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

I definitely agree with Prensky's suggestion (2001) that students have to "power down" at school because of the way that most content is delivered. I have observed it myself working with students over the last few years. While we as teachers can find many more current ways to deliver content, promote communication, and administer assessments digitally, one of the biggest challenges is still inspiring students to simply enjoy learning. Cultivating a love of learning at a young age is something individuals can carry with them throughout their lives, and help them to evolve into lifelong learners.

An interesting report entitled Voices of Students on Engagement (Yazzie-Mintz 2006) suggested that students felt that school was not "intellectually challeging" (as opposed to "academically challenging") and the researchers attribute that sentiment to a feeling of lack of engagement. Note the following statistics that the researchers reported:

Engagement is about interaction; 21st century learning modalities promote this interaction. When used in conjunction with education, social networks, blogs, photo sharing sites, microblogs (such as Twitter) and online discussion forums all demand more interaction, and therefore can result more engagement.

While the older teachers that Prensky refers to as "digital immigrants", i.e. those who didn't grow up with the internet, adoption of these technologies may be slower but the results (with regard to engagement) can be comparable. A study conducted by Tomorrow.org (2007) addressed online learning trends in both students and teachers, and found that teachers were growing more and more interesting in participating in online staff development and coursework:



In my "perfect world", teachers will begin to accept and embrace the power of 21st century learning strategies, and by using them to continue to be lifelong learners, will model for their students how to be lifelong learners themselves.

References:

Learning in the 21st century: a trends update. (Rep.). (2007, Fall). Retrieved September 12, 2009, from Project Tomorrow website: http://tomorrow.org

Prensky, M. (2001, October). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Retrieved September 12, 2009, from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/

Yazzie-Mintz, E. (2006). High School Survey of Student Engagement (Rep.). Retrieved September 09, 2009, from Indiana University School of Education website: http://ceep.indiana.edu/hssse/