Sign up for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills’ online summit. Check out librarians Carl Harvey II, Melissa Johnston, and Leslie Preddy on the agenda!

Are you seeing the trend this year? It’s getting easier and easier to find free Webinars, with presenters of outstanding caliber, online for you and your staff. It’s a great time to be entrepreneurial and pull together a listing for your principal or staff. Little input on your end … with potential for big output and value in your building or district! (Check out the Webinars category in the right-column of this blog for past listings.)

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills – Cyber Summit 2010 via kwout

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills – Framework for 21st Century Learning via kwout

You’ve seen this “rainbow” or “band shell” before, right? It’s the framework for 21st-century learning according to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a collaborative visioning group with members from business, technology, and education. This “P21″ band shell has gotten a lot of air time in a lot of districts.

If you’re a school librarian in one of those districts, and especially if you’re a member of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), you should know that AASL was an early member of this organization and that AASL’s Executive Director, Julie Walker, is the new P21 chair.

So the next time an administrator asks what libraries do or believe in, you can make a direct link between the P21 documents they pass out at staff meetings and your own national professional organization.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills – P21 Announces New Leadership via kwout

The funny thing about the last few weeks of school is how much mental energy teachers and adminstrators spend getting ready for next year: making plans, thinking about summer and back-to-school PD, deciding building goals for the coming year.

Have you seen the P21 MILE Guide?  It might be helpful in evaluating where you are at the end of this year and where you and your colleagues hope to be in the coming year(s).  It’s a very detailed overview of how far various aspects of school culture and student learning are along the 21st-century learning continuum.

Have your scissors and tape standing by — printing out the Guide PDF will result in “some assembly required.”

I’ve got mine posted above the pencil sharpener behind the circ desk, and it gives me something to reflect on whenever I’m sharpening pencils.  And since I work in an elementary school, I’m doing that All. The. Time.  That is, when I’m not dispensing Band-Aids.  Isn’t it amazing how many childhood woes can be solved by applying a sticky bandage?  If only adulthood were the same way.