There is no doubt that the new century caught educators unprepared to face its demands. To prepare today's children for living and working in a globalized community in which societies interact more quickly and easily than ever before, it's important to design effective school curriculum that focuses on appropriate content and development of technological skills.
Appropriate content pertains both to knowledge of basic academic disciplines, like reading, writing, and arithmetic, and to an understanding of different cultures around the world. Integrating cultural knowledge is a key part of the curriculum because of globalization, which is the process countries and communities experience when culture, economies, and societies integrate.
As a result, we have a world with different cultural aspects and work environments that need to interact in any place, at any time, and under any circumstances. For this interaction to happen, we need advanced communication technologies. Therefore, it is critical for content to prepare our children to learn about cultural, economic, political, and social aspects of the countries participating in globalization.
Because globalization relies on advanced technologies to support daily activities and for companies to be efficient and competitive, students must learn how to use these tools in global environments, such as international trade, economic policies, migration, and cross-cultural activities. This content must be relevant, usable, and applicable in the workplace.
Technologies enable us to control resources and create powerful groups that can affect large communities; this aspect of control shows the need to teach students about ethics and social responsibility. We need to prepare our children to be aware of local and global needs to help them make the decisions that contribute to global integration and cooperation.
As we update content to meet the demands of the 21st century curriculum, we need to consider instruction and its delivery systems. We are surrounded by ever-evolving digital technologies, including course management systems, voice tools, video conferencing, Internet applications, Web pages, wikis, online journals, videos, assessment software, and countless others that emerge daily. Today's students are accustomed to interacting with technology, and they need knowledge to be delivered in a way that will fit what they use daily. They are highly dependent on computers and other communication devices to connect with their peers in social networks; we need to examine this new trend and consider its effects as we develop instruction.
Learners are also taking increasing advantage of mobile technologies to access content, using devices like cellular phones, Web-enabled mobile devices, and wireless computing. Because of the availability of content on the Internet, it is important to create a balance between appropriate content and technology instruction that helps students take charge of their learning.
Many schools are beginning to use technology like videoconferencing, online communication, and course management systems to create projects geared toward education without borders. Incorporating global connections, the projects broaden students' cultural perspectives and enhance language skills by allowing students to meet and relate to students from other countries. Technologies are diverse and can be used to create engaging content for any subject. Used appropriately, they can be of great benefit for making content available to students, especially those with special needs or who otherwise may not have access to instruction because of the lack of schools in their area or the lack of time or mobility. We should concentrate on updating existing instruction and transferring it into new formats, including those that facilitate both synchronous and asynchronous instruction.
We also need to modernize the assessment process by designing assessments that can incorporate the use of technologies such as wikis, journals, course management systems, online conferencing applications, and mobile devices. We cannot teach one way and assess a different way. If we want to teach 21st century students effectively, we need to incorporate tools that they use into the curriculum.
