Engage me or Enrage me

After reading this article, it doesn't come to a surprise to me that this is a very controversial issue. As teachers I feel it is extremely important to keep our students engaged, but I don't know if coming up with a bunch of "digital games" for our students is the right answer.
Games should be incorporated in our lesson plans, but school is still school when it comes down to it, and sometimes, unfortunately, certain lesson plans just aren't super fascinating. There needs to be a balance in our school activities for sure, but I think we as teachers should remember that we are there to teach, for our students to gain a better understanding/knowledge of different subjects and not to play games.
I don't believe that it is good four our students to be starring at a computer screen all day. We have to remember where we came from and that this technology that we have overly mass produced in our lives could not last forever. We can not turn into robotic creatures who are reliant on a machine. Every once in a while it does not hurt to pick up a pencil and piece of paper, to read a book by yourself, or to sit and create a project with poster board. Do we do this all the time, no. but i personally think we have to master the ability to incorporate both old school and new school techniques in our classrooms all the while still keeping our students engaged. It's possible, we just can't give in so easily.

Characteristics of a 21st Century Classroom:

After reading the article entitled "Characteristics of a 21st Century Classroom" I was a bit surprised as to how blunt the article was. Although I've heard these comments here and there in my other classes, this article really convinced me that teaching "now" and "then" has and is on a drastic turnover. We as teachers are becoming symbols of coaches and facilitators, monitoring and watching more as opposed to lecturing our students. To me, this comes as a relief for I feel reading and testing straight from text books is nothing but memorization and does not relate to "real world" situations, for it's nearly impossible to keep up with updated information in our texts.
After reading this article I wrote down a few key points that I thought will change our school systems in the 21st century; our students our taught to be lifelong learners as opposed to year by year until graduation. Excelling has no limitation in this world. Tasks will be more hands on as students are curious to find the answer out on their own as opposed to having the teacher explain it to them from the get go, gaining a better sense of independence in our students. We'll be using a lot more of technology related sources rather than textbooks. lectures will gradually fade out and teachers will begin to co-team with one another instead of planning independently. Most importantly, students AND teachers must be culturally aware of the diversity the new 21st century classroom will bring and our focus as educators will be to prepare our students for the workplace they will all one day enter.