What Skills Are Most Important For Students To Learn in Digital Age?

On Friday, I was at Michigan State, where I gave a talk and conducted a Workshop on new forms of interactive pedagogy and skills.  In the course of this, we did the   index card exercise ( http://hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/2012/04/08/single-best-free-way-transform-classroom-primary-lifelongl-any-size- ) in response to my prompt, "What skill is the most important for students to learn in a digital age?"   Special thanks to doctoral student Shannon Sears for volunteering to pass on her notes from the list we evolved at our workshop and allowing me to share the list with the HASTAC network: 

 

What skill is the most important for students to learn in a digital age?

Michigan State University Workshop, 4/20/12

 

Thinking/imagining across media

 

Negotiating responsibility/initiative in learning

 

Collaboration

 

Creativity

 

Evaluating information

 

Time management

 

Critically evaluating information

 

Critical thinking; assessing; analyzing; evaluating problems and developing solutions

 

Personal voice, or learning to be an authority in the lack of traditional power structures

 

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Cathy N. Davidson is co-founder of HASTAC, and author of The Future of Thinking:  Learning Institutions for a Digital Age (with HASTAC co-founder David Theo Goldberg), and  Now You See It:  How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn (Viking Press). She is co-PI on the HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competitions.   NOTE:  The views expressed in Cat in the Stack blogs and in NOW YOU SEE IT are solely those of the author and not of HASTAC, nor of any institution or organization. Davidson also writes on her own author blog,  www.nowyouseeit.net .

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