21st Century Skills in K-12:
Technology as a Goal or as an Enabler

March 18, 2003

Ken Kay
President, Partnership for 21st Century Skills

21st Century Skills--What are they? How would a teacher know if a student possessed 21st Century Skills? Two tough and important questions driving the 21st Century Partnership led by Ken Kay.

On March 17, 2003, Ken Kay shared his experiences as founder and principal of Infotech Strategies, president of Computer Systems Policy Project, and president of Partnership for 21st Century Skills during a TIEOpen Seminar. Inside the Washington, DC beltway, Ken is known as a key lobbyist for the technology industry. Across the nation, he is known for developing the CSPP Readiness Guide, which he created in collaboration with technology CEOs, government leaders, and educational leaders in 1989. This guide helps communities assess their network infrastructure and provides a vision of what the infrastructure should look like in the 21st Century.

Similarly, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) is building a vision of what a successful 21st Century student looks like. With the CSPP Readiness Guide, stakeholders presented technology as a goal. With P21, we see technology as an enabler for academic learning, Ken said about the connected projects. One of P21's unique aspects is its focus on learning skills as well as academic subjects. Through this project, business, government, and community partners are affirming the importance of how students think as much as what they know. Ultimately the partners hope that students possess technology competencies with learning skills, which result in ICT literacy (Information Communication Technology literacy). Clearly defining this literacy, through a report and readiness guide, will also help teachers meet one of the No Child Left Behind 8th grade student requirements. This requirement states, All 8th grade students will be technically literate. This literacy will be known as ICT Literacy.

Finally, inherent in this kind of visionary, futurist project is that it is dynamic and evolving. Because changes happen so rapidly in the technology sector alone, predicting how the 21st century will unfold remains challenging. In addition, Ken Kay stressed the importance of needing input from a wide array of education leaders from federal policy leaders to teachers. He understands that in order for this project to be successful input and buy-in from leaders representing multiple sectors and levels are crucial. In fact, he invited seminar participants to email their input on this project by using P21's online evaluation. Your comments are welcome too.

-- Allyson Knox (TIE '03)