21st Century Learning Environments: Schools & Businesses
Sometimes when we hear the term “21st Century Learning” we think of some futuristic learning environment or workplace that is unfamiliar to us.Guess again!The “21st Century Learning Environment” is here, in our businesses and more and more in our classrooms as we embrace change.It is not an anomaly.It the norm!
This past school year I have had the opportunity to visit businesses, many of these manufacturing facilities.What I have seen has amazed me.The notion of a factory and what a factory worker does in 2009 is quite different than I might have imagined and I have to admit I was surprised at the sophistication.Too often I feel we drive by a business, a workplace, and we make a judgment of what goes on there based upon a mindset of the past.Let me tell you about the now!
Steel factories are filled with technology and workers engaged in tasks that require higher level thinking skills, analysis and application of knowledge. Tool and metal shops also are infused with technology and precision is embedded within the task of each and every worker.Bio-technical companies make items of great intricate detail that require research and testing, often done on site by teams. The business environment of factories today are filled with carefully orchestrated activity and the employees work in tangent and with pride.I have sincerely enjoyed these visits and talking to workers about what they do and the impact each team member has on the entire organization.And, as I watched and as I listened, I became more and more convinced that education and business need to work more closely together so that our students can have the skills they will need for their futures.Higher education, or education via training beyond grade 12 is no longer a nicety-it is a necessity!Workers in our factories today are engaged in continuous learning and training and are eager to participate in it so that they continue to grow, as does their organization.Schools are no different!
When we think of the concept of 21st Century Learning we think of analytical thinking, researching and evaluating information, collaboration, identifying and solving problems, producing real world work, creating lasting products, communicating to appropriate audiences, and authentic learning.I would challenge that we could find all of the above in the businesses/factories that I have had the privilege to visit.I would challenge that we need to find all of these skills in our classrooms as well.
Often we hear the notion of the importance of the acquisition of the basics as a foundation in education.I would not disagree.But I do feel we can help our students acquire the basics and then move on to more critical thinking and the infusion of 21st Century Learning skills so that they are better prepared for the next steps of their lives, even as they progress from one grade level to the next.Within the basics is the need to apply this knowledge, to use it for meaning.When we take the time to recognize that to truly engage the learner in the classroom for long term sustainable learning, then we step up to the challenge of realizing that the 21st Century Learning skills are not for business alone, but should be part of the curriculum of our school environments.
Business and education can and should work together.As we work in education to prepare our students for the future, we must acknowledge that the future for them eventually will be the world of work.And the world of work is a place of great interest!Working with our students to provide a quality educational program that includes the basics but also the 21st Century Learning Skills must be our strategy if we ourselves are ready to step forward on behalf of our youth for a better tomorrow.Let’s do it together!
21st Century Learners: Who are they? Have you met them?
These days it seems I often think about the “21st Century Learner.”I sit and I wonder.I ponder on the concept as if it is about people whom I have not yet met, people who will live in a world we strive to be ready for.But in reality the 21st Century Learners are already here!And I am deeply concerned about them, and their futures.
Sometimes as I think of this new learner, I am caught off guard by the reality of today in comparison to what I experienced as a youngster.And, I am perplexed even more deeply with what the future will bring.I think back to when I was in the first grade and attending school.We could eat lunch in or out, which meant you either packed or your parents sent money with you and the teachers would just dismiss us, opening the gates of the playground to a small town of few restaurants.“It is lunch time,” they would announce, and off we would go.Unbelievable, but true.Mary Beth was my very best friend and lived two roads east from my home in the country. For the two of us to converse on the phone meant an extra phone charge.She would call me the night before to inquire if I could go out to lunch the next day.This was our cue, really.I wonder now if our parents knew.She would call.My mother would say “Well, Mary Beth did call long distance…,” and so on, and I would then be allowed to go out to lunch as a first grader!A long distance call from two roads away.It was a big deal for a first grader to even use the phone back then in my house, but not a big deal to be given 25 cents to spend at the local diner for lunch, leaving the playground unaccompanied and unable to tell time.How did we ever make it back?And how we were able to buy fries and a coke for 25 cents, 5 cents more if you wanted your coke flavored with vanilla?Somehow we did it, over and over again, at the tender age of about seven.
Today, children in our elementary schools have cell phones in their back packs, but are escorted to the bathroom in school hallways lined with cameras for security.They can text message their parents about after school commitments but are going to schools locked with buzzers and intercoms.Amazing.Yesterday.Today. What will tomorrow bring?
I ponder again about the 21st Century Learner.Did I see him or her in the hallways of our current high school, middle school, or elementary, or working at a computer?Did I see him today in the coffee shop talking to himself and his laptop?Oh yes, that’s right, that young man had a projection hanging from his earlobe that was his phone as he sipped his coffee and was conversing with someone while tapping the keys.He looked so young, just out of school. In college perhaps?Who knows?Are these young students the 21st Century Learners?Is the coffee shop acquaintance?Am I?
As I visit schools to see the educational process in action, I see students who are surrounded by and comfortable with technology.They use computers with ease and traverse communication channels constantly, either scoping the Internet for research or more intently, communicating with friends across the globe in shared projects.The ongoing influx of information all around them seems effortless, simple, the images constant and moving; their eager eyes taking it all in and responding to a variety of stimuli simultaneously.Savvy teachers know this and capitalize on it, trying as best they can to stay one step ahead of their students.Good luck to them with that!Perhaps it is better to just ask the students instead and see how things work. Instructors need to move from what students already know, to what they want and need to learn via a technology avenue.
So as I ponder about the 21st Century Learner I am reminded that statisticians who study the future tell us we are preparing our youth for jobs that do not even exist today.We do this by following standards and testing for accountability.In addition, we must blend in the 21st Century Skills of analytical thinking, researching and evaluating information; collaborating and working as a team member; identifying and solving problems; and communicating ideas among others.It takes a creative teacher whose role has expanded greatly in today’s classroom to accomplish this. The new teacher role includes being a coach and guide, a facilitator of knowledge that is meaningful, relevant and useful to students, and a role that encourages students to progress and grow.
Yes, education today is and does have to be, different!We need to embrace the 21st Century Learner because the time is now!And, yes, you have met them.We all have.They are the students in the classroom, and the teachers.They are the parents whose jobs include ongoing education.They are all of us as we embark upon a future that views learning not as the end of the road, but as the beginning.Technology has changed our world.The 21st Century Skills help us define this new education in terms to which we can all relate.Now we just have to keep moving forward!
