Assessment in the 21st century

What common threads in the 21^st century skills are relevant to you, your class, school, district or group?

It seems that the common threads are thinking, acting, and living.  This is being written on July 8^th, 2016, living skills is very relevant to current events in relation to me, my class, my school, district and group.  The living skills I am referring to from the Greenstein book are “Global responsibility and citizenship; and Global understanding.”  I am writing this with the violence between citizens and police officers in mind – besides all of the other senseless violent acts in the recent past.  Yes, critical thinking, problem solving, digital and technological literacy are important 21^st century skills; but learning to live tolerantly and peacefully in this diverse global melting pot seems to be the most important thing in my mind.  I believe that the other 2 general skills, thinking and acting, are going to be integral to the living skill that is so much needed today.  This will take education and information in all the skills.

How can you fit content into the context of 21^st century skills?  Think of some examples.

Learning content in my discipline, librarianship, is easy to fit into the context of 21^st century skills.  Digital libraries and online databases make accessing information easy.  But it also makes finding the appropriate information more difficult.  With so much information at the touch of a fingertip we need to evaluate the information that we access.  This will take critical thinking skills.  Librarianship involves applying critical thinking skills to problem solving.  This will also involve technological and digital literacy to access this information.  All this information will allow students to become better global citizens.

Do you think some content areas have stronger links to 21^st century skills than others? Explain how and why.

I think that they are all interconnected, but they are built in order from thinking, to acting and finally to living.  As I stated in the first prompt, I believe that the living skills are most necessary at a societal level. These other skills help build up the global citizenship and social responsibility skills necessary to live in the 21^st century.  Like I stated in the previous question, digital and technological literacy are integral in participating in the 21^st century.  It seems to me that the younger students that are growing up in this technological age are adept already in these necessary literacies.  Some exceptions include those who do not have internet access.

If we can no longer teach all the content, what are your priorities for adjusting teaching and learning? How will you do that?

I hope I am not reading this question wrong but I think that it is obvious that you cannot teach all the content written in the book about 21^st century skills in one course.  Hopefully the course being taught has 21^st century skills in order to be relevant to the modern age.  In my case, library skills and information literacy contain some of the content of 21^st century skills.  The priorities are all activities related to information.  That includes formation of thesis statements, accessing information (digital and print), evaluating information, organizing information, and making proper citations to give proper credit to the authors.