Week 2 Homework Digital & Collaborative Learning in Context (DCL)

TITLE:  21st Century skills

overview

This week allows us to look into the purpose of education, does education form society, or does society dictate what education should look like? On a more detailed scale we ask what skills do our learners need in this ‘Knowledge Age’/time of hyperchange and examine the Key Competencies - discussing their relevance in the 21st Century with particular reference to the Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) research. Below are key elements of the ITL research rubrics (attached media below)

• Knowledge construction
• Self-regulation
• The Use of ICT for learning
• Skilled Communication
• (Real-world problem-solving and innovation - although this one we'll leave for next week)

The key findings in the ITL Research were that innovative teaching supports students’ development of the skills that will help them thrive in future life and work. However, students’ opportunities to develop these skills are typically scarce and uneven, both within and across the sample of schools in the study.

Click the following link to download 21st Century Learning Design - Activity Rubrics”

How things are changing in the classroom

TASK: Reflect on how 20th century and 21st century skills differ? Do we need both?

I love this above video clip, it kind of reminds me of my son and how he takes things apart and puts them back together again....new and improved...usually! His recent antic's have been focused upon improving his scooter and getting it 'dialled' (I have learnt this means it doesn't rattle when you try to bounce it and goes way, way smoother and faster).
I love to see my son - and also the students I teach enjoying their learning in this way. I find boys in particular love this style of learning. This 'ownership' and 'inquiry' and 'problem-solving' style is just fabulous to sit back and observe their engagement and to take it all on board. 

The scooter in pieces 

My son's new 'dialled' scooter and his new work space

My husband on the other hand, is far from impressed and I think he finds it a bit scary that our son is taking apart a rather expensive toy's that we have brought him. My parents were pretty much of my husbands mindset when I was growing up. I used to take apart expensive, electrical Christmas gifts (a bit scary at times but we all survive a few electrics shocks and such like) and once I even dismantled a brand new bike they had brought me one Christmas. Not because there was anything wrong with the bike you understand, but....well I needed certain parts of it to build a bike I had been building from scratch at the local adventure playground we used to hang-out at.

So, how is this related to the question posed above? 

As a child, I experienced the 20th Century 'industrial' style of teaching and education. The majority of my learning took place with me at a desk and the teacher doing the talk and chalk thing, or us just doing our work individually from a workbook. I did not thrive academically at school, in fact I will openly admit to being labelled a 'disruptive' and a 'delinquent' student. 

Disruptive or Model student? Well that would
depend upon which subject teacher you spoke to.

The funny thing was though, the transformation that took place when I was in a practical lesson or in a hands-on learning environment. In practical subjects, I thrived, I was responsible, competent, gained excellent grades, innovated, demonstrated leadership skills and creative..... the list goes on and I was also a very happy and compliant soul. You could of been mistaken when reading my school report, it actually looked like the teacher was writing about two different student. 

 I think many of our students need to be engaged in real-learning activities like this, in particular boys. This is not to say that there are not those students who would much prefer doing book work and being teacher-led. Overall, the 21st skills are enabling teachers to offer a larger choice of pedagogical styles of learning to a larger percentage of students in one class, 'personalised learning' you may say.  Mixed together, with the problem-based learning and inquiry learning models which are now coming to the fore, 21st Century Education is also allowing students to develop skills that were not actually seen to be needed in prior years, for example, collaboration, self-regulation, critical thinking, communication and creativity.

Let's be clear here, the skills that were required for school-leavers in the times gone by are valid and in my opinion, still needed for today's students. They focus on a factual and procedural society, preparing students for some of the different roles they may take up during their working life or for further education.

However, in saying that, if we only prepare them with industrial type skills, they will not fair well in today's and future societies. Students also now need to be equipped to deal, thrive and to make a difference in this rapidly changing and 'future unknown' environment we are now a part of.  By providing learning environments that seek to foster and develop both sets of skills, we enable the learning to get the most from their time at school and hopefully set them up well to have a good set of 'soft' and 'hard' skills which will be of great benefit to them in the future. 

We do not know what opportunities or careers will be available to the young people of today in their future lives. It is know that many of the job we have now will not exist and new,  presently unknown careers, will be be available to our students.

Therefor I believe, and my thoughts may change as my understanding deepens, we need to do our best to give them as many useful skills and tools that will allow them to be knowledgeable, informed, digital, flexible, sociable and lifelong learners.

It is not just about this though, it is also how each individual students learns best, and providing a variety of learning activities and environments that allows that to happen to as many different students as possible. We now have evidence that supports the fact there are may different learning styles and we owe it to our students to educate ourselves to teach in a way that engages these different learning styles. I also believe we need to role model these soft skills that we are expecting them to learn, such as the key competencies skills. 

The more versatile, innovated and varied my lesson are will hopefully results in more students becoming engaged in learning and realizing and achieving their full potential.