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We’ve all been hearing about the importance of 21st century skills for well over a decade now. But many of us struggle to understand what these really mean and how to integrate them into our lessons and classrooms.

“Adaptive technologies presume that knowledge can be modularized and sequenced,” says Watters, the education writer. “This isn’t about the construction of knowledge. It’s still hierarchical, top-down, goal-driven.”

e latest techno-fad, destined to distract administrators and upset curricula for a few years until the next one comes along. But there are two reasons why adaptive learning might prove more durable than that. The first is that the textbook companies have invested in it so heavily that there may be no going back. The second: It might, in at least some settings, really work.

“I like to think of analogies to other places where science and technology have had an impact, like transportation. We went from walking to horse-drawn carriages to Model Ts, and now we have jet planes. So far in educational technology, we’re in the Model T stage.”

PBL is the act of learning through identifying a real-world problem and developing its solution. Kids show what they learn as they journey through the unit, not just at the end."

You hear two opinions from experts on the topic of what happens when kids are perpetually exposed to technology. One: Constant multitasking makes teens work harder, reduces their focus, and screws up their sleep. Two: Using technology as a youth helps students adapt to a changing world in a way that will benefit them when they eventually have to live and work in it. Either of these might be true. More likely, they both are. But it is certainly the case that these kids are different—fundamentally and permanently different—from previous generations in ways that are sometimes surreal, as if you'd walked into a room where everyone is eating with his feet.

It's as if Beatlemania junkies in 1966 had had the ability to demand "Rain" be given as much radio time as "Paperback Writer," and John Lennon thought to tell everyone what a good idea that was. The fan–celebrity relationship has been so radically transformed that even sending reams of obsessive fan mail seems impersonal.

The teens' brains move just as quickly as teenage brains have always moved, constructing real human personalities, managing them, reaching out to meet others who might feel the same way or want the same things. Only, and here's the part that starts to seem very strange—they do all this virtually. Sitting next to friends, staring at screens, waiting for the return on investment. Everyone so together that they're actually all apart.

Digital orphans have grown up with a great deal of tech access — but very little guidance.

Digital exiles are at the opposite extreme — they’ve been raised with minimal technology.

Digital heirs have impressive tech skills, thanks largely to their parents and teachers.

Focus on “learning” instead of “activities”

You have to be willing, as William Faulkner said, to “kill all your darlings.”You’ve loved those activities for years. You’ve refined them and gotten really good at assigning and grading them.

 We used technology like people do at work – as a tool to helps us get our job done, learn and conduct research, and to connect and collaborate, to build communication skills, and to solve problems. The big insight: technology can power deeper learning.

These questions don’t center upon, nor are they dependent on, technology, though if technology is an integral part of our lives, some of the answers to these questions might lie in the use of technology.

“What’s the ratio of jobs destroyed to new jobs?” I think at least in the short term, that could be an unfavorable ratio.

“Focus on development of key skills and attributes that will be at a premium in the future, including resilience, adaptability, resourcefulness, enterprise, cognitive skills (such as problem solving), and the core business skills for project based employment.”