This past June, ISTE - the International Society for Technology in Education - released the next generation of National Educational Technology Standards for students. Back in 1998, ISTE published the first set of National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS•S). This was a culmination of research and study across the U.S. to define what students needed to know about and be able to do with technology. These newly revised standards focus more on skills and concepts than on tools and software.

The areas that comprise 21st century skills are the following:

• creativity and innovation;
• communication and collaboration;
• research and information fluency;
• critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making;
• digital citizenship; and
• technology operations and concepts

We live in an everchanging technological digital society. We live in a wired world and are raising a wired generation. There is no denying it with the iPods, cell phones, IM, YouTube and MySpace. It IS a different world than when I grew up.

The gravity of this charge occur to me recently this summer one night during my daughter's bedtime. For about two weeks straight, my daughter wanted to read the book Toot and Puddle by Holly Hobbie. Toot and Puddle are two pig roomies who I liken to the "Odd Couple" of yesteryear. They are about as different as can be. Toot is a world wide traveler and explorer, and Puddle is most happy being at home at Woodcock Pocket enjoying all it has to offer.

After about the tenth reading, the book was losing its charm for me so by the fourteenth time, I was trying to make it more fun - yes, purely for selfish reasons. So that night I took my laptop into bed with me. I had heard about Google Earth and have always been meaning to "play" with it. Well, now was as good a time as any. And my daughter was game so I pulled out the book and started up Google Earth. What we did that night was travel through a literary journey of Toots travels around the world. Through Google Earth, my daughter was able to see each stop of Toot's journey in all its glory - real satellite maps of each place with 3D imaes of the major monuments and wonders of the world. Just as how Toot would have seen it had he been traveling in the year 2007. My daughter had the world literally at her finger tips. This really is only the tip of the iceberg of technological wonders that are now available to us today.

This is the world my daughter is growing up in. She is native to this digital world. This is the only world that she knows, her starting point.

We only move forward from here.

I stand fully convinced of the mission that we, as educators and as parents, must embrace - the empowerment of this next generation with 21st century skills.