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Fostering 21st Century Learning
Submitted by Mel on Wed, 10/09/2008 - 11:09am.
"Our teachers need ongoing access to information about effective practice using ICT so they can support our 21st century students to achieve their full potential and become life long learners." 21st Century Learner. An e Learning Action Plan for Schools 2006-2010. To download the full document click here. Also to check out their recently launched site, click here.
What are the 21st century skills that are needed for our students to thrive in their future world?
In what ways do they differ from the skills we needed growing up?
In fact, there are lots of mentions about the 21st century learner both within this digital strategy and general discourse about eLearning but not a lot of debate about whether these skills are any different from the 19th century learners, the 20th century learner, the 23rd century learner….
Share your reflections on what you think the 21st century skills are and add your stories of how you foster 21st century learning.
21st Century learners or 21st Century work force?
I agree with Toni that there are assumptions being made about teachers and students competence using various ICT's in the new century we now inhabit.
Again though, there is absolutely NO evidence that our students genetics, and consequently their brain function, is any different from when they were 20th Century learners. Marc Prensky's assertions that todays students operate at "twitch speed", etc are based on nothing other than conjecture and have no basis in biology.
Changes to pedagogy and classroom practice must be based on more than buzz-words like "digital natives".
It would be prudent to reflect on the rapid changes in technology and consequently trade and industry in 20th Century.
The beginning of the 1900's dawned with the airwaves were all but silent and heavier than air flight was not yet possible.
Nobody would have predicted that less than 100 years later, by the 1990's, the world-wide-web, nano-technology and other advances would arise, culminating in the concept of a "knowledge economy".
The impact on global trade and industry, and hence the workforce, could never had been foreseen.
So why are so many people attempting to predict the skills required of the 21st Century workforce?
If the changes last century were rapid, how much greater will the changes be this century?
ICT technologies will develop rapidly too and the current fascination and substantial investment in ICT may be viewed as short-sighted and suffering from tunnel-vision in the near future.
If education is deemed to be vocationally focused, it may be more useful to take a wider view, to teach resilience and strategies to cope with constant change, including dealing with failure and taking risks.
Such a 21st Century workforce would demonstrate a number of desirable qualities.
Two examples include the ability to easily unlearn and relearn, and individuals used to change will experience little physiological stress, with associated benefits in the home and family as well as the wider community.
If instead we want the 21st century learner to be more intelligent and creative then they should be permitted more opportunities in the curriculum for play and imagination.
Research has shown that intelligence and creativity do not necessarily go together, yet students who do not pass NCEA courses, even though they may be creative, are often dumped in the "alternative" or applied classes and ignored.
Creativity takes time to develop. Past major breakthroughs in technology and science have come from "play" and time to experiment.
Failure is something that can be learnt from too although our current assessment system at High School does not reward risk taking and failure. Failing but perseverance is something the 21st Century learner may have to get used to. Look at what has happened to the global economy in the last few days...
Michael Fenton
2008 e-Learning Fellow
Digital Natives?
What are the 21st century
What are the 21st century skills that are needed for our students to thrive in their future world? A great question and a valid one. As already mentioned, the phrase "21st Century Learner" is being over used and attached to a huge range of contexts.
I look at this from a couple of perspectives, firstly as a parent. My 2 year old walks around the house with a mobile phone, "Texting Mummy!" or "I'm texting Nan Daddy!" While he is not genetically different, the world around him is.
But does this mean he needs a whole raft of new and different skills? No not really, but he needs to be able to adapt and transfers his skills to new situations and contexts, some that we have yet to experinece or even invent, and he'll do this with existing and new technology.
As a teacher, I welcome the any document that describes how e-Learning has the potential to transform the way we learn as Enabling the 21st Century Learner does. Specific 21st Century skills are hardly mentioned in this doument, only a fleeting reference to information literacy.
Like any labels given to education practice, such as; authentic learning, blended learning or thinking, 21st Century skills can be interpreted in a number of ways. There is no one definition fits all. Each school needs to have a discussion about what it means to them, their students and community.
What is important, and this is the value of such a document, is that the tools of the 21st Century are employed to transform the way we teach.
When I hear 21st Century skills I do not think think of a new skill set. Instead I see it as a recognition and validation of engaging students in elearning, building up their competency in a range of skills and contexts.
---------------Nick Rate
eFellow 2008
Assessment for Learning and ePortfolios
Fostering 21st Century? Learning
The Emperor's new age clothes?
There appears to be a myth in education that students as 21st Century learners are somehow different - that they are the so-called "digital natives".
As a geneticist I can state that there is absolutely NO evidence that our students genetics, and consequently their brain function, is any different from when they were 20th Century learners. After all, ALL of my students at High School were alive as 20th Century learners.
New Zealand is a small country. It is not surprising that certain educators or people linked to education, eg Marc Prensky, rise to a sort of "celebrity" status and their thoughts taken as "gospel" by schools as THE way to implement ICT and eLearning technologies. This is an unfortunate trap to fall into. Learning theory is actually not that complicated and a more sensible view can be easily defended.
One example of the pendulum swinging too far in one direction is the current obsession with constructivist theories of learning. Have we forgotten it is merely one tool for us to use as teachers?
Too often views become polarised. For instance, I disagreee with Marci Powell's comment in the July issue of the NZ INTERFACE magazine..." the choice you make as a teacher is - am I going to go with technology and be part of it or am I going to be antiquated?"
In the context of being a distance education teacher, this is probably a fair comment, but it certainly would not be appropriate to think all teachers in all subjects need feel inadequte.
When I look at the different ideas about the criteria to meet the needs of 21st Century students I have to say I am underwhelmed. I worked with students from 1997 to 2004 as founder of a High School research group doing all "eight habits of a highly effective 21st century teacher" (July issue of NZ INTEFACE). Many of us will have been doing our thing quietly in schools as a matter of good practice and professional pride.
I think anonymous is on the right track with recognising that it will be politics again that will direct what happens in the classroom more than anything else.
Roll on the election...
Michael Fenton
2008 E-learning Fellow
21st Century skills?