Around the dawn of the 2000, many institutions in the US conducted surveys related to how people perceive who and what was important in the accomplishments of --- the millennium. One such survey was made by PBS in October 1999. It found that among the top 10 most influential personalities of the millennium were: Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Nicolas Copernicus, Louis Pasteur, and The Most Influential Person of the Millennium was Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the (moving type) printing press. It is significant to realize that all the above personalities were scientists, and Gutenberg's invention triggered the communication revolution. Even TIME magazine named Albert Einstein its Person of the Century. Walter Isaacson, Time's managing editor, summed it up: "When we look back in 100 years, we'll remember the fight for freedom and the fight for civil rights; but above all, we're going to realize how science and technology changed our world."

We owe it to ourselves and to the world we live in to understand this technology, at least in the hope of shaping it to our liking, or, if nothing else, to make us more selective in what technology does to us and what it makes us do. Is is therefore imperative to address the issue of the relevancy of what we teach and what the students should know in a world where science and technology has permeated every aspect of our life.

There has been a strong tradition of rewarding excellence in science and technology, even at the expense of relevance for all people, but for the new millennium there is a need to find ways to combine the two. While we are successfully providing a strong science and technology background for those wishing to pursue these subjects at a higher level, yet, providing an appropriate and rewarding science and technology experience for all students is of concern.

We are at the point of discovering that the traditional approach of teaching and learning will not be sufficient to prepare students for life and career choices. New skills will be necessary for more than one reason:

• Turning out scientifically literate citizens at school level while the amount of available and accessible information is growing gigantically.
• Developing skills to acquire, deliver and process information effectively in a society that changes at a continuity increasing speed; that is, people have to be prepared for life-long learning.
• Enabling the learner to adapt to change: people have to find their way in a society that changes at a continuously increasing speed; that is, people have to be prepared for life-long learning.

The transformation has to be a new and great challenge for all initial education. Not only students have to acquire new skills, but teachers will also have to prepare for different and new roles. So this must also be the focus of the work we are dealing with: research, curriculum work, and teacher training. Science and technology education has to deal with this. Teachers should have knowledge of strategies to build up know-how from the vast amounts of information in science and technology.