What Do We Know About Our Kids’ Futures? Really.
A lot of us (or should I say I?) frame the conversation around Read/Write Web tools in schools in the context of this very blurry future that our kids are entering into, one that despite its lack of clarity is decidedly different from today. In my own case, I tend to frame this through my parenting lens, that it doesn’t feel like the system is preparing my kids for their futures very well even though we don’t exactly know what that future looks like.
So yesterday here in balmy Toronto, I got asked the question directly: even though we can’t be certain about what the future looks like in terms of preparing our kids for it, what, generally speaking, do we know? What general characteristics can we assume in terms of rethinking our curriculum and our practice?
I threw some ideas out, some of which I’ve tried to articulate below. It’s difficult on many levels…are we talking about what they need to know in terms of education? Their profession? Environmentally? From a citizenship standpoint? But truth be told, I’ve been mulling the idea of this post for a while now, so I’d appreciate any sage answers you might be willing to contribute as well. (Come to think of it, this sounds like a potential Tweet…)
Our kids’ futures will require them to be:
- Networked–They’ll need an “outboard brain.”
- More collaborative–They are going to need to work closely with people to co-create information.
- More globally aware–Those collaborators may be anywhere in the world.
- Less dependent on paper–Right now, we are still paper training our kids.
- More active–In just about every sense of the word. Physically. Socially. Politically.
- Fluent in creating and consuming hypertext–Basic reading and writing skills will not suffice.
- More connected–To their communities, to their environments, to the world.
- Editors of information–Something we should have been teaching them all along but is even more important now.
There’s more, obviously. But I’m curious. What would you add? Or what would you push back against?
(Photo “Valencia’s most famous buildings” by cavalierelatino.)
Technorati Tags: future, education
I agree with all the above. I would also add, (this is not an original idea, but a strong belief of my own)they need to be self-directed learners. We must teach them how to get out and teach themselves. With the reality of many career changes in their future, they will always be needing to hone their skills. The demands of the job and jobs will be changing and those not willing to be active learners of the skills required will be left out. This will also require flexibility. ( I wonder how this will effect some of our brightest who can sometimes tend to be more rigid in their ways)Along with the job changes the information available is overwhelming and so to attempt to remain informed in this information explosion they will need to go out and access it on their own as no educator in their right mind can claim to be the holdeer of this precious information nor can they claim to even begin to fathom what this critical information might encompass on any given subject. I guess it’s about infusing the love of learning. So how?
All this being said…. are these the same skills being pounded into our kids when state testing comes around. Frightening!
Azimmer got that comment in just before me, so I concur, that the best thing we could teach kids today is how to teach themselves. It’s my same old rant, that we have to expand our notions of literacy so that it reflects today’s information landscape and then integrate that, instead of trying to integrate technology. If we teach contemporary literacy, then the tech will come because it’s the pencil and paper of our time.
But in addition, I would hope that rather than just teaching literacy skills, that we teach literacy habits, and that we teach them as learning literacies, rather than just literacy.
Finally, I think that it is critical that we think less about life-long learning skills, and instead instill in our students a learning lifestyle — and that’s best done by modeling it.
I like the idea of a learning lifestyle. Our children are going to have to devote much more of their time to learning on a regular basis than we have ever done. That will require all of the resources that Will has mentioned plus regularly scheduled learning time in their lives. Luckily, the learning tools they employ will make our tools appear primitive in contrast, particularly the aid of a smart personal learning assistant.
In the meantime, the best we can do is to inspire them about the pleasure and power of learning and coach them to use all the powerful learning tools currently available.
[…] must be something in the air today besides the fumes of processed cacao. What Do We Know About Our Kids’ Futures? Really. A lot of us (or should I say I?) frame the conversation around Read/Write Web tools in schools in […]
Teachers have to model all of these skills…. If teachers aren’t able to network, to create knowledge, to demonstrate a thirst for learning experiences, then we’ll never be able to teach it.
Unfortunately, the need for transformation is not seen as a need by so many of todays teachers, who did well at school and like things just the way they are.
First step… Inspire educators to network with one another (both locally and globally) and to learn about ‘present-day’ technologies. If we do that, the future may well take care of itself.
Totally agree here Rodd. David uses the learning lifestyle phrase and I use “the way we do business” one. This just has to be how we begin to represent learning, not as an event but as a process.
It is a great question and a great start to the conversation, but I worry those needing to be in this conversation (school boards and administrators) are missing it. Just yesterday, one of my grad students who is a K-12 teacher asked me for one of my presentations and I sent her a link to the slides in SlideShare. She emailed back that she would check it when she got home, as SlideShare is blocked by her school district. It is a snapshot of a bigger issue where you and your followers offer a vision of tomorrow and yet we as a society tie the hands of teachers to develop the digital skills our kids are going to need. I agree wholeheartedly with Rodd’s comment…but the modeling is hard when the tools are blocked.
(end of rant!)
The “system” has never fully prepared anyone for anything. For years colleges have complained about the number of kids that needed remedial math, English, etc. They lacked the skills necessary to excel in the college classroom. As you said Will, let’s look at this through the parents perspective.
As a father of two young ones, 6 and 3, I recognize what they get at school will need to be supplemented here at home. Our kids are fortunate enough to have us involved in their education. I make it a point to help out at both the building and district level to help my kids schools make the changes that are necessary to ready these kids for the next step. I do this not only for my kids but also for the kids whose parents aren’t as involved or concerned and rely on the system to provide all of their child’s education.
I guess my point is this, get involved with your kids education and encourage other parents to do the same.
After reading this I know that I’m probably preaching to the choir, the mere act of reading and commenting on this blog most likely reflects an interest in education that your readers/commenters share with both their kids and students. Thanks for the opportunity to rant though, it feels good! Hey Will, you coming to Michigan in March?
Debbie Meyer has some relevant references on this subject today. She links to four books you could read.
Thanks, Tom…better than going back to school…
Commerce…..tomorrows’ consumers will do even more commerce online. It will be more accepted and expected. Less store fronts and more virtual stores. Virtual churches, virtual dating, virtual trips and vacations, virtual schools, etc. Like a freight train, it is coming down the tracks and education best get on the train.
I find it interesting to note that although the advent of technology has affected our definition of “literacy,” certain skill sets for students to be successful in the future have not changed. Azimmer and David spoke of self-directed learners. I often share this quote when presenting,
“The new education must teach the individual how to classify and reclassify information, how to evaluate its veracity, how to change categories when necessary, how to move from the concrete to the abstract and back, how to look at problems from a new direction - how to teach himself. Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the man who can’t read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.”
(Herbert Gerjouy as quoted by Alvin Toffle in “Future Shock, 1970, p. 414)
Almost forty years ago, but sounds a lot like the information literacy/fluency skills we say are so important for today’s students.
Will, I agree with them all except the “more active.” Of course, they should be, but why more so in this uncertain future? Isn’t it critical now? How will the future change this?
Hi Susan…guess I’m thinking that almost half of the kids born today are staring diabetes in the face. From a physical standpoint, at least, they are not active enough right now. And from an academic standpoint, they are still pretty passive.
I remember reading in “The World is Flat” about the importance of synthesizers of information.
I think this expands on your last bullet point. Kids will need to be able to retrieve information from several places and merge it into a relevant and succinct format.
I heard an interesting point at a conference in which the presenter talked about the skill of problem solving. The point was made that we are not good at recognizing problems. Our children need to learn to recognize problems in order to be problem-solvers. Problems seem to get out of hand before we recognize the impact and then we try to solve things. Too bad we can’t be a little more observant in the early stages.
Two comments…
Critical thinkers - our students need to use thinking skills in order to deal with information effectively. In order to understand concepts we need lots of information, images, means of interacting with others to process our learning but we need the thinking skills to put it all together and construct new knowledge.
“Paper training our kids” - love the phrase! I still see lots of teachers paper training kids even through the use of technology. We use software to create culminating projects only so that they can be printed and placed on the bulletin board in the hallway instead of publishing them to a more global audience to encourage more interaction, sharing of information.
The district I work, Brighton Central Schools, in Rochester NY took a crack at trying to figure out what we thought schools would look like. We had input from a huge community of people and we came up with the 2020 Vision. The kids who entered kindergarten this year will graduate in 2020. So, what do we do to try and prepare them?
Please check out the 2020 Vision here:
http://tinyurl.com/2hf6a9
Now we are going about the process of “actualizing” the plan. What do we need to do to make the plan happen?
What’s great about the plan, is that it has been a district wide discussion. Most, if not all, decisions are made with the 2020 Vision in mind.
Thanks for sharing that Mike. Looking forward to digging into it before my “presentation” in a few weeks.
Links to an interview with Will in Toronto.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFbDEBNS7AE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cZDYz1hmi0
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
As a current high school student at a 1:1 laptop school, one thing I am lucky to have is access to a computer 24/7. Coming from an extremely traditional middle school, computers were not thought of as learning devices, but as a machine to type up papers and for entertainment. There just wasn’t full access to computers for everyone. There still isn’t. Also, some of these bullet points seem to be more idealistic than realistic. I do not believe that it will be necessary for my generation to be more active in anything. It would be nice, but it’s not necessarily going to be required in order to live.
Thanks for responding, Hannah. Always a treat to hear from the students that we’re always talking about.
Acutally, Hannah, I believe active to live is exactly the point. I recently heard that the children being born now are expected to be the first generation that does not outlive their parents due to poor eating habits, a sedentary lifestyle, and the environment. Therefore, activity–physical and mental–seems to be VITAL to life.
Building on “More collaborative” and “More globally aware”, I’d add that students will need to develop a sense of empathy for different people and different cultures. The best communicators I’ve seen are the ones who can relate to their audience. I fear that students — particularly students in the US — do not have a good sense of the rest of the world (my students were shocked to learn that the US represents less than 5% of the world’s population).
I think back to my high school years (1987) not long ago. Learning to type on a typewriter ( what’s that?) and playing games in my computer class. No graphics just words. I don’t know how much the curriculum prepared me for my future as an educator, but I do know that I learned how to learn. No matter what the future holds I know I can figure it out. I have done so with blogs and wikis in just the last few months. We need to concentrate on that as educators. We need to focus on teaching kids how to learn because we don’t know exactly what they will need to know in 5 or 10 years. We do know that they will have to rely on themselves so we better prepare them for that.
This list seems at once very narrow and very broad. You’ve got a couple of things here that seem wishful (like “more active”), things that describe the “how” part (collaboration, networking, and being connected), and two that address the “what” (both about “information” or hyper text - editing it, creating it and consuming it).
It seems to lack a sense of learning as anything more than gathering, editing, and repurposing “information”. To me, information is such a small part of learning. Where’s the math? Where’s the art & music? Where’s the science?
The current curriculum is information-centric because we still believe that if students just learn a basic set of facts, it will be good for them and society in general. If we simply replace paper textbooks and tests for online, hypertextual, multimedia versions, we have nothing to celebrate. We’ve simply replaced the delivery and presentation mechanisms.
I would add that students will need to:
1. Be willing, able, and confident enough to tinker. Creative and innovative acts are implied in some of the comments here; maybe it would be helpful to bring these words more to the surface. For example, the ability to constantly tweak, link, and repurpose (rather than passively consume) content, technology and environments for personal and community needs would certainly be a subset of being more active.
2. Be design aware. Communication is not just verbal and written, although traditional education certainly likes to think it is (and test the kids accordingly). In order to create improvements in their own environments, kids (and educators) need to understand why they’re frustrated by a website and be able articulate why they hate the strip mall down the street.
(Daniel Pink has pretty much covered this territory, but it seemed worth including here.)
Additionally, students will need to:
3. Be courageous enough to go (or even stay) outside the bricks and mortar school to acquire education. (There’s a chart on Education Futures that touches on
this.) Educators and parents will need courage for this, too…
4. Be futures-oriented, with our help. When parents and educators ask students to continually focus on the here-and-now (or to continue to regurgitate the knowledge of the past), we’re severely limiting their opportunities to address their futures pro-actively. No one can solve the messes we’ve created by only re-inspecting navels every generation.
I also have to wonder if we need to simultaneously think about the other side of the coin with this kind of question. Certainly, our kids will need to “be” things, but they will also need to “have” things (opportunities, tools, time) in order to “become,” and, as parents and educators, it is often within our power to provide them… especially if we can become and be the same things we want our kids to be… especially the courageous part…
[…] is quite sad when you consider that I have just read Will Richardson’s excellent post What Do We Know About Our Kids’ Futures? Really. It makes me wonder how we get the message to the community that ICT is not just an add-on or a […]
Amen to David Warlick’s comment, “…we need to instill in our students a learning lifestyle.” Honestly, that is what has been lost, and it is what is most sorely needed. And it has been lost on two fronts: the modeling at home and the learning environment at school. In our abundance (or in our race to maintain a lifestyle…or in some cases just “manage”)our society has supplanted “a learning lifestyle” with a competitive, extrinsic/reward-oriented one. I long for my children to value connecting for learning, researching with a critical eye, synthesizing ideas, imagining a solution, creating the future they want to see. Learning because we can, we should, and we need to…how do we convince teachers, parents, and students of this need?
[…] conversation going on over at Will Richardson’s blog (Weblogg-ed) about skills that students should be learning to be ready for their future — what ever that […]
I’m teaching two freshman classes this semester and it strikes me that kids need to be: more confident, more willing to take risks(intellectual and otherwise), more relational and contextual in their thought(math is not just math, it is a language and an artistic tool, etc.). I see students who have lived their learning by mastering the subjects, but can’t see that the borders between subjects are nonsensical, they have dropped the play and inquisitiveness in favor of performative labor to an ‘other-defined’ goal of ‘pass the test’. I find that worrisome.
[…] [From Weblogg-ed » What Do We Know About Our Kids’ Futures? Really.] […]
Thanks for the question and thoughtful comments. Looking at the future as a half-full glass of milk, I’d include personal initiative, calculated risk-taking, and entrepreneurship in any list of behavior youth will use tomorrow, if they plan to live what we call a middle class life today. I expect tomorrow will require personal competition for daily resources that exceed levels most people in the U.S. have experienced since the 1930s, irrespective of what else teachers and politicians do today.
Howdy, great list. I’ve culled the comments and the original list Will started and dropped it into a wiki page anyone can edit at:
http://mguhlin.wikispaces.com/futurerequireskidsto
Per David Warlick’s suggestion here:
http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/archives/1360
Great conversation!
Take care,
Miguel Guhlin
Around the Corner
http://mguhlin.net
I have posted lists of skills for teachers and students on my Wiki space as well…
http://thecleversheep.wetpaint.com/page/21st+Century+Skills+for+Educators
http://thecleversheep.wetpaint.com/page/21st+Century+Skills+for+Students
This is the type of authentic real world project that can be a catlyst to the change so many of us seek. The delevopment of this wiki models the power of education networks, so I hope to have contributions from far and wide.
Thanks, Miguel and Rodd for creating some added spaces for this discussion.
OK, I’m making a leap here in following David Warlick’s suggestion that condensing this information in a wiki might be something folks would find useful.
Knowing that ‘projects’ can assist in giving form and direction to ideas and networks, I’ve set up some pages on my wiki site. I invite you to model the skills we think students should be demonstrating by collaborating in the development of a 21st Century Skill Set for Teachers
http://thecleversheep.wetpaint.com/page/21st+Century+Skills+for+Educators
and a similar Skill Set for Students
http://thecleversheep.wetpaint.com/page/21st+Century+Skills+for+Students
I know you are all busy, but we’ll see what develops…
• Critical-thinking
• Multidiscipline
• Communication
• Creativity and Innovation
• Problem solving
• Collaboration (classroom, school, district and global)
• Media literacy
• Application of the internet to core subjects
I accidentally just posted a short bullet list.
I just proposed a course called learning.21st at my Junior High and it was accepted. Does anyone have experience teaching or know of any other similar class being taught. I would like to network and find other people who are transferring how these discussions and ideas are transferred to the classroom for a dedicated class devoted to 21st century learning skills.
• Critical-thinking
• Multidiscipline
• Communication
• Creativity and Innovation
• Problem solving
• Collaboration (classroom, school, district and global)
• Media literacy
• Application of the internet to core subjects
Thanks.
I sat across from a gentleman during the recent San Francisco Classroom 2.0 Unconference who commented that schools are where we “unplug and power down students as they enter their classrooms.”
I hope we have some administrators participating in this conversation.
Kids will need to know more and more their place in society and how everything they do has an impact on something somewhere. They need to know that all pervasive consumption of the latest “thing” cannot be sustained.
Many of our kids need to understand the inalienable link between their rights and their responsibilities.
Finally as just about everyone is saying. Learning stuff isn’t enough. They need to learn how to learn and relearn over and over again. In other words, learn lifelong.
Great post.
[…] I read a great post, usually the first thing I do is put it directly in the context of my classroom. I do that […]
[…] 628 Post tnprater1006 5:00 pm As I read the blog entry: Weblogg-ed » What Do We Know About Our Kids’ Futures? Really. I felt that a really good question was presented: even though we can’t be certain about what […]
Perhaps the question isn’t what students need, I think we know, as the previous post indicate. The question to ask is: what is required of us as educators?
article, “SO MUCH HIGH-TECH MONEY INVESTED, SO LITTLE USE: HOW COME?”
pointed out years ago, teacher can email, they can surf the web, they can write report cards on line but they don’t leverage the technology as a tool in the classroom. We need to either lead, follow or get out of the way.
The challenge is to explore how we, teachers etc, can support the new paradigm. When Cuban wrote his article the read/write web didn’t exist. It’s a new day. We need to find ways to incorporate web 2.0 into our teaching practices. It’s not the students that need the help, it’s our colleagues.
Showing my own limitations in my previous post. So much for my html skills.
Very interesting question. So many unknowns. Thanks for a thoughtful post. It’s time to bring web 2.0 into our students’ lives. It’s their future we’re trying to support!
We have to help our students to see the viability of the internet for building relationships. I noticed this article by Chris Sessums addressing social networking. A good place to start
After reading all of your opinions about what our children should be taught about for future success, I would have to agree with you whole heartedly. Raising our children to be more independent and to mainly reach out to others to learn about new things is crucial. With all of your bullet points it seems that you are centering on the fact that for a person to learn they will have to understand everything around them first and then go and build on that. I like that you stress the idea of networking one’s self and putting themselves out there to help get ahead in life as well.
[…] the student needs that skill. I might point them to Will Richardson’s Valentine’s Day post “What Do We Know About Our Kids’ Futures? Really.” All my faculty have an Elgg account and I’m thinking this could be the first blog prompt that […]
[…] the whole thing, especially the comments here. You may want to add your own thoughts to the […]
Although much work has been done on what students will need to be successful in the future, the work—like the future—is never complete. Therefore, clarion calls like this will always be necessary.
As a point of departure, I think this P21 graphic (2006) is fairly inclusive.
http://tinyurl.com/2sbvtm
In NC, our SBE has endorsed some forward thinking and broad “Future Ready” goals and objectives (2006).
http://tinyurl.com/37et8u
Lists like these have been around for awhile. The challenge that lies ahead for us is not in creating the list.
Rather, the challenge will always be turning words into actions that have meaningful effect for 100% of students and staff.
[…] a February 14 entry at Will Richardson’s blog (Weblogg-ed) I noticed with much interest the […]
[…] och lärande? Will Richardson, amerikansk bloggare och förespråkare för Webb 2.0 i skolan, ställde frågan för några dagar sedan i sin […]
In all the 51 comments here so far, there are two words that, to me, are very conspicuously missing: “Fun” and “play.”
In the Magazine section of yesterday’s NY Times, Robin Marantz Henig discusses the importance of “play” for people of all ages in the article, “Taking Play Seriously.” Many scientists who study brain activity see the ways that “play,” very simply, makes kids smarter and more socially adept. I am sure that no one in this forum would argue against the importance of fun and play, but I find it interesting that these words are missing from every single post. Certainly this brave new world should be a place where kids (and adults, speaking of modeling) can still have fun and play.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/magazine/17play.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin
I am also sensitive to the ways that adult-imposed censorship occurs in classrooms, particularly as it relates to the interests of boys. We have become a nation that, while spewing out some of the most culturally base and socially offensive television shows and other media, are hypersensitive to the perceived “inappropriate” expressions of our children in such intense ways that their scope of interest can be strictly limited. I think this has very real effects on the ways that kids feel (or don’t feel) ownership of the material in a classroom. This is commonly seen in what is or isn’t allowed to be published in a variety of formats–written, spoken, or whatever. In the current age of terrorism and school shootings, this isn’t likely to change, but it has a huge impact on the delivery of any type of curriculum when the kids can’t find any personal relevance or means of expression.
Thanks for the comment, Dar. Henry Jenkins addresses play in some depth here. I’d add more but they’re calling my plane! Sorry!
Hannah and others sense some of the idealism in the responses. I don’t think any of these aims or hopes will come to pass because of the current structure of the educational “system”. Board members, administrators, legislators, parents and other powerful community members are awol about these matters. Reform will get stopped, as it has in the past, right at the schoolhouse door. So I think that in order for these and other dreams to occur, we need to create, from the ground up, a new learning environment. Schools as now conceived make learning damn near impossible. I think we should all drop out of “school” and create wonderful, exciting, well designed, engaging learning studios or environments. There will be no “school reform” as long as the “system” is in place.
[…] Richardson has an excellent post on what our kids really need to know. Our kids’ futures will require them to […]
Omvarlds has a pingback four comments above this one which probably says something similar to what I was thinking…I think 21st Century citizens are going to need some polylingual skills. Will “21st Century” people all be speaking English? Will being bi-lingual be enough? Or will there be a need for many languages? Should your kids be learning Chinese? Will the finally get around to inventing the “Universal Translator” from Star Trek? Probably not.It strikes me as I am reading all of these comments that what anyone really needs to be successful is the ability to adapt and assimilate.
I understand that most of the people reading this are educators, so pedagogy - teaching and learning, are going to be central to their responses. But I’m thinking that many of the skills people are referring to are things that kids are going to have to acquire before formal education. And some are things that need to be culturally supported.
~jeb
While I am agree with many of the ideas suggested here, I’d love to know what answers we’d get from 1st graders, 5th graders, seniors. What skills do our youth think they are going to need for their future and what implications does that have for curriculum & instruction?
I’d bet that if a list was compiled from this discussion and a list was generated by a diverse and international group of students, we’d have a pretty good answer to the question that was posed to Will. Perhaps we should throw this question & discussion over to the Student 2.0 blog?
My own reaction to the idea that we need to teach students to be self-directed learners is that we don’t. Until the age of 5, all kids are self-directed learners. When school starts, that freedom is revoked so I think it’s more about allowing rather than teaching.
Please clarify what you mean by “outboard brain.”
Thanks!
Hey Lois,
Outboard brain is a term that some folks in my network have coined to describe what the collective intelligence of the network is. It’s like the other brain that I have, the one that knows a lot more than I do about both technology and education and whatever else. You can check out this post for a better description.
Weblogg-ed,
I found your comments to be very true and intriguing. I am currently in an Education course at Illinois State University that is challenging our thoughts on the future of education. I do have a question though. What exactly do you mean by “networked”? Networked to the internet, people in our field, or each other in group settings?
In a book I am reading for my education class that is humorously called “Blackbored”, the author demands for us to look at technology as our future for education. Technology can help things like being globally aware, less dependent on paper (duh!), using hypertext, and getting more connected. I think being active (physically, socially and politically), will help students learn technology and get into the outside world. I always liked the idea of doing “current events” in class. Yet when the point is forced, the meaning dissipates.
If you have any interest in the technology aspect of school and the background of why students don’t learn correctly, I would highly suggest “Blackbored.”
-Hojnacki212
Great post and comments. I’m wondering if anyone read about TC Williams High School and how technology has been mishandled there? It’s interesting to read that and then this because it seems like the way technology was mishandled by the administrators has now caused the teachers to want to avoid the lists that are being generated here. That’s to the detriment to the students sadly. Here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/3a34kj
Wow! The sign of a great blog post is the quantity and quality of the responses it generates, and this is one of the best-quality discussions I have seen anywhere!
In response to the calls for board members and administrators to be involved, I am both a K-12 board president and a professor of Internet Technologies at a community college.
The balance we try to strike in the K-12 is access vs. harm. In perfect system, NET access would be scalable, appropriate to age and experience. However, we have one gateway for the district and we are a bit hamstrung at this point.
No question that behavior modeling is the best thing we can do for our children, and many districts (such as ours) are pushing read/write out to parent/teacher interactions as well as student/teacher and student/student.
It is a valuable observation that the technology will follow the behavior into the classroom. Our educators must be not just proficient, or advocates, but users.
[…] very interesting conversation is going on over at Will Richardson’s Blog - Weblogg -ed. The question being asked is “What do we know about our kids future?” What […]
I think we need to teach our kids to be thoughtful…about everything…each other, the earth, what they say and do, etc. I teach m.s. aged kids who are pretty self-centered. They do things everyday without thinking of the consequences until it’s too late. I’d like to see them think more before they act, and to realize what other people do for them every day.
Thank you for this thought provoking article. I do think the new generation of students will need to be editors of information more than past generations. The sheer amount of information that students have available to them will require them to use new problem solving skills and critical thinking. You are correct when you say that teaching students to be editors of information from early on would be the best approach.
[…] post is from Will Richardson.What Do We Know About Our Kids’ Futures? Really. By Will Richardson on The […]
[…] 2 14 2008 he wrote: What Do We Know About Our Kids’ Futures? Really. […]
What about going back to the very basics? Ethics, morals, discipline, parent involvement just to name a few. It seems to me that teachers have a hard enough time as it is just teaching. . . to then be the ‘fill-in’ parent and prepare them for the world educationally/technologically/innovatively/sufficiently?
Wow! The huge number of comments in all their variety suggest that this question, and Will’s attempt to answer it in a provisional way, pushes a red-alert button in us all. We all, i suspect, have experiences when just such a question, and a ready answer, was visited upon us when we were younger. The traditional notion is that kids don’t know anything til they grow up and have kids of their own and then they discover how smart, surprisingly, their parents were! That seems to me much going on in the response to this blog. And it is certainly part of my own knee-jerk response to the blog.
And, of course, we’ve no clue really what “Our Kids’ Futures” will be — and for me, i