Group items tagged

“21st century student outcomes”

are the skills, knowledge and expertise students should master to succeed in work and life in the 21st century.

Disciplines include: English, reading or language artsWorld languagesArtsMathematicsEconomicsScienceGeographyHistoryGovernment and Civics

The CEFR

was developed to promote language learning, to facilitate educational and occupational mobility, and to support plurilingualism and multiculturalism.

The CEFR is organized into six reference levels

Briefly, Education 1.0, 2.0. and 3.0 is explained as: Education 1.0 can be likened to Web 1.0 where there is a one-way dissemination of knowledge from teacher to student.  It is a type of essentialist, behaviorist education based on the three Rs – receiving by listening to the teacher; responding by taking notes, studying text, and doing worksheets; and regurgitating by taking standardized tests which in reality is all students taking the same test. Learners are seen as receptacles of that knowledge and as receptacles, they have no unique characteristics.  All are viewed as the same.  It is a standardized/one-size-fits-all education. Similar to Web 2.0, Education 2.0 includes more interaction between the teacher and student; student to student; and student to content/expert.  Education 2.0, like Web 2.0, permits interactivity between the content and users, and between users themselves.  Education 2.0 has progressive roots where the human element is important to learning.  The teacher-to-student and student-to-student relationships are considered as part of the learning process.  It focuses on the three Cs – communicating, contributing, and collaborating. Education 3.0 is based on the belief that content is freely and readily available as is characteristic of Web 3.0. It is self-directed, interest-based learning where problem-solving, innovation and creativity drive education. Education 3.0 is also about the three Cs but a different set – connectors, creators, constructivists.  These are qualitatively different than the three Cs of Education 2.0.  Now they are nouns which translates into the art of being a self-directed learner rather than doing learning as facilitated by the educator. Education 3.0: Altering Round Peg in Round Hole Education

In web 1.0, users are viewed as mere receivers and consumers of content. Knowledge is centralized and expert-based and hence the use of taxonomies and directories to organize and store it. In the same vein, education 1.0 is also based on a notion of one way communication where teachers are the sages on the stage and students are pails to be filled with facts to be regurgitated and spewed back in standardized tests.

In web 2.0 things are a bit different. Users are empowered with tools that permit them more  interaction and participation in knowledge building. Web tools such as blogs, wikis, and social media websites have decentralized knowledge and enhanced collaboration and communication. Web 2.0 foregrounded concepts of collective intelligence, distributed-expertise, and wisdom of the mob. Similarly, in education 2.0 learning is student-centred and involves continuous interaction between learners and their teachers and also with the content being studied. Collaborative approaches to instruction such as PBL, game based learning, flipped learning have been adopted as  teaching modes.

education3.0 is based on the belief that content is freely and readily available as is characteristic of web 3.0. It is self-directed, interest-based learning, where problem-solving, innovation and creativity drive education. Education 3.0 is also about the three Cs: connectors, creators, and constructivists.

Sam Levin, an alum of Monument who is currently a sophomore at the University of Oxford in England studying biological sciences, started the program in 2010. Frustrated with his public-high-school schedule and realizing that his friends weren’t inspired to learn, Levin complained to his mother about how unhappy he and his classmates were, to which she responded: “Why don’t you just make your own school?” And so he did — albeit in small steps. In ninth grade, Levin started a school-wide garden that was solely cared for by students; some woke up early on Saturdays to work with the plants. The garden is still functioning and serves at-need families in the community. After witnessing the commitment that his classmates had to nurturing something they had created themselves, Levin was convinced that they were capable of putting more time and energy into their studies — as long as it was something they cared about. “I was seeing the exact opposite in school. Kids weren’t even doing the things they needed to do to get credit. There was something at odds with students getting up to work for no credit or money [on the garden] at 7 in the morning, but not wanting to wake up to read or do a science experiment,” says Levin. “I saw the really amazing and powerful things that happened when high school students stepped it up and were excited about something.”

The semester is split in half, with the first nine weeks focused on natural and social sciences. Each Monday morning, the students formulate a question with the help of their classmates. For example, “How are plants from different parts of a mountain different from each other?” or “What causes innovation?” The students spend the rest of the week researching the answer and creating a presentation to summarize their findings to share with their classmates at the end of the week for feedback and critique. The students are in charge of keeping themselves on task, creating their research plans and meeting their deadlines.

By taking ownership of their learning, the students at Monument are forced to think creatively and capitalize on their own talents in order to excel. The class framework is similar to what will be expected of them in college and in the workforce, when they have to make their own educated and independent decisions.

In 2011, game designer Jane McGonigal published Reality is Broken, where she outlined four simple rules that define a game: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation. Both Jeopardy and The History of Biology fit this definition, but clearly there is a difference between games that teach the recall of facts and those that teach higher-order thinking skills.

esame Workshop, published a paper in 2011 called “Games for a Digital Age.” They distinguish between short-form games, “which provide tools for practice and focused concepts,” and long-form games, “which are focused on higher order thinking skills.” This is a useful first distinction teachers can use when evaluating games for use in the classroom.

A theme that comes up with teachers who use long-form video games is teaching empathy. “When I first started teaching natural disasters in Grade 7, there were case studies in the textbook, or videos,” says Mike Farley, a high-school teacher at the University of Toronto Schools (UTS). “When we invite students to play a simulation like Stop Disasters or Inside the Haiti Earthquake, they are more immersed; there’s more of an emotional learning.”

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. Together, the five levels of technology integration and the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments create a matrix of 25 cells as illustrated below.

Finally, technology is embedded into the structure of all we do. It’s part of how we research, how we capture information, and how we display our learning. It’s never an accessory tacked on at the end.

My students started by creating a Flickr feed, Facebook page, a YouTube account, a Tumblr blog, and a Twitter account. They decided that visual representations of their knowledge would be the most powerful. So some of my students created photographs depicting images that they felt best represented modern trafficking. These photos were then edited in Picnik, and posted to our blog.

A few years ago I tried to teach this idea to a grade 12 class when we were studying essay writing. They didn’t get it. But in the context we were using, after comparing social media content, it made perfect sense to my grade 11 students.

“You’re too old to learn a foreign language.” “I couldn’t work on computers. I’m just not good with them.” “I’m not smart enough to run my own business.” Do you know what these statements have in common? They’re all examples of the fixed mindset- the belief that intelligence, ability, and success are static qualities that can’t be changed.

The problem is, this mindset will make you complacent, rob your self-esteem and bring meaningful education to a halt. In short, it’s an intellectual disease and patently untrue.