Abstract

No generation is more at ease with online, collaborative technologies than today’s young people, the “digital natives,” who have grown up in an immersive computing environment and constitute the common typecast of students we meet in our classroom today. The development of the desired skills and functions among students requires the current educational system to adapt and rejuvenate traditional teaching methods and redefine its educational goals. The present study concerns an innovative training system for teachers in the Jewish and Arab sectors in Israel. It focuses on the skills required of the learner in the twenty-first century by offering various professional development processes on a digital virtual platform as part of the teachers’ development process in the Israeli education system. Data were collected during virtual training courses that train teachers in applied learning based on the twenty-first-century skills for meaningful teaching in which teachers experience virtual tools in different fields of knowledge. The courses were conducted all over Israel with the potential to collect data from 480 participants. The main finding indicates that this kind of professional development has a significant impact on teachers’ professional skills required in the twenty-first century, pertaining to both the Jewish and Arab sectors in Israel.