21st century skills

As I have been preparing my presentations for the upcoming NELMS conference, I have been challenging myself to answer the question Why do we need to update our curriculum and instruction?

Although I think the 21st Century Skills folks have good ideas that have been misapplied by many, they do help us to understand the changing social context in which our students will live and work.Specifically, I like to show this graphic, which I adapted form some of their work:

This shows the relative trends in job skills anticipated for digital generations.... the routine cognitive skills that were the focus of 20th century classrooms are going to be decreasingly important for future generations. This sure seems to point to the importance of our giving students experience in BCLC and similar authentic settings.