Problem-Solving for Life

Although all of 21st Century Skills are all important, I believe that the problem-solving skill is the most critical.  Problem-solving is a skill that is used your entire life.  No matter the path a student takes in life, there will always be problems that arise.  These problems are going to be different for everyone and each person will have to learn how to deal with the problems in a way that works for them.  Think of all the problems that we have to deal with everyday, and also the problems that plagued us as we were going through school.  Some of the problems were simple as choosing the first car we would buy to more complex problems we deal with as adults like balancing your family budget to meet the needs of your family. At a young age students need to experience problems and have opportunities of  dealing with them.

Integrating problem-solving with my Technology Infusion plan seemed easy to me, but after I started teaching my class this semester, I realized that problem-solving is a skill they still need.  For my students, the problem many of them had was both developing a timeline for their project and also just choosing how they were going to best display their project and present it to the class.

Assessing 21st Century skills is not as easy as just giving a multiple choice test.  Assessing problem-solving will be difficult, but I feel that this can be done in a variety of ways. First off, students will need to develop their timeline and keep track of their progress .  If they are not staying on track, they will need to make adjustments so they will still be able to complete their project within their timeline.  Another way to assess problem-solving skills is to give the students some real-life situations that will have to deal with their lives and have groups discuss what they feel is the best way to deal with the situation.  Since the class I teach is Communication Arts, listening to their discussion and also them sharing their problem and solution(s) in their blogs

All of the 21st Century skills are important, and each person will have their own thought on what they believe is the most important skill.  Problem-solving is the skill that I believe is most critical since it is something that will be used quite a bit throughout everyone's life.  I know I deal with problems daily.