David Warlick on Technology and Education

David Warlick

"The challenge for teachers in the 21st century is to prepare students for jobs that don't exist," said David Warlick, an educator of 30 years. Warlick, who recently presented at the Literacy Promise Conference, does what he advises all teachers to do-keep up with the times.

"Teachers must teach a whole new set of basic skills," Warlick noted. The world is flooded with information--accurate and inaccurate. Learners don't rely solely on textbooks but as Warlick described it " a global electronic library of billions of pages of information" known as the Internet. This is a place where anyone can post information on just about anything and for just about any reason. Teachers need to teach students basic skills of not only locating information from varied sources but discerning accurate information that is pertinent to their needs. "The information environment has dramatically changed in the last 10 years," said Warlick, "and perhaps the best thing teachers can teach their students is how to teach themselves."

An internationally recognized speaker on behalf of education, Warlick has been a classroom teacher, district administrator, and staff consultant with the North Carolina State Department of Public Instruction. In 1995 he started one of the earliest educational websites on the Internet--Landmarks for Schools. This site, which generates more than a half-million hits a day, links teachers to teaching and learning resources. For the past 10 years Warlick has operated The Landmark Project, a consulting and innovations firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is the author of three books on instructional technology and 21st century literacy.

In his well-attended conference sessions, Warlick talked about decoding, evaluating, and organizing information. He emphasized how important it is to have literacy redefined and integrated into all curricula. "Writing will continue to be a core skill for all students," said Warlick, "because some information is simply communicated most effectively in text." But in addition, students will need to know how to work with multimedia and how to select the medium that will best communicate their message. Of course reading will always be the most important skill for all students.

Warlick said that we know almost nothing about how to prepare students for the future. By recognizing the changes occurring in education in the 21st century and learning to work with the new technology, we can train information to find us. This is a time to learn by teaching; to teach each other and to share information.

4 April 2008