When you think of the 21st century, what do you think of? Technology. The vast amounts and quickly, ever-changing technologies characterize the 21st century. Never before have people had so much information readily available to them right at their fingertips. Due to this, there has been a shift in the education system. According to the Masters of Arts in Educational Technology (2020), “Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown (2011) suggested that a new culture of learning has grown out of ubiquitous information networks (i.e., the Internet).” This shift in learning has led to a focus on 21st century learning.
The first major change in learning in the 21st century has been to shift classrooms from being teacher-centered to student-centered. This shift is important to help learners develop a stronger understanding of the information they are learning and being able to transfer what they have learned to other contexts. Within 21st century learning, there has also been a focus on students developing 21st century skills that they will be able to utilize both in and out of school. These skills are the 4Cs, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. In an article that I recently read, Mishra and Koehler’s (2009) Too Cool for School, Mishra and Koehler (2009) state, “the fact that technology is innovative and popular does not make it an educational technology. We often hear the refrain ‘Technology should not drive pedagogy’”. If someone looks closely at 21st century learning, they would notice that even though we are in the middle of the Technology Age, 21st century learning is not characterized by technology. Instead, teachers are coming up with creative and innovative ways to incorporate technology within their curriculums to help drive student learning and understanding while also getting them to gain competencies in the 4Cs.
This week, our task for CEP 810 was to create a lesson plan that supports 21st century learning. I immediately knew which lesson I wanted to focus on. However, this process ended up being more difficult for me than I anticipated. My focus was to have my students work together as a team to create a Glide app for our upcoming (now canceled) District Innovation Extravaganza. The Glide app would allow my students to take their knowledge of Google Sheets to turn information into an app that parents, community members, and students could use to help them navigate their way through this district-wide student showcase. The issue I came across planning this was that I felt like I had gone against what we had learned in Unit 3 about Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) and began building my lesson based on what technology I wanted to incorporate instead of focusing on the content first. I ended up having to go back and rethink my whole lesson.
I had to think very strategically about how I wanted to incorporate the 4Cs into my lesson. I wanted to make sure that using them would help students gain a better understanding of the content. One thing that I worry about when it comes to student-centered learning and working collaboratively is what happens when students simply do not want to put in the effort to learn. My lesson begins by the teacher drawing the class in and introducing them to Google Sheets, making sure to make a connection to how Google Sheets builds upon skills they already learned in Google Docs with building tables. The class then works collaboratively in pairs to navigate and learn the different features of Google Sheets. Students will be able to take their understanding one step further by having to communicate with their peers and explain how one of the features worked to the rest of the class. The students will then have the opportunity within additional lessons to collaborate to create an app for attendees of the Innovation Extravaganza. There will be certain required information to be included, but they will be able to add elements to it as well. They will also have to use critical thinking skills to go back, review, and rework portions of the app that may not be working how they envisioned.
References:
Bucky, C. (2011). 21st century instruction. [image]. Flickr. https://flic.kr/p/an5PX1
Master of Arts in Educational Technology (2020, Summer). Course content from Unit 6: 21st century learning in action. Michigan State University, CEP 810: Teaching for understanding with technology. https://d2l.msu.edu.
Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2009). Too cool for school? No way! Using the TPACK framework: You can have your hot tools and teach with them too. Learning & Leading with Technology, 36(7).
Pt-cartwright (2019). Hang gliding. [photograph]. Flicker. https://flic.kr/p/2hudme5
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