21st Century Skills Map: The Arts

21st Century Skills Map: The Arts

I like this:
"The examples in this Skills Map illustrate how the arts promote work habits
that cultivate curiosity, imagination, creativity, and evaluation skills. Students who possess these skills are better able to tolerate ambiguity, explore new realms of possibility, express their own thoughts and feelings and understand the perspectives of others. Furthermore, these examples suggest ways that study of the arts can help produce globally aware, collaborative, and responsible citizens."

This document, the 21st Century Skills Map for the arts, gives examples of ways in which students can gain skills specifically from methods used in the visual and performing arts, such as:
EXAMPLE: Students view and critique multiple 
works of art, created by themselves and their 
peers, which deal with a specified artistic 
problem. Students use mutually agreed upon 
criteria (elements and principles of art and design, 
subject matter, technique, style, etc.) to describe, 
analyze, interpret, and make informed judgments 
about the art works. using electronic journals, 
students reflect on the points in their critical 
thinking that led to their solution to the problem. 
Students then compare and contrast how the 
other students addressed the same problem, and 
use their electronic journals to form a foundation 
for their participation in a group discussion 
convened through the use of a class blog or wiki.
(taken directly from the document.)

Interesting break down of Information, Media, & Technology Literacy into:
1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
2. Communication
3. Collaboration
4. Creativity
5. Innovation
6. Information Literacy
7. Media Literacy
8. Information, Communication, & Technology Literacy
9. Flexibility and Adaptability
10. Initiative and Self-Direction
11. Social and Cross-cultural Skills
12. Productivity and Accountability
13. Leadership and Responsibility
14. Interdisciplinary Themes

Reading this type of document is always a good reminder of focus points for lessons with students. While many of these points/standards/examples are covered to some extent in my curriculum, not all are consciously covered in every class, as I don't write my curriculum around these.  I think it good to find some sort of check list that I agree with (and this all sounds good) and work to see what I do now in comparison to gaps.  I could then look at those gaps and plan accordingly for the next semester or year.