Importance of the 21st Century Learning Skills

Teachers should expand their teaching toolbox and try new ways, such as teaching with social media or replacing textbooks with web resources.

• Innovate

• Connect

• Students as producers

• Learner-centered classroom and personalized instruction

Increasing intrinsic motivation and put in more effort an ideal recipe for better learning outcomes.

• Students as producers

• Be smart and use smartphones

• Go digital

• Learner-centered classroom and personalized instruction

It also enables teachers to improve their instruction methods and personalize learning.

• Project-based learning

• Learn new technologies

• Build your positive digital footprint

• Keep learning

Encouraged to view their devices as valuable tools that support knowledge rather than as distractions.

• Be smart and use smartphones

• Blog

• Collaborate

• Go global

Teachers should be a role model to which they will teach how to appropriately use social media, how to produce and publish valuable content, and how to create sharable resources.

• Keep learning

• Build your positive digital footprint

• Use Twitter chats

• Blog

The relevance of learning specific knowledge and skills is much clearer to students and much more motivating if they understand how a given topic fits into "the big picture," or a meaningful context.

• Encourage transfer of learning

• Address misunderstandings directly

• Make it relevant

• Foster students' creativity

Students need to comprehend relationships between given variables and how to apply this understanding to different contexts.

• Develop lower and higher order thinking skill at the same time

• Encourage transfer of learning

• Make it relevant

• Teach students to learn to learn (metacognition)

The ability to work collaboratively is an important 21st century skill, not to mention an important condition for optimal learning of other key skills.

• Foster students' creativity

• Teach through the disciplines

• Encourage transfer of learning

• Promote teamwork as a process and outcome

Since there is a limit to how much students learn through formal schooling, they also must learn to learn on their own.

• Foster students' creativity

• Teach students to learn to learn (metacognition)

• Encourage transfer of learning

• Teach through the disciplines

 Develop their 21st century skills and knowledge as they learn why each academic discipline is important, how experts create new knowledge, and how they communicate about it.

• Teach through the disciplines

• Teach students to learn to learn (metacognition)

• Address misunderstandings directly

• Foster students' creativity