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Microsoft is teaming with Cisco and Intel to hindmost the creation of a 21st hundred years curriculum. The companies are funding a protrude to explore better ways of teaching and evaluating students in critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving, communication and other broad areas — skills that they demand from their employees, said Anoop Gupta, who heads Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential program.

The companies are providing funding for at least three years to brace a task force that enjoin:

  • More precisely define the 21st century skills
  • Cast them in a form that is measurable and have being able to subsist assessed, and cause the tools to do so
  • Create “learning environments” that practice information and intercourse technology
  • Disseminate the knowledge globally

“This struggle is really about nailing what we think have power to be done,” Gupta related. “Not everything that is desirable will be temperate.”

An charged with execution director, Barry McGaw of the University of Melbourne, enjoin lead the effort. Five other directors will focus on specific goals of the project, collaborating with other education experts through an annual company, online meetings and a public Web portal.

Gupta was quick to note that the experts, not the companies, will expertness the specific recommendations.

“Anything created will be public domain. Final answers are not going to be what Microsoft and Intel and Cisco think is right,” but the kind of the experts what the experts think is right, he said.

The companies have landed early support from two international student assessment bodies, that will incorporate resulting 21st century skills standards into existing assessment tools. They are: The Program for International Student Assessment, created and administered by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, an effort of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement.

The companies are also open to operating with other rate groups and education experts, Gupta said. Education charge experts, researchers, business leaders, policymakers, and NGOs interested in participating are invited to e-mail the McGaw, the executive director, at bmcgaw@unimelb.edu.au .


Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2009/01/13/microsoft_cisco_intel_backing_effort_to_create_21s.html