21st-Century Skills

• Many organizations have their own lists of what these skills are and Doug suggests you check any organizations you are a member of. He uses this chapter to give ideas about using technology to teach information literacy, technology skill, communication skill, creativity, and problem solving. Avoid assignments where students only need to find facts. Assignments need to have clarity of purpose and expectations, allow for student choice, be relevant, stress high-level thinking skills, and answer real questions. Activities need to feature a variety of information-finding tasks, allow for hands-on modes, use technology, allow for a variety of communications, and offer complexity with manageable steps. There should also be some collaboration.
• When it comes to assessment, you can make projects available to the world for comments. Let students see examples of completed projects and ask them to self-evaluate. There is a rubric you can use as well. As far as teacher attitudes are concerned, you need to be comfortable with some loss of control, accept active students, believe all students can succeed given time and support, work on research expertise, be enthusiastic and realize projects don’t always work the first time. In addition to example lessons Doug gives advice on promoting creativity and right-brain skills with technology.

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