Kim Parra M.A.

What are 21 st Century Skills? The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) is a national organization that advocates for 21st century readiness for every student. The United States is competing in a global economy that demands innovation. P21 and its members provide tools and resources to help the U.S. education system keep up by fusing the 3Rs and 4Cs (Critical thinking and problem solving, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity and innovation).

A key component of the Partnership’s framework for 21st century teaching and learning focuses the skills students should master.

Twenty-First Century Student Outcomes

P21 Website:

What is Web 2.0? Web 2.0 is the term given to describe a second generation of the World Wide Web that is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online. Web 2.0 basically refers to the transition from static HTML Web pages to a more dynamic Web with collaborative websites.

Web 2.0 Web Sites:

21st Century Skills and Web 2.0 What does the teaching of 21st century skills look like in the classroom? What "tools" and resources support the instruction of 21st century skills?

Produce videos from photos, video clips and music.

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21st Century Skills - Animoto Creativity, effective communication skills and critical thinking skills come into play when students use this Web 2.0 tool to design and create videos. Creative juices flow when students suddenly become video producers. The site’s text blocks have a limited number of characters so students must write concisely and succinctly. Students must critically look at their choices of images, text and music to make decisions as to the best choices and arrangements. Critically evaluating each video, editing and revising as needed, and remixing videos develop important 21st century learning skills. The visual, audio, and textual elements in producing the videos help students produce visual messages and strengthen visual literacy skills.

Glogster is a poster-creation tool that allows students to combine text, pictures, graphics, video, and audio into an interactive online poster. You use it to create a “glog” which is basically an online poster web pag e.

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21st Century Skills – Glogster Creativity, effective communication skills and student collaboration during group projects are all used when students use this site. Creating these online posters can definitely spark students’ creativity while turning potentially dull assignments into individually creative and highly visually-stimulating ones. This Web 2.0 tool's visual, audio, and textual elements help to develop the visual literacy skills needed by 21st century learners. Visual literacy is the ability to understand and produce visual messages. Visual literacy has become increasingly important in today’s information age as students are becoming more and more surrounded by images expressing all kinds of information and knowledge.

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

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(CBS) Golfer Tiger Woods had a lot to say today (February 19, 2010), in his first public appearance since his car accident last November. CBSNEWS.com ran his public statement today through a word cloud generator at to see which words were most frequently used in his statement. The words, "people," "want," "Elin," and "behavior" pop in the word-cloud. Perhaps the single most important thing that Tiger said today was "I am deeply sorry for my irresponsible and selfish behavior." But that doesn't show up prominently in the world-cloud. It's in the lower right corner. What's more important? What you say? Or how often you say it?

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21st Century Skills - Wordle Information Literacy Critical Thinking Visual Literacy Picture Linked

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"Fakebook" allows teachers and students to create imaginary profile pages for study purposes. Use "Fakebook" to chart the plot of a book, the development of a character, a series of historical events, the debates and relationships between people, and so on!

“Fakebook” examples in the classroom:

-An opportunity to use an exciting, motivating, and 21st century communication context to target language skills. -A place to sequence/describe the events of a character's life and associate image and video links. -A context to explore character perspectives (and multiple perspectives, as you can have other characters' respond). Fakebook Provides:

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“Backchanneling”

Backchannel is the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside live spoken remarks, such as a classroom lesson. The backchannel is everything going on in the room that isn't coming from the presenter. The backchannel is where people ask each other questions, pass notes, get distracted, and give you the most immediate feedback you'll ever get.

21st century skills demand that we prepare our students to communicate, collaborate and connect to each other, and to information. Backchanneling uses a private chatroom as the platform to practice these skills. Students participate in chatting as a means of communication, review material previously discussed in class and collaboratively compile and organize information. Backchanneling and 21 st Century Skills:

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Type in the code that matches your answer. Type the SEND number here Multiple Choice

Leave a space after the number then type your answer

Some benefits: Increasing classroom participation and attentiveness; Encouraging risk-taking with anonymous student responses; Eliciting diverse opinions when there isn’t a correct answer; Gauging student comprehension of material immediately; Grabbing students with thought-provoking opening questions; and Assessing last night’s reading with a quick quiz 21 st Century Skills: Reflection & Feedback

Finding Educational Web 2.0 Sites and Tools

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