Uniting the Classroom: Including New Media in Education As Common Core State Standards are implemented into elementary, middle, and colleges across the country, teaching practices must be adapted to meet new needs and expectations. The use of technology is now a central focus of the standards, worrying many teachers for a wide variety of reasons, including a lack of teacher training, a decline in face-to-face communication skills, a lack of of students, declining test scores and essential skills, and even the role of the teacher is becoming obsolete (Wilson, 2013). As new media becomes more readily available, educators must carefully examine available technological tools and consider how to best implement them in the classroom environment. To effectively implement and resolve any problems that arise with technology, educators must gain knowledge about how to use new multimedia tools to obtain information, enhance the student experience, and empower students to be content producers themselves. Despite the fears and uncertainties of a dramatically changing educational landscape, educators must learn to teach in a blended classroom that uses traditional teaching methods and practices with technology to purposefully enhance the student experience and cultivate key skills of 21st century literacy. An emphasis on the inclusion of technology and new media in the classroom stems from young people's need to be active digital citizens in a tech-savvy world. The new Common Core State Standards were initially adopted by individual states by choice in 2010 as a means to ensure that all students leave their educational careers prepared for post-secondary endeavors (Common Core State Standards...... half of document .. ....teachers and districts must create cohesive and clear plans to use technology in meaningful ways that benefit both student learning and teaching practices. These changes are big and are happening quickly to prepare teachers to such a change philosophical in teaching practices, clear communication must occur (Vance, Carlson, Lively, & Mastracchio Jr., 2013). To help communicate expectations, teachers must receive sufficient professional development to improve their skills with new media that are incorporated into successful technology integration is important and is what makes the transition to a mixed classroom more effective. “Integrating technology is not easy, it is a three-step process that involves the teacher learning the technology…” before students even have access to it (Sabzian, Gilakjani, Pourhosein). , & Sodouri, 2013).