21st-Century Skills: Evidence, Relevance, and Effectiveness

For this blog, I would like to focus on the quote that begins the article.  It states, “The 21st century isn’t coming; it’s already here…. Public schools must prepare our young people to understand and address global issues, and educators must re-examine their teaching strategies and curriculum so that all students can thrive in this global and interdependent society.”  Times have changed.  The teaching strategies that were used a few years ago may not work for the present classroom.  As an educator, we must be responsible and re-examine our teaching strategies so that we can better them for our students.  Teachers need to connect with their students and they achieve this by their teaching strategies—the way they present a topic or lesson.  As we are in the 21st century, we can see that   technology has become a great resource in today’s schools.  We as teachers need to learn how to use the technology so that our kids can be successful.  Technology has so much to offer, but it is up to us to allow the kids to explore.  As we learned last week by the Flat Classroom Project, we must prepare our students to understand and address global issues.  Learning the material is not enough.  Students must understand what it is that they are learning and how it relates to the outside world.  In math, the question should be: How can I apply the method(s) just learned?  If we can get the young children to explore with technology and to understand global issues, then I believe we are a successful teacher.