New Vision for Education – Unlocking the Potential of Technology – “To thrive in a rapidly evolving, technology-mediated world, students must not only possess strong skills in areas such as language arts, mathematics and science, but they must also be adept at skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, persistence, collaboration and curiosity. All too often, however, students in many countries are not attaining these skills. In this context, the World Economic Forum has taken on a multi-year initiative, New Vision for Education, to examine the pressing issue of skills gaps and explore ways to address these gaps through technology. In this report, we undertook a detailed analysis of the research literature to define what we consider to be the 16 most critical “21st-century skills”. Our study of nearly 100 countries reveals large gaps in selected indicators for many of these skills – between developed and developing countries, among countries in the same income group and within countries for different skill types. These gaps are clear signs that too many students are not getting the education they need to prosper in the 21st century and countries are not finding enough of the skilled workers they need to compete. In response, numerous innovations in the education technology space are beginning to show potential in helping address skills gaps. These technologies have the potential to lower the cost and improve the quality of education. In particular, we found that education technology can complement existing and emerging pedagogical approaches such as project-based, experiential, inquiry-based and adaptive learning methods. In addition, education technology can be uniquely deployed to facilitate the teaching of 21st-century skills such as communication, creativity, persistence and collaboration.”