My professional focus lately has been on how students learn and think differently in this generation from previous generations, what that means, in terms of teaching them, and how we need to change the preparation for adult life because of changes in our society and new demands in the workplace and home life. A little video online called “ 3 Steps to 21st Century Learning” challenges us, as teachers to prepare our students for their future. Another called “Networked Student” gives us a picture of what a 21st century student looks like. These two videos, as well as, a number of others, and wikis like Weblogged or blogs like Teach 42 and others all point to elements necessary to developing the skills students will need in the future.

Have you seen the Frontline report on Growing Up Online? It appears to be designed to scare adults into keeping their kids offline but that is like teaching an abstinence only sex education curriculum. The Frontline series presents it as an “us against them”. It pleads the case of an English teacher who tries to teach with out using technology. She is trying to get students to think more deeply. To try and restrict Internet use is a task akin to stopping a boulder from rolling down a hill. The current economy will slow it down but Pandora’s box has been opened. If we are to guide and direct students, these are skills we HAVE to teach. We need to embrace the world the kids have created by jumping in. Not only is this the only way we can meet students where they are at. In additon, these are the tools that will make it possible to solve the problems of the world. Global warming, economic distress, world hunger, all require a concerted GLOBAL effort. Now the question is how do we get onboard. Where is the train station, so to speak?

I went to Masscue in November and one of the presenters, Will Richardson, challenged us, as teachers, to live more in the digital world by creating and reading more blogs, and developing a virtual community peopled with the teachers we need and want. It sounds an awful lot like what they told me when I was studying yoga a long time ago. When you need a teacher the right teacher will appear.

I find it so compelling, as a teacher, to have discussions about how children learn differently and what we need to teach them to prepare them for a very different future than what we experienced. Hall Davidson was a keynote speaker and talked about the fact that I Q scores have risen substantially over the past years and that students learn differently. One powerful example that he showed was a clip of Dr. Kildare. We watched as Kr. Kildare helped a woman by applying a tourniquet. It appeared almost slow motion compared with what we generally see on television today. Then he showed a clip of House and described the plotline. I cannot recreate the plotline. It was too complicated. And when Dr. House talked about the case he used high level medical terms that we would not understand but it created a backdrop for the story. The story was written in a way that the viewer could make enough assumptions to understand the story.

One example in our school recently was a student that emailed his teachers saying that he was recognizing that he was having trouble with organization and wanted to email homework in. One of his teachers wrote back suggesting that he try that for a while and gradually try to transfer that organization skill to hard copy. It is a great plan and helps him develop skills with both approaches. But this young man is an example of a true “digital native”, a child who has grown up with computers and finds it more comfortable to deal in the digital world than the physical world.

The bottom line is that as teachers we need to live in a digital world if we are to understand how students approach the world. For me, that means I need to go back to a lot of those Web 2.0 sites and really start using them as tools. I need to start a blog, podcasts and wikis, use Delicious to explore the web, and have the students respond to blog posts on a regular basis It is an interesting journey we are on.