Why We Need to Teach 21st Century Skills

One thing that concerns me, and has popped up in many conversations in this class about kids' use of technology, is that technology prowess will overshadow the importance of social relations in kids' lives.

Reading Regan's, "Why We Need to Teach 21st Century Skills" I was really impressed by the emphasis he places on social skills. After his mention of Dewey, Regan writes, "Social responsibility and integrating community-based projects into the daily curriculum enhance student awareness of life beyond school." Regan seems to imply that rather than stymie social skills, technology can instead be used to foster them.

Later in the article, Regan writes about how students will be increasingly expected to create and respond to information presented in a variety of mediums. I wonder if rather than hindering a student's social progress, technology perhaps just multiplies the ways in which people can communicate. So it may be the case that students seem limited in their ability to communicate using the traditional methods, but what if this is only because they are being exposed, simultaneously, to so many more methods than students from earlier generations? Perhaps traditional communication is not necessarily dying out, just that students' skills are less focused now and they must juggle multiple proficiencies--similar to young children growing up learning two or more languages.

Steph Dobler