"Success is based not only on what you know
or how much you know, but on your ability to think and act creatively."
-- Dr. Mitch Resnick, MIT Media Lab, Lifelong Kindergarten
In the online communities, social networks, and
Web 2.0 and 3.0 that currently dominate our 21st Century society,
children live beyond their geographic boarders. No longer is the
routine accepted; everything is customized, including education.
The digital services now literally at our fingertips are our children's
power tools, utilized through play, free-choice learning, and exploration
to build abilities and share talents. They exist in a worldwide
community that no longer embraces knowledge or skill sets as an
end game, but as tools to solve problems and meet needs by innovating
new products and services.
The visitor-centered, customized learning opportunities
needed by this new generation of learners are already embraced by
Children's Museums. Our institutions are innovators of free-choice
learning opportunities that focus on building children's 21st Century
skills through play, exploration, and discovery. We are the inventors
and tinkerers who develop opportunities that inspire children's
imaginations. We are the improvisers who encourage knowledge acquisition
and application. And we are the collaborators who help construct
social opportunities and generate the multi-dimensional literacies
- mathematical, visual, scientific, cultural and beyond -- that
are the foundational architecture for continuous, life-long learning.
The 21st Century environment will require
children to develop key learning and innovation skills. By developing
sessions around utilizing skills like effective reasoning, systematic
thinking, creative collaborations, implementing innovation, and
multi-disciplinary application in our exhibits, programming, outreach,
and professional development we further ourselves as individuals
and as a community. We become institutions that prepare our children
for living, working and thriving in the 21st Century.