why

**What educators around the world are saying:**
//(Compilation inspired by Scott McLeod's [|Digital Kids. Analog Schools]post)//

"Education is evolving due to the impact of the Internet. We cannot teach our students in the same manner in which we were taught. Change is necessary to engage students not in the curriculum we are responsible for teaching, but in school. Period. Students spend so much time using 21st Century Tools at home that they are often bored by reading from a textbook, listening to a lecture, and answering questions from the back of the book. It is our responsibility to harness the educational value of 21st Century tools such as: blogs, wikis, podcasts, instant messaging, video conferencing, movie making, etc."-- [|April Chamberlin], May the Tech Be With You

"We need technology in every classroom and in every student and teacher’s hand, because it is the pen and paper of our time, and it is the lens through which we experience much of our world." -- [|David Warlick], [|2 Cents Worth]

"While we teach whatever we teach at school, the kids go home and learn the skills they need to survive and prosper in an interconnected global economy. Incrementally changing our teaching methods, slowly bringing people up to speed . . . worked fine when ideas of literacy and education were not rapidly changing; but they are. We need to be able to leapfrog in our understandings, in our methods, and in our tools, allowing us to move to where the kids are. If we do not become leaders to our students, we will be followers, seen as irrelevant, and left to cry in our books while the kids are off setting the agenda." -- [|Clarence Fischer], [|Remote Access]

"As educators, we are not grasping (or prepared for) the depth of the change that is occurring under our feet. If it's happened (breaking apart the center) in every other industry - movies, music, software, business - what makes us think that our educational structures are immune? And what does it mean to us? What should we be doing now to prepare our institutions? Ourselves? Our learners? We should all be thinking about that. __--__ [|Will Richardson], [|Weblogg-Ed]

21st Century Learning is: "A literacy of communication, connections, social-networking, open-source, and overwhelming information.... After all that’s how our students view it. It’s not MSN messenger, its chatting. It’s not youtube, its entertainment. It’s not myspace, its a place to gather. It’s not Google, its a way to find information." -- [|Jeff Utecht], [|The Thinking Stick]

"The Net Generation has grown up with information technology. The aptitudes, attitudes, expectations, and learning styles of Net Gen students reflect the environment in which they were raised—one that is decidedly different from that which existed when faculty and administrators were growing up." --[| Educating the Net Generation], An [|EduCase] E-book

"...the kids who start school today will be retiring in the year 2065, and yet we know as little about what the world will look like then as we do five years from now. We can give them all the content we want, but in this age, in won’t make much difference if we don’t teach them how to learn first. And they do that not by spitting back at us what they “know.” They do it by being creative, by trying and failing, by succeeding and reflecting..." -- [|Will Richardson], [|Weblogg-Ed]

It is **not** about the technology; it’s about sharing knowledge and information, communicating efficiently, building learning communities and creating a culture of professionalism in schools. These are the key responsibilities of all educational leaders. The Digitaleader meets these responsibilities using relevant technology tools. -- Marion Ginapolis, guest blogger on [|Scott McLeod]'s [|Dangerously Irreverent]

"What is the Web for? And why do we care so much? Why has this simple technology sent a lightning bolt through our culture? It goes far beyond the Web's over-hyped economic impact: 500 million of us aren't there because we want a better "shopping experience." The Web, a world of pure connection, free of the arbitrary constraints of matter, distance and time, is showing us who we are - and is undoing some of our deepest misunderstandings about what it means to be human in the real world." -- [|Small Pieces Loosely Joined:][|A Unified Theory of the Web by David Weinberger] ([|kids version])

“When people talk to me about the digital divide, I think of it not so much about who has access to what technology as about who knows how to create and express themselves in the new language of the screen. If students aren't taught the language of sound and images, shouldn't they be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read and write?” —George Lucas, filmmaker ([|Sept.2004, Edutopia], Life on the Screen)

“In times of change learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” — Eric Hoffer

“We need to get away from the notion that computers are something we go use in a lab once a week. When was the last time we sent kids to a pencil lab?” — [|Chris Lehmann], principal of Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy

“We need to leave behind ideas of incrementally increasing our understanding, and incrementally changing our teaching methods, slowly bringing people up to speed. This idea worked fine when ideas of literacy and education were not rapidly changing; but they are.” — [|Clarence Fisher]

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." —Alvin Toffler

**READ: Online articles and books about why and how we must prepare our students for the future:**

 * [|New Face Of Learning] by [|Will Richardson]
 * [|Educating the Net Generation] an [|Educase] E-book
 * [|Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants:][| Part I] by [|Marc Prensky]
 * [|Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,][| Part II: Do They Really Think Differently?] by [|Marc Prensky]
 * [|A Day in the Life of Web 2.0] from [|TechLearning] by [|David Warlick]
 * [|The Emerging Online Life of the Digital Native: What they do differently because of technology and how they do it] (.pdf file) by [|Marc Prensky]
 * [|Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom]: by [|Will Richardson]
 * [|Raw Materials for the Mind: A Teacher's Guide to Digital Literacy] by [|David Warlick]
 * [|Small Pieces Loosely Joined] by David Weinberger
 * [|The World is Flat] by Thomas L. Friedman

"The changing information landscape of the 21st Century demands that our students develop new skills of information literacy and become knowledge producers as an integral component of their learning. But what of the professionals charged with these students' education? Can they be convinced of the need for personal change to keep pace with their students' world? Are they even aware of the exponential changes taking place? How would they get started in their classrooms?"
 * No Teacher Left Behind** **- The Urgency Of Web 2.0** from [|Graham Wegner] in Australia

**WATCH: Powerful videos about why and how we must prepare students for the future**:
[|Education Today and Tomorrow] video This video was [|created] by [|Tom Woodward] of Henrico County schools in Virginia. Tom used the [|work] of [|Karl Fisch] from Colorado who created a PPT using various quotes and statistics from "flat world" thinking.

[|Digital Kids @ Analog Schools] video developed by [|Consuela Molina], a UCLA student. The video is about university level education, but can easily be applied to K-12 schools.

"//**If this place isn’t perfecting my skills for the new business world,** **then why am I here**?"//

Here are few interesting reflections on the video from educational bloggers around the world:
 * Ubiquitous Thoughts: [|Professors Take Heed and Teachers Should too!]
 * Dangerously Irreverent: [|Digital Kids. Analog Schools]

[|Karl Fisch explains] his 2020 Vision video on his blog. Students who start kindergarten in 2007 will graduate high school in 2020; this is Fisch's vision of what the world could be like thirteen years from now.
 * [|Google Video] (watch online)
 * [|Download] in Windows Media Player format (17 MB)
 * [|Download] in Quicktime format (97 MB)