Skills for kids like learning to read open up myriad possibilities. The skills we learn in our youth help us to become successful when we grow up. As adults, we have the opportunity to wonder which skills will be most important for children in the future.

“The fact that Internet is changing the way our brains work is no news. But Elon University and Pew Internet and American Life Project just published a great report that goes way further. They’ve asked to 1000 gurus – like Danah Boyd, Clay Shirky, David Weinberger, Alexandra Samuel, and Janna Anderson – how the cognitive future of kids is going to look like in 2020 and which life skills will be crucial to be successful.

Multitasking, rapidity in searching, browsing, synthesizing information and assessing its quality are going to be key. The importance of these skills, the experts claim, needs to be recognized and processed by the education system. No reform of education can leave behind these issues, because any kid will have to develop this kind of tech literacy to be successful in the post Internet era.

We always say that attention has become more important than concentration. Attention is a key skill because it gives us the possibility to be exposed to a huge quantity of information and just catch moment by moment what’s relevant and valuable for us. In a way, we can imagine that this is one of the main skills that you can train while playing video games. Take a look at what Gabe Zichermann, chair of the Gamification Summit and Workshops, says about video games and the way they can help us understand what the future of the education, and of the world itself will look like.”