The North Carolina State Board of Education aims to ensure that all public school students graduate equipped for the 21st century. Internet usage among teenagers has seen significant growth, with over 1 billion online users globally, and a notable rise in social networking and content creation among youth. Additionally, there is a call for schools to better prepare students for real-world challenges, evidenced by statistics on college enrollment, employment prospects, and the increasing prevalence of technology in education.

1. Did you know? The NC State Version

2. The guiding mission of the North Carolina State Board of Education is that every public school student will graduate from high school, globally competitive for work and postsecondary education and prepared for life in the 21st Century.

3. There has been a 45% increase since 2000 in the number of teenagers who use the Internet at School

4. 17% of 11 th & 12 th graders in 2004 took the AP exam, compared to 12% nationally.

5. The Top 5 Websites in the US are: Google Yahoo MySpace YouTube Facebook

6. According to Nature, Wikipedia has an average of 3.86 mistakes per article and Encyclopedia Britannica has 2.92 mistakes per article. However, Wikipedia gets fixed more quickly.

7. 86% of incoming students at NC State in the College of Education in 2007 brought laptop computers with them.

8. College of Education enrollment has risen from 1,284 in 2003 to 1,698 in 2007

9. Worldwide there are over 1 billion on line today

10. 1.2 million students will NOT graduate this year in America

11. The U.S. Department of Commerce Ranked 55 industry sectors by their level of IT intensiveness. Education was ranked number 55 — below coal mining.

12. 60% of 10- to 21-year-olds say their schools should give them more preparation for the real world

13. MySpace has over 375,000 new users every day

14. Over 100,000 blogs are created daily

15. From 2000 - 2006 the NC Population grew 10% to over 8.8 million people.

16. Avg. NC Teacher Salary = 43,343 Avg. Lodging Manager Salary = 43,320 Avg. Paralegal Salary = 43,040 Avg. Flight Attendant Salary = 53,780

17. 62% of all Americans are part of a wireless, mobile population that participates in digital activities away from home or work.

18. Internet users ages 12 to 28 years old have embraced the online applications that enable communicative, creative, and social uses. Internet users ages 29 to 69 years old are more likely than internet users in other age groups to engage in online activities that require some capital: travel reservations and online banking.

19. Some 55% of all adult Americans now have a high-speed internet connection at home. The percentage of Americans with broadband at home has grown from 47% in early 2007.

20. More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites.

21. Some 12% of internet users say they have downloaded a podcast so they can listen to it or view it at a later time.

22. Fully 87% of online users have at one time used the internet to carry out research on a scientific topic or concept.

23. More than 53 million American adults have used the Internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files and otherwise contribute to the explosion of content available online.

24. More teens are creating and sharing material on the internet. And 28% of online teens have blogs, up from 2004. Blogging growth is almost entirely fueled by girls. A subset of teens -- super communicators -- rise as email fades as a communication tool for teens.

25. This Year’s College Freshman Have never rolled down a car window Fox has always been a major network High definition television has always been available They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper. Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities. The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.