21st+Century+Skills

Some key skills we need to teach our students.

**Learning to learn is more important than learning to know **
Don Tapscott, in his book //Grown Up Digital,// argues that Net Geners will not need to “know” but will need to learn. According to best-selling author Thomas Friedman, these students will be working in fields and industries that have not even been thought of today. Essentially, these students need to know how to learn.

**Mastering collaboration is critical **
Maureen Scardamalia, professor at OISE U of T, says that the future economy will not be driven by competition, but by collaboration and those who are able to collaborate (more than independent geniuses) will be the future stars. “In the knowledge society it is not the individual who performs. The individual is a cost center rather than a performance center. It is the organization that performs" (Scardamalia, 2000). 

**Reaching Information Fluency **
Students need to be adept at analyzing the InfoWhelm that exists. According to a study from Cal Berkley University in the last four years alone, due to broadband access and content creation capabilities, there has been a 3200% increase in the amount of data available on-line. That’s the equivalent of having 12 stacks of books from the earth to the sun (Jukes, 2009) Writer and thinker Ian Jukes argues that this requires us to teach these essential skills to students: 1. Ask good questions 2. Acces and acquire the raw materials from the most appropriate sources 3. Anaylze, authenticate and arrange these materials and know how to turn this into usable knowledge 4. Apply this constructed knowledge within an authentic problem <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; msofareastfontfamily: 'Times New Roman'; msolist: Ignore;">5. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">Assess the product and process

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">Embracing problems with Creative Solutions **
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">Most writers on technology’s impact on the workers of the 21st century argue that they will need to be great problem solvers. They will no longer be following specific directions or clear lessons of history, because the pace of change technology creates means they will face problems in five years that cannot even be perceived of today. Students need to be given ill-defined challenges and rewarded for generating creative solutions.

This video examines some of the skills that the 21st Century Student should be practicing.

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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">**Works Cited:**
Jukes, Ian (2009) Literacy is Not Enough. The 21st Century Fluency Project. [|www.thecommittedsardine.com]

Scardamalia, M. (2000). Social and Technological Innovations for a Knowledge Society. In S. S-C. Young, J. Greer, H. Maurer, & Y.S. Chee (Eds.). Proceedings of the ICCE/ICCAI 2000: Volume 1. Learning Societies in the New Millennium: Creativity, Caring & Commitments. (pp. 22-27).

Tapscott, Don (2009). Grown Up Digital; How the Net Generation is Changing Your World. McGraw Hill.