20th vs 21st Century Classrooms

The "Characteristics of the 21st Century Classroom"document does a fairly excellent job at painting a picture of what the current 21st century way of teaching is, or what it should be by comparing it to older teaching methods that were practiced throughout the previous century. For me, the point about teachers needing to prepare their students for work in the 21st century sums the whole thing up in a very simplistic but accurate way. Back in the 20th century, teachers generally lectured their students and only taught one subject at a time. Now students are being taught multiple things at a time, such as reading a passage for an English class that is about a country that is being studied in a social studies class. Students are also able to absorb more content as the lecture-like classroom setting is less common which means that students have more time actually engaging the content presented to them instead of trying to memorize it. With the teachers being more of a coach that assists the students during school as opposed to the old lecture who simply forces the students to memorize and recall the information, now students are now being taught in a way that promotes them not only asking questions, but asking the correct questions. These changes in teaching methods has a lot to due with the fact the there has been so many breakthrough technological advances that make it easier for people to access a wider range of information. Back when my parents were in college in the mid 70's, the main way that they did their research for their classes was by going to the library and read books about whatever topic they were reseacrching. Now, people can access information on any topic from virtually anywhere that a computer is. The internet and various other computer programs makes it possible for teachers to be able to reach a much wider group of students as well as making their classrooms more efficiently run overall.