21st+century+skills

Hello LE division faculty! Gayle Cole recently got me hooked on [|Diigo] which is a great site for organizing favorite websites. I especially find it useful for sort of collecting great blogs that I like to check in on now & again for ideas & inspiration. Because we are hosting him next month, I have been reading [|Will Richardson's blog]. Recently, he referred to an article from Educational Leadership that I wanted to share with you. It's about 21st century skills and you can find the article [|here]. I was particularly struck by it because the program administrators recently revamped our admissions open house presentation, complete with a [|Prezi], and the focus in presenting our academic program was on this notion of 21st century skills. (As an aside, it was proposed that this presentation be shared with you all at an upcoming faculty meeting and I would love to know your thoughts - would you like to see it?) We certainly see ourselves as aiming to teach with these skills in mind at CEE, but this article really made me think about the implications of "adopting" these or any one set of external goals. I'd be curious to hear what you think. On a somewhat related note, I will be hosting a parent focus group in a few weeks for parents in our division. I had thought of a few areas for discussion but would also love any ideas you have for topics - keeping in mind that these should be hot topics without being so controversial as to create a hostile environment. Are there other areas that you find yourself discussing with parents more than others? This would be an opportunity for them to share about it in a safe & respectful setting, with the understanding that the information would be shared in a constructive way. Please let me know if you have any suggestions!
 * homework
 * tutoring
 * conference forms (not the conferences themselves but the user-friendliness of the forms)
 * after-school offerings
 * 21st century skills (perhaps sharing with them the 6 that we highlight in our open house presentation, getting feedback on how we are/are not effectively teaching those skills) - as you can see this idea has been on my mind a lot!

I will be at the [|ERB conference in NY]next week from Tuesday-Friday. I hope to write to you from there - if there is anything that you would like me to check out, the program can be found in the link above. There are some interesting-sounding sessions that I plan to check out but certainly let me know if there is something of particular interest to you or that you think would benefit our division!

Take care, MB