“How to Build a Student for the 21st Century”

Keep up your information literacy efforts…

Time Magazine’s article “How to Bring US Schools Out of the 20th Century” (Dec. 18, 2006) highlights ideas that librarians have been stressing for a while now. Influenced by the upcoming release of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce’s plan for reevaluating American education from elementary school to university/college, this article discusses 21st century skills students should be taught in school to be successful in today’s global economy. “Becoming smarter about new sources of information” is one of those skills. Since today’s students are surrounded by blogs, podcasts, Google, instant messaging, etc, workplaces are demanding that future employees have the ability to recognize, use, and critically engage with information that is reliable, accurate, and of a high-quality nature. Although most students today are very comfortable with technology and different forms of media, they don’t know how to use the information they get from these sources for research, critical thinking, and for developing informed opinions. In addition to describing various information literacy initiatives in US classrooms, the article also explores Learning 2.0 tools.