What have we learned?

I had no idea so much thought had gone into the "21st Century Learning." In fact, I had never heard about it before the current unit in my Master's of Education Technology course.

There are many ideas about how 21st Century learning should be focused and what teaching strategies will best bring about the future of learning. From my reading, it is clear that there are two main goals to the approach of 21st Century Learning.

First is the idea that classrooms and learning in general should be structured to resemble "affinity spaces" (Gee, 2018) - inclusive environments where all are welcome to participate, explore, share, challenge, and create. The second idea is that the learning that occurs in these affinity spaces is connected to success in all areas of life - lessons learned in the classroom should be relatable and applicable to “real-life.”

I will admit that a lot of the ideas in this realm are very abstract to me – I don’t often go in-depth about planning a lesson or how best to help someone engage with a new subject. However, as I reflect I realize that a lot of these concepts actually come naturally in my current work environment. My goal in advising on the use of any technology is to promote better understanding of the tool in order to promote more usefulness in its application.

I spent a bit more time reflecting on a few more specific concepts related to 21st Century Learning, and recorded them here:

References

Gee, J.P. (2018, February 26). Affinity spaces: How young people live and learn online and out of school. Phi Delta Kappan. http://www.kappanonline.org/gee-affinity-spaces-young-people-live-learn-online-school/