I believe that we prepare learners to have curiosity and a questioning disposition by modeling this ourselves. In the Grant Lichtman TedTalk video (2013), he shared that how we teach learners to be self-evolving is to ourselves become self-evolving educators and organizations. This happens by embracing the constant change of learning and not only sticking to what we have been doing for years. I believe the same goes for inspiring digital learning with our learners. Embracing the ever-changing digital world ourselves, learning and growing with it, we inspire our learners to do the same. Providing them with different methods to learn, digital and otherwise, gives the opportunity for exploration and interest. My teen son is a gamer. I thought of him throughout watching the class videos. He loves to game with friends and in collaborative groups with others to achieve goals. In the MacArthur Foundation video (2010) a real gamer thinks, “If I ain’t learning, it ain’t fun.” This is 100% true when it comes to my son and his gamer friends. When I sit with him and listen to him talk about the missions and challenges, it is never about one game. This is hard for me to understand because gaming when I grew up was just playing to win or lose. Now, there is no stopping point in most games. For him, it is a series of challenges where he acquires skills and strengths to help in the next competitions working with others to constantly improve and learn. It is never-ending and ever-growing. He is always learning, gaining skills and techniques to improve and he would not enjoy it otherwise. When I apply this to learning in education, I see the benefit of this style of learning. The 21st Century vs 20th Century education video helped me to understand the differences in where education was years ago and where it is headed. The video showed the following about 20th century vs 21st-century learning: 20th Century:
Textbook Driven
Passive
Isolation
Authorities
“I taught them the material, it’s up to them to learn it.”
No student freedom
Full of discipline problems
Fragmented Curriculum
Low Expectations
School was irrelevant and meaningless to learners
The teacher is a judge
Filling the Vessel
Retelling
Information Transfer
Time-Based
Memorization
21st Century
Kindling the Fire
Discovery
Outcome-based
Learning to learn
What you know and what you can do
Research-based
Active
Collaboration
Facilitators
“What have they learned, and can they transfer it to real life?”
A great deal of freedom
Very few discipline problems
Integrated Curriculum
High expectations
School connected to interests, experiences, and talents
Worldwide audience
(21st Century Education vs. 20th Century Education, 2009) Watching this video made it much more clear how different education was when I was growing up. Sadly, we still use a lot of the ‘older’ methods in the classroom, much more than we should be using moving into the next century. I would like to see education take a clear turn toward "teaching into the unknown" and embrace constant change by “preparing students for their future, not for our past” (TEDx Talks, 2013). This statement was so powerful in the Ted Talk. Creating change that doesn’t just throw away our past, but combines it with a new way of learning is important because learners need the structure of expectations and guidelines with the freedom of COVA. We must stop focusing on cramming information into learners, but teach them how to self-evolve to create change in the future of learning. References 21st Century Education vs. 20th Century Education. (2009, April 2). Www.youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiD1UqLPrOg Rethinking Learning: The 21st Century Learner | MacArthur Foundation. (2010). [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0xa98cy-Rw TEDx Talks. (2013). What 60 Schools Can Tell Us About Teaching 21st Century Skills: Grant Lichtman at TEDxDenverTeachers [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZEZTyxSl3g
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