standard of value.
 Explaining is telling what something is or how it works so that others can
understand it.
 Problem solving is analyzing the causes and effects of a problem and finding a way
to stop the causes or the effects.
 Tracking cause and effect is determining why something is happening and what
results from it.

Creative Thinking
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Creative thinking is expansive, open-ended invention and discovery of possibilities. When

people speak of “right brain” activity, they most often mean creative thinking. Here are
some of the more common creative thinking abilities:
 Brainstorming ideas involves asking a question and rapidly listing all answers, even
those that are far-fetched, impractical, or impossible.

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  Creating something requires forming it by combining materials, perhaps according
to a plan or perhaps based on the impulse of the moment.
 Designing something means finding the conjunction between form and function and
shaping materials for a specific purpose.
 Entertaining others involves telling stories, making jokes, singing songs, playing
games, acting out parts, and making conversation.
 Imagining ideas involves reaching into the unknown and impossible, perhaps idly or
with great focus, as Einstein did with his thought experiments.
 Improvising a solution involves using something in a novel way to solve a problem.
 Innovating is creating something that hasn’t existed before, whether an object, a
procedure, or an idea.
 Overturning something means flipping it to get a new perspective, perhaps by
redefining givens, reversing cause and effect, or looking at something in a brand new
way.
 Problem solving requires using many of the creative abilities listed here to figure
out possible solutions and putting one or more of them into action.
 Questioning actively reaches into what is unknown to make it known, seeking
information or a new way to do something.

Communicating
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 Analyzing the situation means thinking about the subject, purpose, sender,
receiver, medium, and context of a message.
 Choosing a medium involves deciding the most appropriate way to deliver a
message, ranging from a face-to-face chat to a 400-page report.
 Evaluating messages means deciding whether they are correct, complete, reliable,
authoritative, and up-to-date.
 Following conventions means communicating using the expected norms for the
medium chosen.
 Listening actively requires carefully paying attention, taking notes, asking
questions, and otherwise engaging in the ideas being communicated.
 Reading is decoding written words and images in order to understand what their
originator is trying to communicate.
 Speaking involves using spoken words, tone of voice, body language, gestures,
facial expressions, and visual aids in order to convey ideas.
 Turn taking means effectively switching from receiving ideas to providing ideas,
back and forth between those in the communication situation.
 Using technology requires understanding the abilities and limitations of any
technological communication, from phone calls to e-mails to instant messages.
 Writing involves encoding messages into words, sentences, and paragraphs for the
purpose of communicating to a person who is removed by distance, time, or both.

Collaborating
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 Allocating resources and responsibilities ensures that all members of a team can
work optimally.
 Brainstorming ideas in a group involves rapidly suggesting and writing down ideas
without pausing to critique them.
 Decision-making requires sorting through the many options provided to the group
and arriving at a single option to move forward.

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  Delegating means assigning duties to members of the group and expecting them to
fulfill their parts of the task.
 Evaluating the products, processes, and members of the group provides a clear
sense of what is working well and what improvements could be made.
 Goal setting requires the group to analyze the situation, decide what outcome is
desired, and clearly state an achievable objective.
 Leading a group means creating an environment in which all members can
contribute according to their abilities.
 Managing time involves matching up a list of tasks to a schedule and tracking the
progress toward goals.
 Resolving conflicts occurs from using one of the following strategies: asserting,
cooperating, compromising, competing, or deferring.
 Team building means cooperatively working over time to achieve a common goal.
II. Literacy Skills
 Information Literacy
 Media Literacy
 Technology Literacy
Literacy skills help students gain knowledge through reading as well as using media and
technology. These skills also help students create knowledge through writing as well as
developing media and technology.
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Information Literacy
Students need to be able to work effectively with information, using it at all levels of
Bloom's Taxonomy (remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and
creating). Information literacy involves traditional skills such as reading, researching, and
writing; but new ways to read and write have also introduced new skills:
 Consuming information: The current excess of information requires students to
gain new skills in handling it. When most information came through official
publications like books, newspapers, magazines, and television shows, students
encountered data that had been prepared by professionals. Now, much information is
prepared by amateurs. Some of that work is reliable, but much is not. Students must
take on the role of the editor, checking and cross-checking information, watching for
signs of bias, datedness, and errors. Students need to look at all information as the
product of a communication situation, with a sender, subject, purpose, medium,
receiver, and context.
 Producing information: In the past, students were mostly consumers of
information. When they produced information, it was largely for a single reader—the
teacher—and was produced for a grade. It was therefore not an authentic
communication situation, and students felt that writing was a purely academic
activity. Now writing is one of the main ways students communicate. It has real-world
applications and consequences. Students need to understand that what they write
can do great good or great harm in the real world, and that how they write
determines how powerful their words are. Students need to take on the role of
professional writers, learning to be effective and ethical producers of information.
Media Literacy
Media literacy involves understanding the many ways that information is produced and
distributed. The forms of media have exploded in the last decade and new media arrive
every day:

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 Picture Not Mine. Credits to the owner.

Students' use of media has far outstripped educational use, and students will continue to
adopt new media long before teachers can create curricula about it. It is no longer enough
to teach students how books, periodicals, and TV shows work. Students need to learn how
to critically analyze and evaluate messages coming to them through any medium.

Picture Not Mine. Credits to the owner.

As with information literacy, the key is to recognize the elements of the communication
situation—sender, message (subject and purpose), medium, receiver, and context. These
elements are constant regardless of the medium used. By broadening the student's
perspective to see all media as part of a larger communication situation, we can equip
students to effectively receive and send information in any medium. Students must learn to
recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each medium and to analyze each message
they receive and send.
Technology Literacy
We are living through a technological revolution, with huge changes taking place over brief
spans of time. A decade ago, Facebook didn't exist, but now many people could not live
without it. The average cellphone is now more powerful than computers from several years
ago. We are surrounded by technology, and most of it performs multiple functions.
In Growing Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World, Don Tapscott
outlines the following eight expectations that students have of technology.
 Freedom to express their views, personalities, and identities
 Ability to customize and personalize technology to their own tastes
 Ability to dig deeper, finding whatever information they want
 Honesty in interactions with others and with organizations
 Fun to be part of learning, work, and socialization as well as entertainment
 Connecting to others and collaborating in everything
 Speed and responsiveness in communication and searching for answers
 Innovation and change, not settling for familiar technologies but seeking and using
what is new and better
As you can see, students expect a great deal out of their technologies. You can help them
use technology wisely:
 reading Web sites;
 using search engines;
 using map searches;
 accessing videos, podcasts, and feeds;
 evaluating Web resources;
 researching on the Internet;

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 e-mailing, chatting, texting, microblogging;
 using social sites;
 visiting virtual worlds;
 blogging and using wikis; and
 using message boards, newsgroups, and VOIP (Skype).
By understanding how to evaluate this new information and how to use these new tools to
create effective, well-grounded communication, students can harness the power of new
technology and be inspired to learn.

III. Life Skills
 Flexibility
 Initiative
 Social Skills
 Productivity
 Leadership
What are life skills?
Life skills equip students to thrive in the classroom and in the world beyond. The 21st
century life skills are flexibility, initiative, social skills, productivity, and leadership.
Flexibility

Given the rapid rate of change in our world, the ability to adjust and
adapt is critical to success. Students needs to learn to quickly analyze
what is going on around them and make adjustments on the fly—all
the while keeping their goals at the forefront of their minds. Flexibility
is not spinelessness. In fact, a spine needs to be flexible to allow the
person to move while remaining upright with eyes on the prize.
Picture Not Mine. Credits to the owner.

The inquiry process requires and rewards flexibility. Instead of following a set course or a
rigid set of instructions, students must make constant course corrections as they do the
following:
 set goals
 seek answers
 navigate information
 collaborate with others
 create something
 evaluate their work
 improve it
 share it with the world
Initiative
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The entrepreneurial spirit is founded on initiative—the willingness to step forward with an
idea and take the risk of bringing it to fruition. The changing economic
landscape requires entrepreneurs. Students need to learn how to set
goals for themselves, plan how they will reach their goals, and enact
their plans. Once students feel comfortable with charting their own
course, they will readily launch into activity.
By teaching students the inquiry process, you equip them to take
initiative. When you step back into a facilitating role, you require
students to step forward. Students take the initiative when they
 question,
 plan,
 research,

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 create,
 improve, and
 present.
Social Skills
Picture Not Mine. Credits to the owner.
Human being have always been social creatures, connecting to
and depending on a tribe of some hundred others. Technology now
allows people to belong to multiple tribes—students at the same
school, friends on Facebook, colleagues on LinkedIn, fans on fan
sites, gamers on massively multiplayer online games. In all of
these environments, social skills are critical. Whether students are
having a face-to-face meeting or are tweeting with hundreds of
strangers, there are real human beings with real thoughts,
feelings, and needs on the other end. And, as work environments
become more collaborative, social skills are a key to success.

The best way for students to develop social skills is to collaborate with others. When
students work together on a project, they have common goals and interests, they are
required to develop social skills such as these:
 cooperation
 compromise
 decision making
 communicating
 using emotional intelligence
 using constructive criticism
 trusting others
 delivering on promises
 coordinating work
Productivity
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During the recent recession, the productivity of the American worker
reached an all-time high. Clearly, those who kept their jobs did so in part
by producing more than they needed to before. The increase in
productivity among workers in the U.S. means that more is being
produced by fewer people, which means that the job market is even more
competitive after the recession than during it. Workers who have lower
productivity are being left behind.

By using the inquiry process and developing projects, students learn the
habits of productivity:

 Goal setting
 Planning
 Time management
 Research
 Development
 Evaluation
 Revision
 Application
Leadership
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 Leadership is a suite of related skills that combines the other life skills.
Good leaders take initiative, have strong social skills, are flexible, and are
productive. They also do the following:
 Identify goals
 Inspire others to share those goals
 Organize a group so that all members can contribute according to their abilities
 Resolve conflicts among members
 Encourage the group to reach their goals
 Help group members solve problems and improve performance
 Give credit where it is due
That list pretty well describes what you do daily as a teacher—because
you are the leader of your class. However, if students are perpetually in
the role of followers, they never have to learn these skills. They need to occasionally
become the teacher, and inquiry allows them to do so. Group projects also require students
to take on leadership responsibilities. Inquire provides many projects that can be done in
groups.
New Skills for New Jobs
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These skills have always been important for students, though they are particularly
important in our information-based economy. When most workers held jobs in industry, the
key skills were knowing a trade, following directions, getting along with others, working
hard, and being professional—efficient, prompt, honest, and fair. Schools have done an
excellent job of teaching these skills, and students still need them.

To hold information-age jobs, though, students also need to think deeply about issues, solve
problems creatively, work in teams, communicate clearly in many media, learn ever-
changing technologies, and deal with a flood of information. The rapid changes in our world
require students to be flexible, to take the initiative and lead when necessary, and to
produce something new and useful.
Demand in the Workplace
These are not just anecdotal observations. The following quotations come from Up to the
Challenge, a report by the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), Career
Technical Education (CTE), and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21):
 The employment titan Manpower reports that despite the recession, 31 percent of
employers throughout the world struggle to find qualified workers because of “a talent
mismatch between workers’ qualifications and the specific skill sets and combinations of
skills employers want.”
 The American Management Corporation reports that employers want workers who can
think critically, solve problems creatively, innovate, collaborate, and communicate.
 The National Association of Manufacturers reports, “Today’s skill shortages are
extremely broad and deep, cutting across industry sectors and impacting more than 80
percent of companies surveyed. This human capital performance gap threatens our
nation’s ability to compete . . . [and] is emerging as our nation’s most critical business
issue."
 The National Academies indicate that “The danger exists that Americans may not know
enough about science, technology, or mathematics to contribute significantly to, or fully
benefit from, the knowledge-based economy that is already taking shape around us.”
 The New York Times reports that low-skilled workers are being laid off and "turned away
at the factory door and increasingly becoming the long-term unemployed . . .” This issue
results from a disparity between the skills that worker have and those that employers
need.

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CommiT and ConqUer!
Activity:
 Socialized recitation on laws pertaining to 21st Century Skill Categories.
 Metacognitive report – submitted through Google Classroom
- Design and demonstrate an activity using the 21 st century skills in a particular learning
area

Note: Rubrics will be given prior to the activity.

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