ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity are skills that have been important long before the 21st century. These skills include the most basic workforce readiness skills and level up to more nuanced essential or soft skills, technical skills, and entrepreneurship. Innovation and design thinking need critical thinking as a base skill set to propel our learners to a solutions-oriented approach to learning. Collaboration is much more than merely putting learners into teams. In fact, many parents, teachers, and kids decry project-based learning due to misaligned ideas about what collaboration entails. Written communication is generally completed as a graded experience in the form of an essay or the occasional short story. Practice presentations and the inclusion of experts in the middle of the project afford them the time to enhance their communication skills. Creativity is the ability to take a fresh look at a problem, product, or challenge.
