Week 2 - Blog Posting #4 -21st Century Skills & Lifelong Learning

Ropes courses and military obstacle courses have long been training grounds for collaboration. I've participated in a few in my lifetime and can attest to the fact that the only way that people 'get over the wall' is with help. The team must work together to get everyone over to the other side. For some people, the 'wall' is their independence. They must learn to work with other people for the common good. Whatever constitutes a wall that blocks collaboration will discourage, delay, and deny the team an optimal result.

Collaboration is a way to break down walls and connect to the network of human ingenuity. According to Wendy Drexler in the video Networked Student, students need teachers to be modelers, synthesizers, and change agents. Educators are in a unique position to be facilitators of knowledge acquisition in Web 2.0. As the student faces a 'wall' of information to sort through, the learning concierge directs, helps evaluate, and encourages. A Web 2.0 educator must be willing to allow other experts to contribute to the knowledge bank.

Students today were raised in a world of technology that has affected them beyond just their taste in video games. Marc Prensky in his article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants (2001) says young brains today are changed. They process information differently than earlier generations. Marc Prensky quotes Dr. Bruce D. Perry of Baylor College of Medicine as saying “Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain structures,...it is very likely that our students’ brains have physically changed –and are different from ours – as a result of how they grew up."

Ruth Reynard commented on this change in The Journal article 21st Century Teaching and Learning, Part 1. She asserts that educators are not seeing, nor understanding, that their students do not see the world or learn the same way that they did. The way technology has affected education is more than teaching techniques.

Educators have an even more profound need to be lifelong learners and students themselves in today's world. In order to connect to the skills of the current day, teachers must study. I do not believe it is an option. Those who are not are obvious. Districts who ignore the need to update technology, use media, and train their teachers are making a serious mistake that may build unnecessary walls to their students' potential and future.

A 2003 class from the University of Illinois created an Educational Technology Timeline that is worth reviewing. They projected some possible scenarios for the future with links that show their research, and imagination. Whatever the future brings, more change is inevitable. I only wish there would be a housekeeping robot like on the Jetsons!