21st+Century+Skills

What are 21st Century Skills?
21st century skills are the skills students need to succeed in work, school and life. They include:
 * Core subjects (as defined by NCLB)
 * 21st century content: global awareness, financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy, civic literacy and health and wellness awareness
 * Learning and thinking skills: critical thinking and problem solving skills, communications skills, creativity and innovation skills, collaboration skills, contextual learning skills and information and media literacy skills
 * Information and communications technology literacy
 * Life skills: leadership, ethics, accountability, adaptability, personal productivity, personal responsibility, people skills, self-direction and social responsibility

"Technologically Literate" and the NCLB
The EETT section of the NCLB, Title II, Part D, Section 2402 (b) (2) (A), specified an 8th grade benchmark for states and LEAs to meet if they want to receive federal money for technology:
 * "To assist every student in crossing the digital divide by ensuring that every student is technologically literate by the time the student finishes the eighth grade, regardless of the student's race, ethnicity, gender, family income, geographic location, or disability."

Unfortunately, the NCLB left the definition of "technologically literate" up to states to define. California doesn't seem to have a statewide definition for LEAs to adopt. Some guidelines might be helpful:
 * The State Education Technology Directors Association (SETDA) defined technology literacy this way in 2002: "Technology literacy is the ability to responsibly use appropriate technology to communicate, solve problems, and access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information to improve learning in all subject areas and to acquire lifelong knowledge and skills in the 21st century." Available from http://www.setda.org/toolkit/nlitoolkit/TLA/tla02.htm. SETDA also has a list of 8th grade performance indicators of technology literacy on the same site. The State of Washington has adopted SETDA's language, breaking the abilities into tiers of higher level skills, and also added a higher level of performance they call "technology fluency". See http://www.k12.wa.us/EdTech/TechRequirements.aspx
 * The proposed Federal ATTAIN Act of 2007 (Roybal-Allard), HR 2449, which will update the EETT portion of the NCLB if passed by Congress, defines "student technology literacy" to mean "student knowledge and skills in using contemporary information, communication and learning technologies in a manner necessary for successful life-long learning and citizenship in the knowledge-based, digital, and global 21st century, which includes the abilities to effectively communicate and collaborate; to analyze and solve problems; to access, evaluate, manage and create information and otherwise gain information literacy; and to do so in a safe and ethical manner."

Resources

 * [|http://www.21stcenturyskills.org] - This partnership has an [|excellent overview available for download.]
 * Also download and look at the [|ICT Literacy Maps] at the 21st Century Skills site. These literacy maps are the result of hundreds of hours of research and feedback from educators and business leaders. ICT literacy maps are available for Geography, Math, English and Science. The "literacy maps" are designed to illustrate how educators can meld lessons about Information and Communication Technology (ICT) literacy into the fabric of everyday classroom learning. The idea, according to the partnership, is to "assist educators in developing lesson plans for students that combine learning skills &amp; with 21st-century tools, such as the internet and data analysis software." Each of the PDF-style documents contains a list of potential core curriculum skills that can be addressed through exercises that teach ITC literacy, as well as sample student outcomes for accessing, processing, managing, integrating, and communicating information.