21st C Learning

Many educators are explicitly teaching online research skills, such as how to evaluate a website's credibility, how to use precise keywords, and how to better mine search engines.

As more and more students interact digitally–with content, one another, and various communities–the concept of digital citizenship becomes increasingly important.

Which begs the question: what is digital citizenship?

Later this week, we’re going to have a more in-depth look at the characteristics of digital citizenship, but the infographic below I ran across on educatorstechnology.com last week takes a more student-friendly approach by defining digital citizenship in terms of its actions and habits: using, sifting, mastering, creating–the literal actions that ultimately define the tone of a student’s interactions with their digital environments.

This makes it useful not just as a visual for teacher understanding, but for students to discuss, internalize, and apply themselves. In fact, hanging it in the classroom, computer labs, media centers, and other highly-visible places might make sense as well: the rules of the world of digital networks and social media.

One of the many skills that eLearning designers need is the ability to write clear and engaging content.

It's a fact that eLearning should be a carefully planned and created to fully succeed in meeting the needs of your learners.

The writing in an eLearning course needs to stand on its own without an instructor. Instead of being used to support the instructor’s lesson, the writing is the star of the show. It must be engaging and clear, almost a combination of the best of technical and marketing writing to interest the e-learner in the material and impart information.

So with the final term underway at our elementary school, the grade 3 and 6 teachers are starting to prep for the test. Our superintendent @cdsmeaton has always told us that the PATs should not affect our teaching practice. “I am a staunch believer”, he tells us, “that a focus on excellent teaching will lead to excellent results, no matter how it’s measured.” I tell them the same thing. But it doesn’t quite play out that way in the mind of the individual teacher. PATs, existing as they are, leave teachers with a strong sense of responsibility to prepare their students to write them; and as long as the tests are administered in such a way that has very little to do with the type of learning teachers are being called upon to engage in, there will be a bit of an exit from engaging learning around this time every year.

Heres what I’m getting at:

Do you know the actual theories of learning? A learning theory is an attempt to describe how people learn, helping us understand this inherently complex process.

Good questions are at the heart of good inquiry. They should be higher-order, rich, worthy, essential and/or fertile. They are often open-ended (have no right or wrong answer) but are backed by subsidiary questions which are usually closed. Get the initial question right and the rest of the inquiry flows well.

Young children and those new to inquiry will need help in framing the initial question or problem. The ultimate aim is for them to be able to frame their own questions for inquiry but initially they will need teacher guidance to do this.

Having essential questions drive curriculum and learning has become core to many educators' instructional practices...Although essential questions are powerful advance organizers and curriculum drivers, the problem is that the essential questions are typically developed by the educator not the learners.  The educator may find these questions interesting and engaging, but that does not insure that students will find them as such...

My province is currently taking a very close look at curriculum. The reason for this is to ensure that the Program of Study remains responsive and relevant to students as our world continues to change.  Policy makers are committed to designing ”Engaging curriculum that inspires every student, every day.”  They are also calling upon teachers to include learning experiences that build important 21st century competencies such as those I have outline in earlier posts. “These competencies enable students to understand their world, engage fully in their education, relate well to others, manage their lives wisely, and contribute positively to their communities...