RM-21st

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The new millennium was ushered in by a dramatic technological revolution. We now live in an increasingly diverse, globalized, and complex, media-saturated society. According to Dr. Douglas Kellner at UCLA this technological revolution will have a greater impact on society than the transition from an oral to a print culture.1
 * The 21st Century **

Today's kindergartners will be retiring in the year 2070. We have no idea of what the world will look in five years, much less 60 years, yet we are charged with preparing our students for life in that world. Our students are facing many emerging issues such as global warming, famine, poverty, health issues, a global population explosion and other environmental and social issues. These issues lead to a need for students to be able to communicate, function and create change personally, socially, economically and politically on local, national and global levels.

Even kindergarten children can make a difference in the world by participating in real-life, real-world service learning projects. You're never too young, or too old, to make your voice heard and create change that makes the world a better place.

Emerging technologies and resulting globalization also provide unlimited possibilities for exciting new discoveries and developments such as new forms of energy, medical advances, restoration of environmentally ravaged areas, communications, and exploration into space and into the depths of the oceans. The possibilities are unlimited.

21st Century Schools, LLC recognizes the critical need for developing 21st century skills. However, we believe that authentic education addresses the “whole child”, the “whole person”, and does not limit our professional development and curriculum design to workplace readiness.
 * 21st Century Skills **

21st century skills learned through our curriculum, which is interdisciplinary, integrated, project-based, and more, include and are learned within a project-based curriculum by utilizing the seven survival skills advocated by Tony Wagner in his book, //The Global Achievement Gap//:
 * Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
 * Collaboration across Networks and Leading by Influence
 * Agility and Adaptability
 * Initiative and Entrepreneurialism
 * Effective Oral and Written Communication
 * Accessing and Analyzing Information
 * Curiosity and Imagination



iKids in the New Millennium One of our goals is to help students become iKids and truly global citizens.

In many countries today’s students are referred to as “digital natives”, and today’s educators as “digital immigrants”. Teachers are working with students whose entire lives have been immersed in the 21st century media culture. Today’s students are digital learners – they literally take in the world via the filter of computing devices: the cellular phones, handheld gaming devices, PDAs, and laptops they take everywhere, plus the computers, TVs, and game consoles at home. A survey by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that young people (ages 8-18) mainline electronic media for more than six hours a day, on average. Many are multitasking – listening to music while surfing the Web or instant-messaging friends while playing a video game.

Even toddlers utilize multimedia devices and the Internet with tools such as handheld video games like Leapster and web sites such as __ [| www.PBSkids.org] __ and __ [| www.Nick.com] __. Preschoolers (including my 2-year-old grandson) easily navigate these electronic, multimedia resources on games in which they learn colors, numbers, letters, spelling, and more complex tasks such as mixing basic colors to create new colors, problem-solving activities, and reading.

However, as Dr. Michael Wesch points out, although today’s students understand how to access and utilize these tools, many of them are used for entertainment purposes only, and the students are not really media literate. Read the section below on Web 2.0 and new social communities. Dr. Wesch shows us how to use the tools to enable our students our students to become truly media literate as they function in an online collaborative, research-based environment – researching, analyzing, synthesizing, critiquing, evaluating and creating new knowledge!

//**Reading Through Multimedia:** // View each of these short clips! (NOTE: if you are viewing this from a computer that traditionally blocks YouTube, you will need to override the block or view it elsewhere. Also, give it a few minutes to load!) media type="custom" key="6672249"