Our digital-natives that sit in our classrooms each day cannot perform like students of the past sat in a standardized and strict setting while a teacher was the only source of content they had to learn from. Now, most students have all the information they really need at their finger-tips; literally. For teachers to keep the students of the 21st century engaged, they need to use specific instructional strategies to meet their needs, strategies that allow them to develop in a way that learning just becomes natural to them. When teachers apply these strategies, they need to utilize the tools that student use every day to communicate, collaborate, create, and critically think with; their technology. Being strict and standardized in the classroom used to work in the days when students could not easily access information like they can do now with the Internet. Students need strategies and technology that allows them to stay focused on content within less time, but multiple time within a lesson. Today’s students need variety in the ways they learn to be successful in the 21st century.
The purpose of teaching must change to meet the learning needs of today’s students. Instead of being the major focal point in the classroom for gaining knowledge, the teacher needs to become a facilitator who utilizes teaching strategies with technology, organizing and setting the parameters of a lesson so students can take charge of what they are learning and their performance levels. Teachers need to be more observant, noticing when students need further help and provide differentiated instruction to personalize the learning effort for them in a way that meets their individual needs. In other words, the teacher needs to be the one to adapt to the students’ way of learning and not the students adapting to the way the teacher teaches.
