Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Examining 21st Century Learning

During Tuesday's seminar, graduate students chose one of two groups (Higher Education and K-12 public schooling) in order to discuss perspectives on 21st Century Learning (21CL):
1. What does 21CL mean to us?
2. What does 21CL look like?

What does 21CL mean in higher education?
  • fear of change
  • high paced learning
  • high degree of specialization
  • new set of skills
  • out of the traditional classroom
  • teach something students can relate to
  • relation of class to every day life / skills
  • tailor classes to relevant life / job skills
  • information overload - need to be selective, better time and content managers
What does 21CL look like in higher education?

  • high tech - load up the web pages, use books / media differently (digital, ebooks, pdfs)
  • Choice of method / media to engage with information
  • Increased collaboration
  • student to student
  • students to teacher
  • teacher to students
  • teachers and students to outside world (class, school, community country)
  • Global culture
  • Constructivist approach
What does 21CL mean in K-12 education?
  • Teachers are more of a facilitator less of an instructor
  • Changes in teacher practice
  • Scary
  • Immediacy
  • Access to knowledge; to answers to student questions
  • Constructing the environment with students
  • Knowledge
  • Culture
  • Question: Is it necessary to have k-12 structure, as we know it?
  • Assessment is required
What does 21CL look like in K-12 education?
  • There can be a disconnect between teachers and learners
  • Structures (ie school) may serve others
  • There can be a disconnect between technology and curriculum
  • New curriculum focused on problem solving, exploring individual meanings
  • Blended learning
Graduate students in 679.02 are encouraged to add additional thoughts and comments to this discussion.

4 comments:

4Syth4Learning said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
4Syth4Learning said...

Hi Everyone,
Here is an appropriate and timely wikispace with lots of information about 21st century learning.
Check out '21st century skills' from the left side navigation menu.
I had some trouble making the wikispace link 'live'.
You may need to copy/paste to get to it.

http://movingforward.wikispaces.com/

If someone knows how to do this, could you e-mail me with instructions?
manic@ucalgary.ca

Thank you and enjoy!

tsoroski said...

21st Century Learning

Hello,

In August I had the opportunity to attend the Emerge One-to-One Learning Initiative Summer Institute at SAIT. This institute supports teachers, administrators, technical support personnel and project leads in their efforts to deliver an effective one-to-one laptop program within their school and/or jurisdiction. There are currently 20 such projects underway across the province. One of the keynote speakers was a fellow from Scotland by the name of Ewan McIntosh. He is a teacher and social media specialist who brings to light the learning opportunities that can be provided through the use of social software. He showed the video Frozen Grand Central from YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo )
as an example of the power of text messaging.
The project began with one person’s idea. That person sent a text message about it to a few people who in turn sent it to a few more people and so on, until, in a very short period of time, an organized group of strangers were participating cooperatively in the ‘frozen Grand Central Station’. After showing the video, Ewan McIntosh challenged us to think about the implications text messaging and other social software might have on our own teaching and learning.
What are your thoughts?

Go to http://edu.blogs.com/ and http://delicious.com/ewan.mcintosh for more info. on Ewan McIntosh and his work.

4Syth4Learning said...

WE'RE OFF AND RUNNING...

I spent a little time visiting the class web sites today.
The assigned Technology Project, which has similar objectives and goals, produced a myriad of viscerally pleasing offerings!
Usability appears to have been at the top of everyone's Design requirements.
I saw many techniques which I would like to incorporate in my site in the future ...

The Reading Responses(I read only a few), were insightful and probing and caused me to reflect on ideas I hadn't even thought of.
They inspire me to try to "dig a little deeper" in my own work from now on.

Just wondering if anyone else had a similar experience?