What We Need To Know About 21st Century Skills

Traditionally, students gained knowledge and skill sets related to specific fields to help them achieve career success. Nowadays, the rapid pace of economic and social change means schools have to prepare students for careers, technologies and problems that haven’t even been created yet.

Today’s students must develop transferable skills that they can use in a wide variety of settings in order to succeed. The 21st century skills are ones that are necessary for working effectively with others and solving problems in a global economy, according to experts.

• Communication: Ability to listen, understand, communicate, and contextualize information verbally, non-verbally, visually, and in writing...
• Self-motivation: taking on a task or activity on one’s own, without prodding or supervision from another
• Leadership: The ability to set goals, guide teams through necessary steps and achieve those goals collaboratively
• Responsibility: To take responsibility for actions and to adopt a positive outlook.
• Problem solving: Identifying, analyzing, interpreting and evaluating situations, ideas and information to solve problems

Students are allowed to drive their own learning is critical to ensuring lifelong education.

• Decisiveness: The ability to make fast, clear, and well-informed decisions.
• Time management: the art of organizing your time and planning how to spend it effectively on specific tasks
• Flexibility: an individual’s ability to adapt to situations that change.
• Negotiation: the ability to reach an agreement between two or more parties.
• Teamwork: working in a team or tandem to achieve common goals, including preventing and managing conflict.

It is now clear what 21st Century skills are and why employers want them in new hires. 

So how can we help students to apply and improve them, especially in school? Listed below are a number of approaches that Algorithmics teachers constantly use with students.