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RUP - Links to 9 DC Elements Going-Digital - Coggle Diagram

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RUP - Links to 9 DC Elements Going-Digital - Coggle Diagram: RUP - Links to 9 DC Elements Going-Digital

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Street art and copyright. Under New Zealand law, all original artworks are copyrighted automatically from the moment they're created.

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Better Sharing, Brighter Future

"Twenty Years of Creative Commons (in Sixty Seconds)" by Ryan Junell and Glenn Otis Brown for Creative Commons is licensed via CC BY 4.0 and includes adaptations of the multiple open and public domain works. View full licensing and attribution information about all works included in the video on Flickr.

Creative Commons is an international nonprofit organization that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture we need to address the world's most pressing challenges and create a brighter future for all.

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For over 20 years, Creative Commons has supported a global movement built on a belief in the power of open access to knowledge and creativity. From Wikipedia to the Smithsonian, organizations and individuals rely on our work to share billions of historic images, scientific articles, cultural artifacts, educational resources, music, and more!

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Wikipedia

55+ million articles

Every one of Wikipedia's 55 million plus articles are shared openly and freely using a CC license.

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All images of public-domain works in the Met's collection are openly available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).

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Many of the lessons found on Khan Academy are openly licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA.

Wikipedia

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Every one of Wikipedia's 55 million plus articles are shared openly and freely using a CC license.

The Met

492,000+ images

All images of public-domain works in the Met's collection are openly available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).

Khan Academy

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One year after Creative Commons (CC) hosted an exploratory Open Culture Roundtable, in Lisbon, Portugal, which initiated the Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture (TAROC) global initiative, nearly 50 stakeholders from all continents gathered again for a strategic workshop, in Lisbon in May 2024. In this blog post, we share a snapshot of key highlights.

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Open Culture
Cropped, Open Culture Strategic Workshop by Filipa Alfama, CC BY 4.0

One year after Creative Commons (CC) hosted an exploratory Open Culture Roundtable, in Lisbon, Portugal, which initiated the Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture (TAROC) global initiative, nearly 50 stakeholders from all continents gathered again for a strategic workshop, in Lisbon in May 2024. In this blog post, we share a snapshot of key highlights.

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Le Sortie de l'opéra en l'an 2000 by A. Robida - Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division - Public Domain.

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Creative Commons is an international nonprofit organization that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture we need to address the world's most pressing challenges and create a brighter future for all.

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9 Elements of Digital Citizenship you students need to kno

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9 Elements of Digital Citizenship you students need to kno

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The online environment should be a safe space in which everyone feels protected. Since education is at the heart of society, students should be taught to use technology in a responsible manner, ensuring the safety of the online environment for generations to come.

In their book, Digital Citizenship in Schools, Mike Ribble and Gerald Bailey talk about how technology influences the way people interact and the concept of digital citizenship in the classroom. The authors define nine elements of digital citizenship, related to technology usage inside and outside the school environment:

1. Digital access

Although we live in a digital era, not everyone has access to technology. As teachers, we should be aware of this digital divide. Not all students can afford a computer, a smartphone and Internet access. That's why educators need to provide suitable alternatives for each student's needs.

2. Digital commerce

Digital commerce highlights the necessity to tackle safety issues related to using money in the digital world. Technology is also used in the classroom to teach students about the various career paths that they could choose in the future. Understanding how e-commerce works is a must, both as consumers and as potential entrepreneurs.

3. Digital communication

Online communication has become so common that students forget they are doing so in a virtual space, where miscommunication happens often. The Internet has given a voice to anyone who needs it. In turn, this requires empathy and appropriate reactions from its users.

4. Digital literacy

Digital literacy also includes the ability to differentiate between real and fake content, which can have a negative impact on the lives of your students. They need to learn which content is good for them and what they should avoid in order to lead a balanced life.

5. Digital etiquette

We should teach students to become " digitally fluent". Digital etiquette shapes their online behavior to respond positively to online content. In this way, their online attitude is reflected in the real world and vice versa.

6. Digital law

The online environment has room for both positive and negative interactions. Digital law deals with legal rights and restrictions governing technology usage. To prevent any kind of online crime, no matter how serious, students as digital citizens need to know the law and how it applies to them in particular.

7. Digital rights and responsibilities

The online world has its regulations and a user has rights and responsibilities. The Internet can also be used for harmful purposes and anyone needs protection against cyberbullying, for instance. Schools should approach this subject in classrooms, hold students accountable for their actions and also report any misconduct in the virtual environment.

8. Digital health and wellness

Students should be taught to protect themselves and others from potential harm and ask for help if they need it. Making use of online resources is a plus, but everyone should be aware of the dangers as well.

9. Digital security

Security in the online world is important. When using devices at school or at home, students should be aware of potential malware attacks. Teachers should explain how to prevent them from happening and how to protect their devices as much as possible.

Visit our Blog for insightful posts on edtech for K-12 and Higher Ed.

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Infographic: Digital citizenship for students " NEO LMS

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The online environment should be a safe space in which everyone feels protected. Since education is at the heart of society, students should be taught to use technology in a responsible manner, ensuring the safety of the online environment for generations to come.

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Digital citizenship is a concept that enables teachers, administrators, parents, and technology teams to teach students how to use the internet appropriately. Students who develop a strong sense of digital citizenship are also developing skills that can help them navigate through college and their careers. To be a good digital citizen is to understand what kind of behavior is appropriate and responsible when using technology.

Digital citizenship is especially important in American schools. According to EdWeek 's Market Brief, over half of the teachers and students in the United States have access to school-provided computers. Many schools have implemented BYOD (bring your own device) policies as well. On one hand, this means that students and teachers have access to more educational opportunities than ever. On the other hand, it is now easier than ever for students to abuse their Internet usage in the classroom. Whether you are a teacher or a parent, it is important to have conversations about digital ethics and good online behavior. Keep the door open and talk to them about appropriate technology usage. By gaining knowledge about how to behave online, students will be able to use the Internet responsibly for the rest of their life.

Social media sites like Instagram and Facebook give students ample opportunity to express themselves on the web. Many post pictures of what they eat or what movie they saw. However, this innocent behavior can easily become dangerous. By posting every aspect about their life, a student may end up publishing content about themselves that may damage their online image. This can lead to lost opportunities in the future. U.S. News and World Report states that 35% of college admissions officers examine students' social media presence. Also, according to CareerBuilder, 70% of employers check applicants' social media accounts. Students must be aware of the risks of participating in social networking sites. Open conversations and classroom instruction about digital citizenship can help students make the right choices when it comes to the way they present themselves online.

The concept of digital citizenship extends to unethical and illegal activities as well. Unethical usage of the Internet can result in the theft of personal identities or property. Hacking into another person's information, stealing someone's words, downloading illegal music and sending spam are all unethical - and sometimes illegal - online activities. All student and technology users need to understand that there are rules they must follow to keep themselves and others safe online.

Some students may not even realize that their online behavior is dangerous and damaging. It is always important to respect and educate these students. Take a step back and then take time to educate them on the proper digital etiquette. In doing so, you protect them from further damage to their personal life, as well as their future.

Let students know that there are ways to prevent online threats. For instance, remind students to contact a parent, teacher or administrator if they're being bullied online. Leave the door open for students to communicate with you on what happens when they are online. This will help them grow into good digital citizens. It will help teachers, administrators and parents help them as well.
Text by Taylor Stewart

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What is Digital Citizenship? - LearnSafe

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Digital citizenship is a concept that enables teachers, administrators, parents, and technology teams to teach students how to use the internet appropriately. Students who develop a strong sense of digital citizenship are also developing skills that can help them navigate through college and their careers.

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Responsible User Policy & Acceptable Use Policy (RUP/AUP)

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Responsible User Policy & Acceptable Use Policy (RUP/AUP)

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is a term for a workplace or school’s rules for internet use is an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). It is also called “Responsible Use Policy,” which describes the same thing. Responsible and Acceptable Use Policies(RUP/AUP) help administer what students or employees can or cannot do on the organization’s internet connection. RUPs focus on teaching students what to do in order to be responsible digital citizens, rather than telling them what not to do.

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Techopedia: Educating IT Professionals To Make Smarter Decisions

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Your go-to source for professional IT insight, from defining complex tech jargon to exploring the latest tech trends.

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Working with online safety experts, we're here to provide parents & carers with guidance, advice and support to keep children safe online | Internet Matters

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There are enough arguments about "what Web 3.0 is" to make it impossible to point to a single authoritative definition. But that's fine, it means we can propose our own definition of Web 3.0.

Here it is:
Web 3.0 is the third generation of the Internet-a global network that permits intelligent interactions between all its users and devices.
Now to explain ourselves...

Web 1.0 was the early Internet that persisted until about 2000. At first, websites were just places you could read the information posted on servers and interact with such servers in simple ways. There were search engines, and there were e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay.

Web 2.0 arose following the turn of the century. It was far more interactive, far more collaborative, and far more capable. There were technical reasons why, not least of which was the rapidly improved bandwidth available to users, and servers. It is this generation of the web that gave us smartphones and mobile computing. Web 2.0 could support near real-time interactions and thus collaborative activity was feasible. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter were part of this, but so were graphical multiplayer games. It also included the birth of Big Data and the machine learning algorithms that sifted through it.

Web 3.0 is defined by intelligence. This intelligence is not just in interactions between people and websites, but between software and software. And, there's more than that. The difference between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 has multiple aspects.

We will discuss them one by one.

The Underlying File System

Web 1.0 and web 2.0 are defined by the HTTP protocol and the simple file systems it provides access to. The protocol enables resources to be accessed (via a URL) and also files, particularly HTML documents.

It is a client-server protocol that currently provides the foundation of all data exchanges over the Internet. The term client-server means that there is a requesting side (a client - usually a web browser) that calls for information from a server (a computer that serves up information - usually web pages or parts of web pages).

The protocol works by virtue of Domain Name Servers (DNS) servers. There is a large network of these which includes thirteen root servers.

You can think of the DNS servers as a postal service for the request you make from your browser via the HTTP protocol. They deliver that request to the address you specify, which will be something of the form:
http://www.thewebsite.com/the-page-I-want
When thewebsite.com receives this message, it sends you a message back, the page you want, using the same postal service.

It may be more complicated than that. In reality, it may involve multiple messages, including ads that you don't want to see. Nevertheless, it all happens through a kind of postal service.

With Web 3.0 that mechanism will change. Indeed, we might be inclined to call it Internet 3.0.

The technology that will most likely replace the current DNS system goes by the name of the InterPlanetary File System, IPFS for short.

Why wasn't it called the InterStellar Files System or even the InterGalactic File System? Perhaps its designers lacked ambition.

The IPFS is also a postal system, but it is not centralized around a group of root servers like the HTTP protocol. The goal in the design of IPFS, which is a child of blockchain technology, was to create a peer-to-peer file system that worked after the fashion of BitTorrent, the file streaming service that is frequently used to download and share videos and music.

IPFS separates the act of seeking information from the act of retrieving it. It does so through the magic of content addressing.

Content addressing is a math trick where you apply a hashing algorithm to some content (such as a web page) and it generates a unique key that acts as its address. To cut a long story short, you provide the network with that address, and a server that holds the information sends it to you.

IPFS has lots of advantages over HTTP. Here's a list:

It is more secure (and SSL is no longer required).

It keeps all the versions of a file, as well as the file.

The data can be distributed in many places. For example, a website does not reside on a particular server and may not even have a specific origin server, but it's there somewhere in the file system.

Because the address relates to the content, the address never needs to be updated when the content is moved.

There's no real distinction between client and server. Remember it's like BitTorrent where there are multiple servers both holding and requesting data, including your own device).

It is significantly faster than HTTP.

It is transport-layer agnostic, which means it can work over any transport layer (from TCP to Bluetooth)

Assuming IPFS is successful, all of these advantages become Web 3.0 advantages.

Digital Identities

Digital identities are another technology that was spawned by the blockchain, and it may become the most important feature of Web 3.0. The point is that Web 2.0 is infested with cybercrime-dark deeds of every description from identity theft to click fraud.

It happens because the connection between two computers is not properly authenticated, and currently cannot be authenticated. Let me spell it out.

With web 2.0 a server never knows for sure that the client software accessing it is what it pretends to be-a browser under the control of an identifiable human being. Neither, on the other side of the equation, does the browser know whether the server and the files it is accessing are the ones it intends to access.

However, if everything involved in such an interaction had a verifiable identity, fraud and deception would be far more difficult to perpetrate. With Digital IDs, individuals can only have one verifiable identity, since each ID has to be linked to a unique credential, like a birth certificate. Similarly, organizations can only have one verifiable identity. As regards everything else (hardware and software) involved in the interaction between a client and server, these things can be directly tied to a unique ID belonging to an individual or an organization.

What is more, because of a brilliant technology that goes by the name of zero-knowledge proof, it is possible for either side to prove they are authentic without even revealing their identity.

Digital IDs enable two important features of Web 3.0:

1. The severe reduction to the point of elimination of cybercrime.

2. Individuals will be able to manage and grant access to their personal data.

(As you have probably realized, Permission.io's business model is strongly connected to this aspect of Web 3.0)
Micropayments

The blockchain is fundamental to Web 3.0, in several ways. We have mentioned two so far: bullet-proof Digital IDs and a distributed file system. Perhaps its most important contribution is its primary use, its ability to create cryptocurrencies, and particularly the ability to use such currencies to make micropayments.

This stems from the low cost of a cryptocurrency transaction. In the non-blockchain world, the cost of a credit or debit card transaction is calculated as a percentage of the value plus a fixed amount (say, 10 cents). The seller pays. So sellers are unlikely to allow credit card payment for products with a ticket price less than about $10.

The cost of a blockchain payment is generally much lower. In practice, it varies quite a lot between different cryptocurrencies as it depends on how the blockchain is organized. Low-cost examples include an EOS transaction at $0.0105 and a TRON transaction was $0.0000901 (measured in March 2018).

With such low transaction costs, it becomes possible to sell things for a few cents. A few cents could be the fee charged for reading an article from a national or local newspaper or a magazine. Being able to charge per article that way will revolutionize web publishing. Low-cost sales of products and services will be a reality with Web 3.0.

Trust

Some might argue that the blockchain's most important contribution is automated trust. This stretches beyond the security that the blockchain can deliver through digital IDs by building a web of trust.

Some blockchains enable the creation of "smart contracts", programs that are attached to the blockchain and that execute when triggered by a specific blockchain event. The important point about smart contracts is that the program code is the contract.

This makes smart contracts far more certain than a legal contract. Legal contracts are enforced through the legal system, which varies in reliability from one place to another but is never perfect. The outcome of a challenge to a legal contract is never certain.

However, smart contracts can be trusted 100%. A simple example of a smart contract is given by the movement of goods through a supply chain. Goods are dispatched with an RFID tag that reports their location when read. When the goods reach specific locations the smart contract can automatically enact payment-for transport or for warehousing or import duties. Payments are thus predictable and can be trusted 100% to occur.

Naturally, smart contracts can be far more complex than that example. They can cover many situations that are currently covered by legal contracts, diminishing the possibility of fraud.

Semantic Data and Information

Another facet of Web 3.0 is the presentation of data in a semantic form. We will not dive into the technology behind that here, but you can get a sense of it from Google's Knowledge Graph which places blocks of organized data to the right of some of your search results.

If you don't recognize what I'm talking about, do a search on "Galileo's trial". Notice that Google gives you a succinct summary of your search topic, as well as the usual collection of links. That's the work of Google's Knowledge Graph.

But now try a search on "Who attended Galileo's trial?"

At the moment such a question is too complex for Google to unravel. However, it could if it had a greater grasp of the meaning of the question and if the websites it surveys organized their metadata in a more semantically friendly manner.

OK, that's academic, not economic.

But now think about searching for products. It's here where the commercial magic of Web 3.0 steps in. Nowadays in the US, more product searches happen on Amazon than on Google. Yet neither of these Web 2.0 giants can answer detailed product questions like "what is the best deal available for a 55" HD TV for delivery within 2 days."

From the consumer's perspective, a practical answer to such a question would serve up a range of information, offering possible choices rather than just a set of web links.

That kind of capability will be part of Web 3.0 by virtue of semantic technology. It will save buyers and sellers a good deal of time in the sales cycle.

Software Negotiating With Software, Bots for Everyone

The paradigm we have become accustomed to is that of "browser and website".

We have browser plugins that provide certain services for us (clipping copies of web pages, filling in passwords, ad blocking, and so on.)

On the website side of the equation, websites have been fairly unresponsive in interacting with their visitors, with the exception of the web giants with the big bucks who can afford Big Data AI and thus software that responds to the user in real-time.

The paradigm for Web 3.0 will be different. The individual user will begin to regard what we now call a browser as a kind of operating system that runs applications. What we now think of as plugins will become our applications, and while they will still be able to show us documents or videos, as before, some apps will be capable of much more.

For example, a shopping application will help its owner buy, say a car, by gathering data from him or her and then going out to find suitable links for the user to visit. Ultimately such software should be able to help the user through the whole buying process, including negotiating a reasonable price.

Just as nowadays hackers and some websites run bots, in Web 3.0 the user will be able to buy and configure bots that serve them directly. Bots are, after all, just applications.

This development may take a while as it depends on the proliferation of digital IDs and also good semantics.

AI and Big Data, for Everyone

Most web users are painfully aware of digital ads that follow them around the web or the ads that Facebook drops before their eyes or Amazon's efforts to tempt them to buy something else "they might like" when they are about to place an order. Among the websites with big budgets, the twin weapons of Big Data (your data mainly) and AI provide commercial firepower that puts the customer at a disadvantage.

However, intelligence can cut both ways. AI could equally well serve individuals if they take control of their data and collaborate in finding effective ways to exploit it. In short, with Web 3.0 the possibilities of AI are likely to broaden, but to the disadvantage of the big guys.

3D Graphics

The advent of 3D Graphics is a natural consequence of graphical software evolution. If you are not sure what 3D graphics is, here's an example. Such animation owes a great deal to WebGL (Web Graphics Library), which is a JavaScript API that can render interactive 2D and 3D graphics within web browsers without the need for any plug-in. It is based on the OpenGL graphics language and uses elements of HTML5. An important technical detail is that it can exploit GPUs and thus performs well.

3D Graphics will make an impact outside the obvious areas of online games and entertainment. It is likely to be used in education, health care, real estate, and other areas of e-commerce. It's also likely that, in time, individuals will design and use their own 3D avatars.

While you can view blockchain-related technology (Distributed file systems, Digital IDs, micropayments, etc.) as related developments, 3D Graphics is simply an evolutionary development. It was inevitably going to develop in a given time; it just happens to be coming to maturity at the same time as these other Web 3.0 technologies.

Complete Connectivity (Ubiquity)

Over time, Web 3.0 will remove many of the inconveniences of Web 2.0.

We can expect the Web to be available on any device (pad, mobile phone, desktop) seamlessly. The Internet of Things will join the party, with every household device controllable from anywhere and, where appropriate, able to be used as a web access device.

Ultimately, this means that your identity, and most things you own, and all your data, as well as every software capability you have a right to use, will be linked together and able to work together.

When Will Web 3.0 Happen?

New technology generations are never born on a specific date. Even Web 1.0 didn't happen on a particular date.

You could say it began as soon as the first browser was released in a usable condition. But at that time there weren't many websites. You might, therefore, claim that it was born when websites began to multiply. But realistically it didn't happen until the first search engines appeared. However, you might want to argue that it didn't occur then, but when the first true e-commerce sites began working.

The point is that it slowly emerged. Web 2.0 with its social networks, multiplayer games, and big data algorithms also took a while to come of age.

Web 3.0 will be the same.

Perhaps you will wake up one morning and realize that your browser embodies a set of bots that do really useful things for you, that you have a Digital ID and that you can interact intelligently with the Internet. When that happens you will have a right to declare: "Oh yes, this is Web 3.0."

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What Is Web 3.0? Features, Definitions, & Examples

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There are enough arguments about "what Web 3.0 is" to make it impossible to point to a single authoritative definition. But that's fine, it means we can propose our own definition of Web 3.0. Here it is: Web 3.0 is the third generation of the Internet-a global network that permits intelligent interactions between all its users and devices.

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To help with any internet safety concerns to help guide 'Grown Ups' who 'Need Answers'.

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The National Crime Agency's CEOP Education team aim to help protect children and young people from online child sexual abuse.

We do this through our education programme, providing training, resources and information to professionals working with children, young people and their families.

I am:

Respecting me, you, us: building healthy relationships and creating positive cultures is a CEOP Education resource for 12 -14 year olds developed in association with clinical psychologist, Dr. Elly Hanson.

Under 18 and worried about online sexual abuse?
To report, click to visit the CEOP Safety Centre.

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The CEOP Education programme from the National Crime Agency’s CEOP Education Team aims to protect children and young people aged 4-18 from online child sexual abuse.

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Embedding 21st century skills

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21st Century skills are 12 abilities that today's students need to succeed in their careers during the Information Age.
The twelve 21st Century skills are:

1. Critical thinking

2. Creativity

3. Collaboration

4. Communication

5. Information literacy

6. Media literacy

7. Technology literacy

8. Flexibility

9. Leadership

10. Initiative

11. Productivity

12. Social skills

These skills are intended to help students keep up with the lightning-pace of today's modern markets. Each skill is unique in how it helps students, but they all have one quality in common.

They're essential in the age of the Internet.
On this page, we'll take a look at what's included in 21st Century skills, how they help students, and why they're so important.
You'll also be able to download a free guide on how you can teach 21st Century skills in middle or high school courses.

To start, let's dive into the three categories that 21st Century skills fall into.

The Three 21st Century Skill Categories

Each 21st Century skill is broken into one of three categories:

1. Learning skills

2. Literacy skills

3. Life skills

Learning skills (the four C's) teaches students about the mental processes required to adapt and improve upon a modern work environment.

Literacy skills (IMT) focuses on how students can discern facts, publishing outlets, and the technology behind them. There's a strong focus on determining trustworthy sources and factual information to separate it from the misinformation that floods the Internet.

Life skills (FLIPS) take a look at intangible elements of a student's everyday life. These intangibles focus on both personal and professional qualities.

Altogether, these categories cover all 12 21st Century skills that contribute to a student's future career.

This is not an exhaustive checklist of career readiness skills - but they're the career readiness skills that overlap with 21st Century skills!

Let's take a closer look at each category.

Category 1. Learning Skills (The Four C's)

The four C'sare by far the most popular 21st Century skills. These skills are also called learning skills.

More educators know about these skills because they're universal needs for any career. They also vary in terms of importance, depending on an individual's career aspirations.
The 4 C's of 21st Century Skills are:

Critical thinking: Findingsolutions to problems

Creativity: Thinking outside the box

Collaboration: Working with others

Communication: Talking to others

Arguably, critical thinking is the most important quality for someone to have in health sciences.
In business settings, critical thinking is essential to improvement. It's the mechanism that weeds out problems and replaces them with fruitful endeavors.

It's what helps students figure stuff out for themselves when they don't have a teacher at their disposal.
Related Resources:
Bonus Resource: Free Critical Thinking Lesson Download
Creativity is equally important as a means of adaptation. This skill empowers students to see concepts in a different light, which leads to innovation.
In any field, innovation is key to the adaptability and overall success of a company.

Learning creativity as a skill requires someone to understand that "the way things have always been done" may have been best 10 years ago - but someday, that has to change.
Collaboration means getting students to work together, achieve compromises, and get the best possible results from solving a problem.
Collaboration may be the most difficult concept in the four C's. But once it's mastered, it can bring companies back from the brink of bankruptcy.

The key element of collaboration is willingness. All participants have to be willing to sacrifice parts of their own ideas and adopt others to get results for the company.

That means understanding the idea of a "greater good," which in this case tends to be company-wide success.
Related Resources: Finally, communication is the glue that brings all of these educational qualities together.
Communication is a requirement for any company to maintain profitability. It's crucial for students to learn how to effectively convey ideas among different personality types.

That has the potential to eliminate confusion in a workplace, which makes your students valuable parts of their teams, departments, and companies.

Effective communication is also one of the most underrated soft skills in the United States. For many, it's viewed as a "given," and some companies may even take good communication for granted.

But when employees communicate poorly, whole projects fall apart. No one can clearly see the objectives they want to achieve. No one can take responsibility because nobody's claimed it.

Without understanding proper communication, students in the 21st Century will lack a pivotal skill to progress their careers.
Related Resources:
But the four C's are only the beginning. 21st Century skills also require students to understand the information that's around them.

Category 2. Literacy Skills (IMT)
Literacy skills are the next category of 21st Century skills.
They're sometimes called IMT skills, and they're each concerned with a different element in digital comprehension.
The three 21st Century literacy skills are:

Information literacy: Understanding facts, figures, statistics, and data

Media literacy: Understanding the methods and outlets in which information is published

Technology literacy: Understanding the machines that make the Information Age possible

Information literacy is the foundational skill. It helps students understand facts, especially data points, that they'll encounter online.
More importantly, it teaches them how to separate fact from fiction.

In an age of chronic misinformation, finding truth online has become a job all on its own. It's crucial that students can identify honesty on their own.
Related Resources: Media literacy is the practice of identifying publishing methods, outlets, and sources while distinguishing between the ones that are credible and the ones that aren't.
Otherwise, they can fall prey to myths, misconceptions, and outright lies.

Just like the previous skill, media literacy is helpful for finding truth in a world that's saturated with information.

This is how students find trustworthy sources of information in their lives. Without it, anything that lookscredible becomes credible.

But with it, they can learn which media outlets or formats to ignore. They also learn which ones to embrace, which is equally important.

Last, technology literacy goes another step further to teach students about the machines involved in the Information Age.

As computers, cloud programming, and mobile devices become more important to the world, the world needs more people to understand those concepts.

Technology literacy gives students the basic information they need to understand what gadgets perform what tasks and why.

This understanding removes the intimidating feeling that technology tends to have. After all, if you don't understand how technology works, it might as well be magic.

But technology literacy unmasks the high-powered tools that run today's world.

As a result, students can adapt to the world more effectively. They can play an important role in its evolution.

They might even guide its future.

But to truly round out a student's 21st Century skills, they need to learn from a third category.

Category 3. Life Skills (FLIPS)
The five 21st Century life skills are:
Life skills is the final category. Also called FLIPS, these skills all pertain to someone's personal life, but they also bleed into professional settings.
Flexibility is the expression of someone's ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Flexibility: Deviating from plans as needed

Leadership: Motivating a team to accomplish a goal

Initiative: Starting projects, strategies, and plans on one's own

Productivity: Maintaining efficiency in an age of distractions

Social skills: Meeting and networking with others for mutual benefit

This is one of the most challenging qualities to learn for students because it's based on two uncomfortable ideas:

1. Your way isn't always the best way

2. You have to know and admit when you're wrong

That's a struggle for a lot of students, especially in an age when you can know any bit of information at the drop of a hat.

Flexibility requires them to show humility and accept that they'll always have a lot to learn - even when they're experienced.
Leadership is someone's penchant for setting goals, walking a team through the steps required, and achieving those goals collaboratively.
Still, flexibility is crucial to a student's long-term success in a career. Knowing when to change, how to change, and how to react to change is a skill that'll pay dividends for someone's entire life.

It also plays a big role in the next skill in this category.

Whether someone's a seasoned entrepreneur or a fresh hire just starting their careers, leadership applies to career.

Entry-level workers need leadership skills for several reasons. The most important is that it helps them understand the decisions that managers and business leaders make.
Related Resources: True success also requires initiative, requiring students to be self-starters.
Then, those entry-level employees canapply their leadership skills when they're promoted to middle management (or the equivalent). This is where 21st Century skill learners can apply the previous skills they've learned.

It's also where they get the real-world experience they need to lead entire companies.

As they lead individual departments, they can learn the ins and outs of their specific careers. That gives ambitious students the expertise they need to grow professionally and lead whole corporations.

Initiative only comes naturally to a handful of people. As a result, students need to learn it to fully succeed.

This is one of the hardest skills to learn and practice. Initiative often means working on projects outside of regular working hours.

The rewards for students with extreme initiative vary from person to person. Sometimes they're good grades. Other times they're new business ventures.
Along with initiative, 21st Century skills require students to learn about productivity. That's a student's ability to complete work in an appropriate amount of time.
Sometimes, it's spending an extra 30 minutes at their jobs wrapping something up before the weekend.

Regardless, initiative is an attribute that earns rewards. It's especially indicative of someone's character in terms of work ethic and professional progress.

That goes double when initiative is practiced with qualities like flexibility and leadership.

In business terms, it's called "efficiency."

The common goal of any professional - from entry-level employee to CEO - is to get more done in less time.

By understanding productivity strategies at every level, students discover the ways in which they work best while gaining an appreciation for how others work as well.

That equips them with the practical means to carry out the ideas they determine through flexibility, leadership, and initiative.

Still, there's one last skill that ties all other 21st Century skills together.

Social skills are crucial to the ongoing success of a professional. Business is frequently done through the connections one person makes with others around them.

This concept of networking is more active in some industries than others, but proper social skills are excellent tools for forging long-lasting relationships.

While these may have been implied in past generations, the rise of social media and instant communications have changed the nature of human interaction.

As a result, today's students possess a wide range of social skills. Some are more socially adept than others. Some are far behind their peers. And some lucky few may be far ahead, as socializing comes naturally to them.

But most students need a crash course in social skills at least. Etiquette, manners, politeness, and small talk still play major roles in today's world.

That means some students need to learn them in an educational setting instead of a social setting.

For them, it's another skill to add to their lives.

Now that we've established what 21st Century skills are, let's answer the next big question.

Do employers actually want people with 21st Century skills?

What's the Demand for 21st Century Skills?

While 21st Century skills have always been important, they've become essential in a worldwide market that moves faster by the day.

These skills all double back to one key focus.

Someone's ability to enact and / or adapt to change.

This is because any industry is capable of changing at a moment's notice. Industries are now regularly disrupted with new ideas and methodologies.

Those industries that haven't been disrupted aren't immune though. They just haven't been disruptedyet.

With that in mind, the world has entered an era where nothing is guaranteed.

As a result, students need to learn to guide the change that'll inundate their lives. At the very least, they need to learn how to react to it.

Otherwise, they'll be left behind.

This is especially true as customer demand accelerates in all industries along with expectations for newer features, higher-level capabilities, and lower prices.

In today's marketplace, falling behind means becoming obsolete.

That's a familiar concept to all of today's students as tomorrow's advancements make today's miracles quaint or unimpressive.

Today, the only consistency from year to year is change.

That's why many teachers like you are incorporating the 21st Century Skills Assessment into their career readiness courses.

With 21st Century skills, your students will have the adaptive qualities they need to keep up with a business environment that's constantly evolving.

How Do You Teach 21st Century Skills?
While these skills can be taught at any grade level, we find it's most important to teach 21st Century skills in middle or early high school.
Now you know what 21st Century skills are and why employers want new hires to have them.

So how do you teach them in your daily classes?

Before getting into the details, it's important to identify who should teach 21st Century skills.

This is the time when your students need to hone their career readiness skills before they enter the workforce!

So how can middle and high school teachers teach 21st Century skills effectively?

Click below to download the Ultimate Guide to Teaching 21st Century Skills in Secondary Schools and find out!

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Learn about 21st Century skills, why they're important, and how to teach them. Skills include: Critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, information literacy, media literacy, technology literacy, flexibility, leadership, initiative, productivity, and social skills.

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