The Third Decade of the 21st Century...

This week my journey took me to the third decade of the 21st century.  How you ask?  During my monthly technology team meeting one of the elementary schools in my district asked me to set up Google Apps accounts for all their students.  I organize these accounts into folders with their graduation year as the name of the folder.  It’s crazy to think that most students in the elementary grades will graduate in the third decade of the 21st century.  Today’s Kindergarten students will graduate in 2024.

It’s even scarier that we don’t know much about how this decade will look.

We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that have not yet been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.   – Kari Fisch

All we can know about the world these students will step into is that it will have challenges and opportunities beyond what we can imagine today.  These problems and possibilities will demand creativity, critical thinking, ingenuity, problem solving and responsibility.

After hearing that and thinking about it, most people would say – what technology should we buy to try and solve that problem?  I guessing most Kindergarten students today might not be able to spell their name, but they will know how to surf the internet.  Most would Google how to spell their name.

Wrong!  It’s not about the tool.  We don’t even know what the tools will look like in the third decade of the 21st century.  Our focus needs to be on critical thinking, research, creativity and collaboration.  If we teach students now how to learn and how to problem solve, these students will be capable of doing new things – and not simply repeating what other generations have done.  I am excited to help these students enter the third decade prepared and ready to conquer the world!
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