Our world is changing, and in order to prepare our children for this new world we need to

change the way we educate them. In the 21st century educators must create a curriculum that will
help students connect with the world and understand the issues that our world faces.
As an educator, I can recount the countless number of times that I have heard about the
learner of the future. This conversation consistently leads most educators and business people to a
description heard over and over again. The learner of the future has to know how to work with
others, has to know how to use technology, has to be a problem solver, has to be a self-learner, all
because they will change jobs many times in their lives. We are now part of the world economy
and our students have to compete with students from around the world. Not to mention the parts
about some jobs that have not yet been created. I could go on but the redundancy would take over
and I would sound like the broken record of the last thirty years. I could also recite the needed
solutions and the resulting responses to address the issue and again sound like that broken record.
In order to educate in the 21st century, teachers and administrators need to cultivate and maintain
the student's interest in the material by showing how this knowledge applies in the real world.
They must also try to increase their student's curiosity, which will help them become
lifelong learners. Next, they should be flexible with how they teach and give learners the resources
to continue learning outside of school.
There are many skills that children will need in order to be successful in the 21st century.
Here are a few of the most important 21st century skills:
 Ability to collaborate, work in teams
 Critical thinking skills
 Oral presentation skills
 Written communication skills
 Ability to use technology
 Willingness to examine civic and global issues
 Ability to conduct research to learn about issues and concepts
 Chance to learn about new career opportunities

Changes in the larger society over the last 100 years—various social movements, the
advent of telecommunications, the movement from industrial-based to knowledge-based work,
struggles over political boundaries, modern technology and science breakthroughs employed in
both the most positive and most negative of circumstances—have in some form or another
impacted the ways colleges and universities "do" higher education.
 With such specific applications of technology and the limited use of other forms (for
example, multimedia), students' low expectations for the use of technology in the curriculum is
not surprising. Such constrained use of technology by the faculty in the curriculum and low student
expectations may serve to limit innovation and creativity as well as the faculty's capacity to engage
students more deeply in their subject matter. Like all organizations, colleges and universities
respond to the demands placed upon them. Students' and institutions' low expectations for the use
of technology for learning provide insufficient impetus for faculties to change their behavior and
make broader, more innovative use of these tools in the service of learning.
Students' personal experience with technology is typically broad and, in many cases, very
deep. Moreover, their extensive use of technology continues throughout their college experience—
that is, except fully integrated into the curriculum.
From the beginning, however, a problem arose in that those students went on to high
schools and later to colleges that did not (and do not) provide this type of rich learning
experience—a learning experience that can best be achieved when technology is used in the service
of learning. If we are to adequately prepare students for an era of change, information, and
knowledge explosion in the 21st century, we must alter this scenario. Schools, colleges, and
universities must draw on a variety of technologies and use them as resources to deepen students'
learning. When we simply ensure that students have access to the latest, most powerful computers,
we make technology an end unto itself instead of the powerful teaching and learning tool that it
can be.
Generations Z and Alpha are also the most internationally connected in history. They
encounter people online from all over the world, and can easily make friends on the other side of
the planet before they have even left their home state. Schools and parents are also increasingly
offering children and young people the opportunity to travel, creating a truly borderless experience
of learning.
The students in our schools today are intelligent, independent and extremely capable. They
are skilled with technology and comfortable with global and intercultural communication. We can
expect that future generations are going to have even more experience in these areas.
The 21st Century has been conceived as: The age of ‘Globalization’, the age of ‘Knowledge
Economy’, and the ‘Information age’. Globalization refers to the contemporary social reality,
which is characterized by change, uncertainty, unpredictability, complexity, interdependence and
diversity. According to Giddens (1990) and Albrow (1994), it refers to the process by which human
relations are increasingly being intensified. As a result, economic, political, cultural and social
distinctions are becoming less and less inhibitive. Advancement, especially in the information and
telecommunication sectors has compressed time and space and the world is gradually becoming a
borderless forum for human interaction popularly known as the global village.
I have learned that one of the important aspects of problem solving is to not look for the
answers in the same places where everyone else is looking. I have determined that looking in other
directions and sometimes in the opposite one will render better solutions and outcomes. What if
you were given a school made up of students who had failed, or who had dropped out of the
traditional system? How would you educate them? If you offered them the same things as the
system that had failed them, they would fail again. I determined that the common denominator
among them, and interestingly among many students, is their ability to read, write, and think. What
if the learner of the future was armed only with the abilities to read at the appropriate level, write
in a way that communicates properly, and think in-depth (meta-cognition) about what he/she
reads? What would a school day look like for that student?