Creating 21C Student Assessments: ATC21S via Jonathan Martin

I just read an important recent post by my friend Jonathan Martin and will not reprise it all here.  But I want to re-post the video he included from the ATC21S working group.  It was not long after I first heard the term “21st Century skills” and realized it referred to the kind of transformative learning that has fascinated me for decades, that I also heard the rumbles of the first real roadblock: “How are we going to assess things like creativity and collaboration?” “How are going to know if we are getting better at teaching those skills?”  My gut response was “get smart people to look at the problem, people who are good at writing assessment rubrics, and that problem will be solved.  It is not a reason to defer to the status quo.

Well, that is what has happened, or is starting to happen.  Does anyone think this is impossible?  Let’s check that big fear off the list and get on to solving the rest of the problems.  After all, as my friend Mr. Usher says in The Falconer, problems are good things to have!