21st Century Communication Skills in the Student

21^st Century communication skills are the technical and interactive disciplines essential to success in the real world of college, career, and for life in general. To interact effectively with today’s social circumstances in business, economy, and industry, the student must acquire skills for working within cooperative groups, thinking critically, and be capable of problem solving using reliable Internet resources. The fast paced world of the 21^st Century include technological tools used for interpersonal communications, requiring the student’s capability to analyze, create, and build solutions from digital resources. For this to be performed with success, they must possess the knowledge for sourcing reliable information and identifying rhetoric, the communication of irrelevant, fictitious, and possibly biased data that intends to promote a false trust from, or create an otherwise malevolent effect on, the target audience. In order to develop success for students within this expansive form of communication, and virtual interactions that run business today, teachers must address the basic skills for the communication and expression of information involving technology.

            To ensure the skills for student comprehension of 21^st Century expression, the basis of communication, real world application of technology should be included in content lessons. The ability to express understanding for relaying information can be accomplished through student production and analysis of visual models in video dialogues, wikis, blogs, social media, and other Internet formats of communication. Many online resources are available and should be included for the study of standards in education with science, mathematics, and social studies, as well as in the language arts. The use of technology is fundamental for representing to learn from the real world application of these subjects in the 21^st Century. Virtual communications surround students in the form of television, movies, music, video, and Internet sources and while they are bombarded with this digital talk on a daily basis, they should be instructed on traversing the information highway to reliably take advantage of the learning it presents. Students must be instructed in the identification of differences for, what is illogical rhetoric and what is a source of credible information that will benefit their education and, as a result, their success in the real world. The instruction of students in the use of technology and its capabilities for expression will benefit their analysis of digital data for use in education and beyond, helping them decipher what is reliable or not to source from, in their daily encounters of 21^st Century information being communicated.

            Hands on learning benefits student’s comprehensive knowledge for subject matter because of the interactive, multisensory experience involved. Having students work with tools of technology will build in them, a clear understanding of the ways in which it can be manipulated. If students can use a video graphics application to create and alter materials, such as Photoshop, to modify images and data for a desired expression, they will understand this manipulation of facts in the virtual world; how information can be misconstrued in what they are encountering from Internet and media sources. Conversely, students can create blogs and podcasts to express information based on opinion and/or fact to experience the reality of its inclusion in the materials available from the Web. The concept for inaccuracies used in unreliable media information, that falsely support an illogical argument or purpose unknown, will be better understood by the student with experience in the digital manipulation made possible in their personal use of technology.        

Creating an educational experience for students, with the use of technological tools is not always possible for a teacher to provide, due to economic and multiple factors influencing what equipment is available to schools. Regardless of the ability to provide this first hand experience, student awareness of and instruction for the use of information from 21^st Century communication, must address identifying credible information to support knowledge attainment. Instruction on identification of source for articles, videos, and other digital methods for communicating information must be directly instructed to students without access to technology use in their classroom. It is critical to build the knowledge for acquiring scholarly information from these resources, as it seems to be the wave of change for how academics and career relevant materials are currently sourced. To support the successful interaction of the student in 21st Century communication skills, the basics of accuracy and reliable identification of material to source is essential. Demonstrating how this identification is made, through materials that can be displayed in place of technology in the classroom, should be part of student instruction when sourcing information in the digital world.

Technology is the mode of communication in the 21^st Century. The multitude of information and materials made available through digital data sources has opened up a great resource for materials to learn from. The communication of these materials is an educational resource for support of academic achievement in today’s student however; the availability of false information is in great abundance as well. In order to create the advantage to learning from the information available in the 21^st Century, teachers must address the approach to identifying the source of data and digital communications. A student who has understanding for, the difference in materials that are reliable resources for learning from those that may be inaccurate or even false, and why communication of information today is not always a guarantee of accurate, scholarly material, will be better equipped to take advantage of communication that builds their opportunity for success beyond education. The teacher can build these skills for 21^st Century communication in their students and create the advantage of the great abundance for learning materials today that the digital era has made possible.