Sunday September 16, 2007
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Contemporary Social Studies Teaching
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Sunday September 16, 2007
Learning To Play Digital Games
This article is interesting in the sense that most people would not suspect. It talks about such things as Harry Potter and Deus Ex . It goes to explain how game players have to spot unusual objects or explore unexplored areas. If a threat exist a players has to move past. It is in these new age terms that students look to achieve. Harry Potter mixes creativity with spacial needs and critical thinking. Harry Potter inspires students to think creativly and apply logic and reason to have success. One can draw parallels to real life situations. What does a person do when they have to deal with someone unapproachable? What areas of my personality can I explore to be successful in life and in the classroom. What kind of learner am I/ Do I learn best seeing, hearing, etc? This article does an amazing job at showing how creativy, education, and gaming are interlocked in the educational process. I never saw Harry Potter a learning tool until I read this article.
Posted by mjcrotea
( Sep 16 2007, 11:46:33 PM EDT )
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Monday August 27, 2007
Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century
Recent advancements in technology including the emergence of ubiquitous computing, social networking, and digital representations of vast amounts of information have altered the way students interact with content and with each other. The implications of these developments for educators are significant with information becoming a currency of sorts for citizens in society. Information literacy and other new skills and understandings have emerged in 21st century as vital to productive civic and economic life. The New London Group (1996) has described these skills and understandings as multiliteracies and has suggested that these new literacies reflect emerging and evolving technological forms for representing texts as well as the plural cultural experiences that are a part of increasingly ?globalized societies? (p. 61). The ten New London Group (NLG) scholars who developed the concept of multiliteracies view their work as further reflective of changes in working, public, and private lives that are representative of what Jim Gee calls ?fast capitalism.? These changes include more nimble work experiences, a decline in public citizenship and direct government involvement in public life, and the private being increasingly validated yet at the same time more transparent than ever before.
Like the New London Group, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) has begun work on clarifying the literacies that will be central to civic, economic, and social life in the years and decades to come. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2002) argues that technological, economic, informational, demographic, and political changes require that schools reconsider how they prepare young people for civic, economic, and social life. Arguing to ?bridge the gap between how students live and how they learn? (p. 4), P21 has identified six key elements for 21st century education including, core subjects and learning skills as well as 21st century tools, contexts, content, and assessment. These six elements shape an educational reform agenda that P21 argues will enable young people to develop a wide range of skills (e.g. media, communication critical thinking, creative, problem solving, interpersonal, collaborative) while using information and communication technologies (e.g. computing, networking, audio-visual, media) in authentic contexts.
The New London Group and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills collectively suggest that technology plays an important contextual role in calls for educational changes. While some of the arguments are economic (i.e., economic productivity and increasing standards of living around the world are closely tied to technological advancements) much of this technological context is tied to the ways children live their lives and the tools and resources they use to communicate and socially interact. Both NLG and P21 argue that young people are becoming increasingly dependent on technologies to communicate, gather information, and extend social experiences and as these young people move into the workplace they are making increasing use of new technological tools to engage professional and personal interests. They further suggest that the 21st century workplace is infused with digital communication systems such as email, instant messaging, texting, and virtual networking as well as information management systems that expect workers to have sophisticated technological skills and dispositions. Given the relatively early stage of development for many of these technologies, work and learning in 21st century technology-enhanced environments also requires dispositions receptive to change and adaptation. Static technology dispositions might well limit students and professionals in environments that value change and creativity.
Children in school today were born into social and educative environments where digital technologies are part of everyday life. These 21st century learners are using digital technologies even in infancy and grow up with technology all around them. The emergence of this first technologically savvy digitally native generation (Prensky, 2006) is cause for an evaluation of educational systems including teacher education and professional development. Digitally native children bring different skills, interests, and needs to the classroom and teachers need to understand these unique attributes in order to best meet their needs. Teachers must also understand that there are a variety of technological contexts for learning. These contexts include the devices children use as well as forms of access and use. Whenever technology is used in the classroom it also generates pedagogical challenges for teachers as they seek to take advantage of the affordances of technology in their instruction.
What are the implications of these New Literacies and 21st Century thinking skills? How much of the talk about technology, new ways of learning and the such is simply hype and how much do you think is valid? Are you observing any shift in the ways that children learn or changes in the what children should be learning?
New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92.
Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2002). Learning for the 21st Century. Retrieved April 19, 2007, http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/images/stories/otherdocs/p21up_Report.pdf
Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2005). P21 backgrounder. Retrieved April 19, 2007, http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/images/stories/otherdocs/P21%20Backgrounder%20March%202005.pdf
Prensky, M. (2006). Listen to the natives. Educational Leadership, 63(4), 8-13.
Posted by jklee ( Aug 27 2007, 03:50:03 PM EDT ) Permalink Comments [13]
Recent advancements in technology including the emergence of ubiquitous computing, social networking, and digital representations of vast amounts of information have altered the way students interact with content and with each other. The implications of these developments for educators are significant with information becoming a currency of sorts for citizens in society. Information literacy and other new skills and understandings have emerged in 21st century as vital to productive civic and economic life. The New London Group (1996) has described these skills and understandings as multiliteracies and has suggested that these new literacies reflect emerging and evolving technological forms for representing texts as well as the plural cultural experiences that are a part of increasingly ?globalized societies? (p. 61). The ten New London Group (NLG) scholars who developed the concept of multiliteracies view their work as further reflective of changes in working, public, and private lives that are representative of what Jim Gee calls ?fast capitalism.? These changes include more nimble work experiences, a decline in public citizenship and direct government involvement in public life, and the private being increasingly validated yet at the same time more transparent than ever before.
Like the New London Group, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) has begun work on clarifying the literacies that will be central to civic, economic, and social life in the years and decades to come. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2002) argues that technological, economic, informational, demographic, and political changes require that schools reconsider how they prepare young people for civic, economic, and social life. Arguing to ?bridge the gap between how students live and how they learn? (p. 4), P21 has identified six key elements for 21st century education including, core subjects and learning skills as well as 21st century tools, contexts, content, and assessment. These six elements shape an educational reform agenda that P21 argues will enable young people to develop a wide range of skills (e.g. media, communication critical thinking, creative, problem solving, interpersonal, collaborative) while using information and communication technologies (e.g. computing, networking, audio-visual, media) in authentic contexts.
The New London Group and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills collectively suggest that technology plays an important contextual role in calls for educational changes. While some of the arguments are economic (i.e., economic productivity and increasing standards of living around the world are closely tied to technological advancements) much of this technological context is tied to the ways children live their lives and the tools and resources they use to communicate and socially interact. Both NLG and P21 argue that young people are becoming increasingly dependent on technologies to communicate, gather information, and extend social experiences and as these young people move into the workplace they are making increasing use of new technological tools to engage professional and personal interests. They further suggest that the 21st century workplace is infused with digital communication systems such as email, instant messaging, texting, and virtual networking as well as information management systems that expect workers to have sophisticated technological skills and dispositions. Given the relatively early stage of development for many of these technologies, work and learning in 21st century technology-enhanced environments also requires dispositions receptive to change and adaptation. Static technology dispositions might well limit students and professionals in environments that value change and creativity.
Children in school today were born into social and educative environments where digital technologies are part of everyday life. These 21st century learners are using digital technologies even in infancy and grow up with technology all around them. The emergence of this first technologically savvy digitally native generation (Prensky, 2006) is cause for an evaluation of educational systems including teacher education and professional development. Digitally native children bring different skills, interests, and needs to the classroom and teachers need to understand these unique attributes in order to best meet their needs. Teachers must also understand that there are a variety of technological contexts for learning. These contexts include the devices children use as well as forms of access and use. Whenever technology is used in the classroom it also generates pedagogical challenges for teachers as they seek to take advantage of the affordances of technology in their instruction.
What are the implications of these New Literacies and 21st Century thinking skills? How much of the talk about technology, new ways of learning and the such is simply hype and how much do you think is valid? Are you observing any shift in the ways that children learn or changes in the what children should be learning?
New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92.
Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2002). Learning for the 21st Century. Retrieved April 19, 2007, http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/images/stories/otherdocs/p21up_Report.pdf
Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2005). P21 backgrounder. Retrieved April 19, 2007, http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/images/stories/otherdocs/P21%20Backgrounder%20March%202005.pdf
Prensky, M. (2006). Listen to the natives. Educational Leadership, 63(4), 8-13.
Posted by jklee ( Aug 27 2007, 03:50:03 PM EDT ) Permalink Comments [13]
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