Name some 21st Century skills and which ones do you think are most important?

At the top of my list I believe our students need to become inventive, critical thinkers, effective communicators, and collaborators so that they can solve problems and be productive citizens and participants in the future economy. Students also need to set goals and create strategies to achieve them. I also think students will need to know how to use technology efficiently to achieve specific goals. Having laptops is a valuable learning tool and although our students are very comfortable and eager to try new learning tools, they need to learn to evaluate information, locate and synthesize it and use it effectively.

We are living in the Collaboration Age, a term I first learned when I read World Without Walls by Will Richardson,. Creating opportunities for students to create and interact with wikis, blogs and social bookmarking is important to me. I suspect that sharing information and knowledge is a skill our current students will use throughout their lives. As a side note, I cringed as I read about the Canadian college student who was almost expelled for "cheating" after creating a study group to share notes. What initiative! What increased learning for everyone!