Welcome to the 2009-2010 school year. It seems that the annual educational cycle seems to accelerate as the years progress. While I attribute some of this quickening pace to my advancing age, I would have to argue that the most influential contributing factor is the rapid societal change occurring 24/7 around us. This point hit home with me this past weekend while I was spending some one-on-one time with my 20-month-old-grandson Eli. As he was exploring Grandpa’s coffee table for interesting playthings, he happened upon a small solar calculator. As I watched, Eli picked up the calculator and put it to his ear as if he had just received a phone call on his blackberry!! The technology for this solar calculator was not readily available when Eli’s dad was 20 months old, yet for Eli’s generation the solar calculator technology was obsolete and was mistakenly recognized within the current context of ever advancing electronic communication.
A news story the following day reinforced this message as the opening of a brand new school celebrated new classrooms with student-accessible Smartboards and computers in select classrooms. What I realized at the time was that many of the students sitting in these classrooms would probably be carrying portable Smartboards, in the shape of iphones, and Smart phones, in their pockets. Though the acquisition of this technology for classrooms does indeed need to be celebrated, I think that we as educators must also realize that education as we know it lags behind in “keeping up” with the changes that are a part of the world our young people are experiencing outside of the classroom walls. With this realization comes the responsibility of education to provide students in our classrooms with the skills to recognize, understand, and utilize the information and communication technology that they (the students) are bombarded with on a daily basis. We as educators need to “retool” our literacy programs to focus on 21st century conceptual arenas including information literacy, critical thinking, and problem solving. Furthermore, we need to do it in such away that we engage our students in the learning to the extent that what goes on in the classroom becomes a relevant part of their lives rather than a block of time separate from their “real lives”.
I found a graphic that I felt depicted the challenge of 21st century learning. It is taken from the Center for Media Literacy website and appears in conjunction with an article entitled Learning for the 21st Century.
http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article580.html
I would like to hear your thoughts, ideas, comments, and reactions to what I have shared. Please share your comments and reactions. Tell us what you are (or aren’t) doing in your classroom to address these changes. Hope to hear from you soon.
