Showing posts with label 21st century education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 21st century education. Show all posts

The Digital Learning Wheel

10:25 AM    

December, 2014
Ring of Technologies is a beautiful visual wheel that displays a host of learning goals together with some examples of web tools to achieve them. To me this work  (created and shared by UAF eLearning Faculty Resources) represents the core of digitally-based learning. It also chimes in with what we have said about purposeful use of technology in instruction. Having clear goals about what you want to target in your teaching using technology will definitely help your learners make the best of that technology.
Here is an example of one of the readings of the different components of the wheel. For instance as a teacher keen on enhancing my professional development (goal), I can make use of social bookmarking websites or blogging platforms (tools ) to reach my purpose. Check out the other goals and web tools mentioned in this wheel and share with us what you think of it.

This wheel is also available for free download in PDF format from this link.

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These Are The 4 Concepts Shaping 21st Century Learning

8:18 PM    

December, 2014
Today's learning landscape is enriched with a variety of new concepts that were to the recent past foreign  to many. Of course learning is a dynamic field and it will always keep developing as human knowledge progresses. But the last two to three decades in particular have witnessed the outburst of several new conceptions and theoretical frameworks that, among other things, attempt to capture the latest developments in learning . This cheat sheet features a number of these concepts.

I am also sharing with you the visual below which highlights three more concepts shaping the 21st century learning. To these I added the concept of Andragogy.

Source: http://goo.gl/MBwZfp

1- Andragogy
Andragogy is a teaching strategy developed for adult learners. Andragogy has been around for more than a century but it gained more momentum and came up to the surface in educational literature particularly with the work of Malcom Knowles. Andragogy marks a clear departure from the traditional pedagogy informing child learning in that it is predicated upon 5 assumptions related to the characterstics of adult learners :

  • 1. Self-concept: As a person matures his self concept moves from one of being a dependent personality toward one of being a self-directed human being
  • 2. Experience: As a person matures he accumulates a growing reservoir of experience that becomes an increasing resource for learning.
  • 3. Readiness to learn. As a person matures his readiness to learn becomes oriented increasingly to the developmental tasks of his social roles.
  • 4. Orientation to learning. As a person matures his time perspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application, and accordingly his orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject-centeredness to one of problem centredness.
  • 5. Motivation to learn: As a person matures the motivation to learn is internal (Knowles 1984:12)

Check out this page to learn more about Andragogy: 

                                        Related : Pedagogy Vs Andragogy

2-Heutagogy
Heutagogy is the study of self-directed learning and self- determined learning. While some think about Heutagogy as a separate methodology from Andragogy, several other scholars view it as an extension of Andragogy. Heutagogy is all about teaching learners how to learn. In this respect,  "heutagogy looks to the future in which knowing how to learn will be a fundamental skill given the pace of innovation and the changing structure of communities and workplaces.”
Here is a PDF document to learn more about Heutagogy.

3- Peeragogy
As for peeragogy, here are some definitions cited by Arenastudies:
“Peeragogy (which he refers to as “paragogy”), is a collection of “the best practices of effective peer learning.”
“It is also a theory of peer-to-peer learning and teaching that addresses the challenge of peer-producing a useful and supportive context for self-directed learning”.Charles Jeffrey Danoff .

Check out this post to learn more about Peeragogy.

4- Cybergogy
This is a completely novel concept to me and as I searched further on its meaning I came across this entry from Edutech Wiki:
One of the central elements of cybergogy is the intent to combine fundamentals of both pedagogy and andragogy to arrive at a new approach to learning (Carrier & Moulds, 2003). Cybergogy focuses on helping adults and young people to learn by facilitating and technologically enabling learner-centered autonomous and collaborative learning in a virtual environment. At the core of cybergogy is awareness that strategies used for face-to-face learning may not be the same used in the virtual environment.

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The 8 Components of A Digital Learning Environment

10:18 PM    

November 1, 2014
Another great read but this time from BYOT Network. In this paper entitled " The Components of a Digital Age Learning Ecosystem", Dr Tim Clark suggests 8 elements as being constitutive of a digital learning environment. And though I have some remarks on the use of the term ecosystem as being too complex a term for capturing the learning intricacies that take place in a learning environment I would rather disregard this comment and focus more on the 8 elements the article features . These elements are :

Source of the image: http://goo.gl/lnvVAB


1- A sense of community
2- Essential questions
3- Captivating digital content
4- Assessment for learning
5- Multiple teaching tools
6- Designs for differentiation and accessibility
7- Supportive classroom environment
8- Engaging instructional strategies

Here is my take on the first two elements and I invite you to check the original article to learn more about all the 8 components of a digital age learning ecosystem and share with us what you think of them.

The first element is "a sense of community". This is probably the equivalent of Lave and Wenger's communities of practice. At the core of it is the idea of  enhancing the spirit of collaboration in class and transforming the traditional roles of teachers from experts to facilitators and explorers.
The second element is "essential questions". This one aims at constructing an inquiry-based instructional strategy in class where students get to formulate and develop their learning experiences with the help of thought provoking questions.

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The 5 Main Fluencies of The 21st Century Learning

8:23 AM    

October 29, 2014
Today I want to share with you this awesome read I came across in Global Citizen Education. The article is entitled " 21st Century Fluencies" and is basically based on Crockett et al.'s book Literacy is Not Enough. The main argument in this paper is that 21st century fluencies are process skills that students need in order to thrive in a rapidly changing world. These process skills include things such critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and innovation to mention but a few. "The 21st century fluencies", as the authors of this work state, "are not about hardware, they are about headware and heartware".


Image source: http://goo.gl/GJKHzD

The article talks at length about five main fluencies. Here is a brief overview of each of these fluencies and you can check the original article for more  in-depth analysis of each of these fluencies.

1- Solution Fluency
" Solution Fluency is the ability to think creatively to solve problems in real time by clearly defining the problem, designing an appropriate solution, delivering the solution and then evaluating the process and the outcome."

2-Creativity Fluency
Creative Fluency is the process by which artistic proficiency adds meaning through design, art, and storytelling. It is about using innovative design to add value to the function of a product though its form

"Collaboration Fluency is team working proficiency that has reached the unconscious ability to work cooperatively with virtual and real partners in an online environment to solve problems and create original products".

" There are two components of Media Fluency. Firstly, the ability to look analytically at any communication to interpret the real message, and evaluate the efficacy of the chosen medium. Secondly, to create original communications by aligning the message and audience though the most appropriate and effective medium."

Information Fluency is the ability to unconsciously and intuitively interpret information in all forms and formats in order to extract the essential knowledge, authenticate it, and perceive its meaning and significance.

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