Many of us are aware that learning in the twenty-first century has begun to shift in ways the educational system still has not been able to adapt to. In the twentieth century, learning was perceived as memorization, information transfer, and working in isolation. Contrarily, in the twenty-first century, we perceive learning to be full of discovery, outcome-based, and collaborative with active learning. This leads us to prepare learners to have more curiosity and ask questions to solve problems identified with the problem-based learning method. To get young learners to understand how to ask more questions, I believe educators have to do more modeling on what inquiry-based learning looks like and sounds like. Although that may seem very primary level, all learners must see what learning should look like and sound like before they understand how to accomplish the goal no matter what the learning style is.
In connection to what I addressed above about modeling the learning, the same would apply to digital learning. Digital learning has become very popular in the twenty-first century whether it is occurring within the classroom or through online learning at home. Yes, for many years it wasn’t looked at as native or intrinsic, but over the last few years since COVID, I believe digital learning to be more naturalistic than traditional information transfer styles. There are so many learning programs that have games embedded within the program that drive students to want to engage in these programs. There are various benefits whether it's learners collecting coins to spend at the store in the program, points or ranks against other students and classes, or just fun short games for each question they get right. Kids are so much more intact to digital applications than they are listening to a teacher teach. However, for those who do not have that intrinsic motivation. I have used myself as an example sharing my digital learning experience currently in the ADL program. It shows them that if I can do it they can do it too.
Grant Lightman tells us that after visiting sixty schools there was a noticeable commonality between most across the country. Our education system and the people in control are resistant to change. However, change is necessary in a world where learners have become content creators. Dewey’s Quote “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s we rob them of tomorrow” is an outstanding quote to tie in the big transition in learning from the twentieth century to the twenty-first century. What we’ve done for the last century and even what we may have done just last year cannot always be used. Some say if it’s not broken then don’t fix it not realizing the entire system is broken. Each group now comes with more digital knowledge and informal knowledge from social networking applications. Therefore, we must throw away yesterday’s teaching and open our minds to teaching students in the twenty-first century in ways that relate to them most. Merging the traditional foundation wave of teaching with the new age digital learning wave and having them co-exist effectively will bring a whole new realm of excitement to our learners in the twenty-first century.
References:
21stEducator. (2009, April 2). 21st Century Education vs. 20th Century Education [Video]. YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiD1UqLPrOg
Macfound. (2010, December 1). Rethinking Learning: The 21st Century Learner | MacArthur Foundation [Video].YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0xa98cy-Rw
TEDx Talks. (2013, March 21). What 60 Schools Can Tell us About Teaching 21st century skills: Grant Lichtman at TEDxDenverTeachers [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZEZTyxSl3g
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