Teacher Magazine - Are Teachers Ready for 21st Century Learning?

Well, thanks to Jim Gates, I discovered why I was suddenly getting new comments on my shouldn't-have-been-award-winning-but-was post about being a technologically illiterate teacher. It turns out that Teacher Magazine has an article referencing it (free registration required):

An unprecedented level of discussion about 21st Century learning and its impact on teachers’ work has taken place in the Teacher Leaders Network discussion group recently. Among the many topics covered: Internet safety and cyber-bullying; growing up online; the risk of teachers becoming “irrelevant”; the frustrations caused by school firewalls; and the distinction between digital tools and digitally-infused learning. We can only offer a small sample of our community dialogue here. If you’d like more, download this transcript.

We think these are important conversations, and they are taking place more and more frequently in our Network, in other online teacher communities and, most importantly, in schools across the nation. If they are not taking place, they should be. The rise of the Internet, Web 2.0 tools, and instant global communication— and the demand by powerful lobbying groups for more focus on “new skills”— is going to change teaching and learning in profound ways.

Bill posed a provocative question to the TLN discussion group: “Are you technologically illiterate?”

I'm catching up on a bit of my professional reading, and I finally had a chance to read Karl Fisch's "Is It Okay To Be a Technologically Illiterate Teacher?" post, which was voted the "Most Influential Blog Post" in the 2007 EduBlog awards.

It goes on from there, quoting some of the responses from the discussion group. This apparently is a web-only feature, not part of their print magazine, but has already generated a few comments. I would suggest that if anyone is interested, you should head over there and add a comment - since the people having that conversation may not always be the same folks who are typically having the conversation here.