21st century skills?

While on twitter yesterday I came across this article . It talks about how the 21st century skills that we as educators love referring to and teaching, are actually no different really to 18th century skills, it's just that we are doing these things in a different way. If you turn on diggolet while reading it, I've highlighted some bits and also added some notes that I've shared with EDC3100 (I hope it worked).

I found the most interesting point was when he described that the skills students have now regarding communication on the internet aren't learnt in the classroom, because we apparently don't allow the use of social media and communication sites. Student's are not becoming technology literate in the classroom, and this is often because teachers are not technology literate themselves. - I do not think that he has researched this enough to be honest, he might be surprised if he did.

But I do think he is right, we are not teaching students to be technology literate, they are learning it by themselves and are often better at it than we are. So why don't we use this in the classroom to help other students learn? If we struggle with ICTs why can't we get the student's to help us?