What are the most important things you need to learn in high school? What do employers want you to know? What skills do you need in order to succeed in the 21st Century World?

You need to be able to Solve Problems and to Communicate.

If all you learned in my class was how to use one particular computer application what would be the point? What would be the use? In five years will you be able to use the new interface or the new syntax or the new computer program? Will you be prepared for the job market in ten or twenty years?

So why is it important to learn all the facts you're supposed to learn in high school? Because you're learning how to learn! Can you find correct facts? Can you understand and synthesize those facts into useful information? Can you then communicate that information in clear and concise ways? Can you utilize that information where necessary or appropriate? (BTW this paragraph also describes the steps of Computer Information Processing — Input, Processing, Output, Storage.)

Why Digital Media and Computer Graphics?

Reading Onscreen is different from reading on paper. This means that writing for the screen also needs to be different. There aren't (yet) enough educators who understand this.

Media Literacy is necessary in order to be an engaged citizen and a life-long learner. And Media Literacy today is not limited to passive consumption of information. In the 21st Century we need to be active consumers and contributors to the new media that surrounds us.

Project-Based Learning is valuable. People don't retain much of what they're taught by lecture. One of the best ways to really learn a subject is with hands-on experience — actually doing something. At the same time, working on projects means students learn to meet deadlines, to take responsibility, to work with teammates, to take leadership and to solve problems. The skills students learn while they're putting together a video or constructing a website are the same skills they'll need to be office managers or architects or lawyers or nurses or graphic designers or... simply to function as successful educated adults.

And keep two more things in mind
• Just because you're having fun doesn't mean you're not learning;
• My favorite days as a teacher are times when I can say to students, "I'm very proud of you."

—Henry Machtay
email machtayh at galileoweb dot org