At the opening of the 2009-2010 academic year, school administrators and our students are re-entering an educational arena where a rapidly changing learning landscape presents a host of issues and challenges that demand novel and forward-thinking solutions. Battered budgets, obsolete instructional models and a poorly designed educational system to meet present student needs top the list requiring immediate corrective action if we are to prepare adequately our students for college, careers and responsible citizenship.

Of course, today's educational environment is impacted by the difficult economic issues facing our society, from staggering unemployment numbers to financing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the skyrocketing costs for adequate health care. There are no easy solutions to these real-world problems. But we know that a key step to addressing and improving the economic and social quality of our lives is to ensure that our students are receiving adequate preparation for successful careers and are gaining the self-confidence, knowledge and ecumenical attitude, necessary to address such challenges.

Today's students learn differently. They are motivated in ways drastically different from previous generations of students. They are not inclined to respond with any enthusiasm to a "business-as-usual" approach to learning. We recognize that changes must be made in what students are taught and how the material is presented to them. The expansive growth of information and technology has greatly influenced their views of our global economy and the current issues people in the 21st century face.

In most schools today, knowledge is generally controlled by teachers. This knowledge comes from the top down, and has traditionally been presented in a text-based form. Most educators release information slowly, and only after it has been thoroughly vetted by experts. Yet, today, students want to receive information quickly, from multiple sources and from the bottom up. Usually, today's teachers expect to do things step by step, while students generally are much better at multitasking and using parallel processing than students who have preceded them. Most teachers prefer a focus on the individual, while today's students want simultaneous use of networks and collaboration with their peers. Many educators want learning to be serious. Yet, as you might surmise, today's students want learning to be fun in the ways in which they perceive fun. Educators see schools as a place to learn, while students see the world as a place to learn.

Students enrolled in our schools today were born into an age of podcasting, blogging, videogames, virtual worlds, social networking sites, Skype, YouTube, wikis, mobile media and other multimedia venues that process information and allow instant communication. Students are connected, mobile, social, instantaneous and entertainment oriented. In the world of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, various environments our students inhabit are oftentimes foreign to many of their teachers.

As we confront this growing educational schism between student and teacher, school administrators must prepare teachers for effective teaching by providing for professional development in this new technological age. School administrators must also assess student achievement and student needs, and then map out programs for school success, offering a curriculum which emphasizes problem solving, using a collaborative team approach by fully integrating the prevailing technologies of the 21st Century.

To share information and communicate with teaching peers, our teachers must use Facebook, blogs and Twitter. To create, our teachers must use Flash, Flikr and Mashups. They must conduct meetings using webinars and searches using Google. Today's teacher must teach students to organize in wikis and to experiment using simulations and visualization through 3-D worlds such as Second Life.

This year, to begin meeting these pressing challenges, 20 of Hawai'i's private schools received funding from the Hawai'i Community Foundation, partnering with the Hawai'i Association of Independent Schools, to launch a program designed to engage teams of educators to keep in step with the 21st century student by developing more effective uses of advanced technological tools in support of student centered and project based learning.

These fortunate Hawai'i schools are positioning themselves to create a network of statewide programs that will keep Hawai'i's youth at the leading edge of global growth and needs, helping them to become community leaders, contributing citizens and creative problem solvers.

Indeed, what our schools teach and how our teachers teach will be better aligned with, and more adept at, utilizing the new skills and competencies that our students absolutely require to grow and mature educationally in the new frontiers of the 21st century living environment.

Betty White is principal at Sacred Hearts Academy and is a trustee for the National Coalition of Girls' Schools and a director of the Hawai'i Association of Independent Schools. She wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.