21st Century Learners and Technology Integration in the Classroom

This week's food for thought was a consideration of the nature of the 21st Century Leaner (who are students will be and what will be important for their learning) and how technology could be applied to effectively teaching this and future generations of the digital age.

A brief summary of what I learned about 21st Century Learners;

- It is critical to teach and develop skills in the following areas in order that students may be successful not only in school but in their adult lives and future careers as well;

• Literacy (ability to understand and manipulate) when it comes to Information, Technology, and Media
• Critical thinking, innovation, and self-directed learning
• Life and Career Skills (which include the above mentioned skills as well as interpersonal skills, accountability, flexibility, time and resource management, etc.)

- That all of these skills can and must be taught through the filter of the core subjects, which are also vital parts of student skill and knowledge development

- That 21st Century Learners must understand the relevence of what they are learning and be given opportunities to practice applying what is taught

- That the skills and information learned in the classroom must be recognized as tools used to prepare students for the social, political, and economic realities they will encounter

I have also been considering the incredible saturation of modern society by technology; obviously technology is a very important aspect  of daily life, considering its huge prevalence and influence. It is crazy to try and ignore such an important part of culture within the classroom, particularly when technology has the potential for excellent classroom application. It has been stressed that students need to feel their education has practical relevence and also that education needs to be engaging if students are going to take an interest in their learning; incorporating technology in the classroom can solve both of these issues. Technology can be fun and interactive, and students will learn and develop important skills for use outside of school.

Lastly, I want to mention that it is a good idea for teachers to stay up to date with new technology. Not only is it going to make lessons that much more applicable to the present, but lots of new technology is just simply more efficient for teaching than the old, and that is WHY it is developed in the first place. One of the assigned articles (Presenting Effective Presentations With Visual Aids,  http://www.osha.gov/doc/outreachtraining/htmlfiles/traintec.html) actually made me think of this. While the article was useful in stressing the importance of using visual information in presentations to make information more comprehensible and memorable, the technology discussed in the article as presentation supplements really dated the article. It mentioned flip charts, VHS tapes, slide projections and transparency projectors; it also discussed issues with these technologies that are eliminated in more modern presentation technologies such as a powerpoint presentations. Such issues included trying to transition smoothly between sheets of transparencies, the time and effort needed to produce slides, the unwieldiness of transporting large posters or charts, and the expenses involved in producing all of these types of presentation supplements. Modern presentation software such as powerpoint can transition smoothly between "slides" at the click of a mouse (or even automatically if a timer is set), requires only as much time to create as it takes to select what you would like to include, can be transported on a cd, USB drive or simply accessed through email, and cost nothing to produce.

A summary of these ideas is available at the link below, in a presentation I created using Prezi (another handy presentation software, and my first attempt using it):

What is Effective Technology Integration for 21st Century Learners? on Prezi

P.S.
After this first encounter with Prezi, I have to say I did not find it to be a very flexible or user-friendly program. I felt it was very limiting in terms of what I was able to do with my presentation and what it looks like. Next time I would preferentially use Power Point or Google Documents.

First Blog - Technology and Education

Testing 123, testing...

Here we go.

In high school (several years ago now) I had a Livejournal account that I used as a personal diary; since then I haven't used or cared for blogs, and it had never occurred to me until last week that blogging could be used as a classroom tool.

Going into this Communications Technology class I was excited to try and catch up to all the new technology being used in schools, partly because there's some really cool technology that's gained popularity in schools since I graduated (such as the Smart Board), and partly because I want my students to see me as savvy and competent, not dated and SO five years ago. :)

After reading through the articles posted for the class I feel much more aware of and intrigued by the potential of blogging for classroom use. I like the idea of blogs being used as a tool for students to share questions and thoughts with instructors, a forum for discussion with peers, and a tool for reflection. I like the idea of blogs being used just to encourage the students to write more and express themselves whether the content is school-related or not; I think the options of usernames and privacy settings will stimulate student's freedom and willingness to write. I also think that since students are growing up in the digital world, the internet and technology will continue to be such a big part of their lives; since the primary purpose of education is to prepare students for their futures it makes sense that education should embrace the reality of technology today and in the future and embrace it by incorporating technology in schools.

My biggest concerns with using blogging in the classroom would be students divulging personal/identifying information online, and using blogs as a tool for bullying their peers. I appreciated the article that recommended discussing internet safety and rules for blogging with students; it will also be interesting to see if student's being able to read and respond to each other's blogs will build a tighter-knit classroom community and have a positive impact on the problem of bullying rather than facilitating it.

More to follow, thanks for reading :)