One major challenge educators will face in ensuring students are ready for 21^st Century is the way in which the primary institution of education is constructed. As Will Richardson made mention, students today expect to have information available for their consumption 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Since, the content and curriculum planning is out of the control of teachers in most districts, we will be challenged in how to incorporate these new technologies into sometimes older models of learning. Creating/using rubrics that use newer web 2.0 technology will be an important step in meshing the worlds.

Skills typically taught and reinforced such as organization will still be important in education, however, organization skills will shift to organizing blogs and wikis. Teachers will add new roles as facilitators of information searches. In this new age of open communication and information overload, it will be important for educators to teach students how to evaluate information and develop critical thinking skills that challenge information and ideas presented on the web. Teachers will be challenged help students make connections to information and other people directly who are reliable sources of information. In order to achieve these goals, teachers are challenged to become savvy users of web 2.0 tools themselves and stewards of change within the school system. If school districts have major restrictions on tools available for use in education, one way to begin is using web 2.0 tools in personal or staff to staff settings, and then sharing ideas on ways to incorporate in the classroom.

I have always believed I have as much to learn from my students as they have to learn from me. It is exciting that there are so many ideas and ways in which students can share/communicate their ideas not only with their teacher, but other teachers and students all over the world.