Are we producing students who are globally competitive?

On my way to school this morning I listened to a short Alan November podcast that talks about the importance of students becoming lifelong learners. Alan give three essential skills that are necessary to ensure this.

1. Students need to have "phenomenal capacity to deal with overwhelming amounts of information." They need to be able to access it, organize it, produce it, make meaning of it, add value to it, and publish it.

2. Global Communication - Students need to understand social protocols, different points of view, and have skills in teamwork and collaboration.

3. As educators, we must provide students with a culture of learning that leads them to be self-directed. Students need to be self-motivated (this is a tough one for me), self-assessing, have a sense of interdependency and be team builders. We need to move away from the old model of teaching kids how to be taught to teaching kids how to learn.

This podcast really resounded for me as I am redirecting my thinking as a teacher. The third one is almost overwhelming for me as I can see a cultural shift will have to take place before this can happen.