21st Century Educator

I'm writing this post while on a flight between Seattle to Denver. I'm patiently typing on my iPhone, sitting next to people whom appear blissfully unaware how unusual this is. I'm updating a computer which is located thousands of miles away using a device smaller than a remote control from a height of 37,000 feet! I mean I can literally communicate with anybody who has an Internet connection, which means my potential audience is over a billion people.

This should be amazing to everyone but no one around me seems terribly shocked by this. Why would they, communication like this has become ordinary nearly everywhere in the world. When my students were on their trip to Africa, they were able to blog about the experience and share photos with those of us back at home. We got to feel a little bit like we were with them in Africa, it was very cool.

Global communication and interconnectedness are becoming commonplace. Within my son's lifetime, he will have people he considers close friends that he has never met in person. Education has to take advantage of these changes to how we communicate or we risk turning our classrooms into digital deserts into which no student will want to venture.

• David Wees's blog

About David

David is a mathematics teacher and a learning specialist for technology at Stratford Hall in Vancouver, BC. He has been teaching since 2002, and has worked in Brooklyn, London, and Bangkok before moving back to Canada. He has his Masters degree in Educational Technology from UBC, and is the co-author of a mathematics textbook. He has been published in ISTE's Leading and Learning, Educational Technology Solutions, The Software Developers Journal, The Bangkok Post and Edutopia. He blogs with the Cooperative Catalyst, and is the Assessment group facilitator for Edutopia. He has also helped organize the first Edcamp in Canada, and TEDxKIDS@BC.