Engaged, Connected, Empowered

Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century

Ben Curran, Neil Wetherbee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781596672550
• eBook ISBN: 9781317918349
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This reader-friendly book offers practical strategies and digital resources that will help K–12 students succeed in the 21st century. You will learn how to teach students to collaborate and make connections, filter primary source information, create products to demonstrate learning, develop a digital toolkit, and more!

Special Features:

• Digital resources are included to help you implement the ideas in this book.
• Personal anecdotes are provided from the authors' own successes and failures using technology.
• The book is organized by topic, so you can skip around and read or reread the parts that are relevant to you.
• The authors provide suggestions for teachers at different comfort levels with technology--novice, intermediate, and expert.
• The book's accompanying Facebook page includes additional content and links to complement the book (http://facebook.com/EngagedConnectedEmpowered).

Shift 1: Consumption Versus Production

1

An Introduction

In the traditional 20th-century classroom students consumed, or at least teachers hoped they consumed, the information presented to them. This style of teaching has been parodied numerous times on television and in movies. Just think of the boring teacher droning on and on in a monotone voice. The camera pans to the students, and none of them are engaged. Students are doodling and daydreaming. Unfortunately, the teacher thinks he’s prepared a wonderful lesson on a topic that he, and everyone else, will think is enthralling. The sad thing is this parody plays out in classrooms across the United States every day because many teachers and schools are using an outdated 20th-century model. In this section, we’ll examine one of the shifts from this outdated 20th-century model to a more engaging and effective 21st-century model.

We’ll begin this shift by examining these areas:

• Students as “consumers” of information presented by their teachers

• Lack of challenge for students who are consumers

• Encouragement of students to produce evidence of their learning

Then, in the second and third parts of Shift 1, we will do the following:

• Show you a few simple steps to move from student consumption to student production

• Provide you with examples to further clarify

Consumers of Information

In a teacher-centered classroom, which is typical of the 20th-century model, the teacher does most of the hard work. The teacher has to find the resources that help teach the desired standards, then use those resources to create a presentation. Next, the teacher creates some sort of assessment to be sure that students have consumed the information presented and, finally, gives the presentation and assessment. In this scenario, the teacher is the producer and the student is the consumer. Additionally, the teacher is doing most of the work and perhaps the learning too.

Students should be doing most of the producing and, in turn, learning in a modern classroom. Student production is more challenging for students than mere consumption. Furthermore, production encourages students to develop thinking skills, particularly critical thinking skills. Although the teacher is still in charge of selecting standards, the students are responsible for finding or, at a minimum, using the resources. The students are responsible for synthesizing the information and creating the product.

In addition to the students learning, they are producing evidence of their learning. A product can use nondigital tools (markers, paper, etc.) or more modern technologies. Both kinds of products have advantages. The primary advantage of more traditional tools is that a limited access to computers, digital cameras, etc., is not a problem. Imagine your class is learning about World War II. Rather than preparing a lesson on D-day, challenge your students to create a product demonstrating what D-day was. Students could research and write poems about the events, create annotated maps, or produce diary entries from the perspective of a French citizen. In all these examples, the students are doing the research, synthesizing what they learned, and producing something. These products are tangible evidence of their learning. The same lesson could be addressed using more modern technologies, which tend to be flashy and more in keeping with the students of today. In this case, students could research D-day and write a script and record a podcast, create an annotated Google map that includes links and videos, or produce a VoiceThread around images of French citizens. These digital technologies aren’t actually any better or worse than traditional tools, but the 21st-century method of presenting the topic is better.

We are in no way trying to devalue the importance of traditional assessments such as tests, but a well-designed project that includes student production provides much greater clarity of strengths and weaknesses because faking, cheating, or copying a final product is difficult. Cramming for a project is also difficult. These products demonstrate student learning. Furthermore, the products allow for diverse learning styles to succeed. Standard assessments suit the strengths of only a select group of students. Creating products allows for students of all intelligences to demonstrate their knowledge and growth and—most important—is fun and engaging.

Governor Richard Snyder of Michigan succinctly summarized the necessary change in educational methods in a special message on education reform on April 27, 2011. Although we don’t agree with everything he wrote in that report, this quote captures the change from the 20th-century model to the 21st.

But to compete on a world-wide scale, our education system must evolve from one that served us well in the past to one that embraces the challenges and opportunities of the new century. A grammar school education once suited the agrarian age, and a high-school education suited the assembly line age. A high-quality post-secondary education is needed for the technology age.

(Snyder, 2011)

In the 19th century, a solid education prepared children to work on and run a farm. The 20th-century model prepared children to work on an assembly line. And clearly, especially in Governor Snyder’s state of Michigan, assembly line jobs are becoming a career of the past. The number of manufacturing jobs available and the compensation for them has been falling steadily. Working on an assembly line is no longer a ticket to a stable, middle-class life. Therefore, we should not prepare our children for that career. We need to prepare children for the technology-age jobs that have already been created and help create flexible children who can adapt to fill the jobs not yet created. The 21st-century model focuses on creativity, collaboration, and knowledge acquisition through production, not consumption.

Perhaps you are left saying to yourself, “This all makes sense, but where do I go from here?” In Chapter 2, we will provide you with the tools necessary to get students producing. Chapter 3 will provide a summary of products we’ve used in our own classrooms. After reading all of Shift 1, “Consumption Versus Production,” you will be inspired to implement many of these techniques, and you’ll have the tools necessary to do so successfully.

2

Implementation

Educators use numerous excuses to convince themselves that they should resist change. Change can certainly seem scary, and some of the excuses are, on their surface, legitimate:

• My administration wants me to teach in a certain way.

• I don’t have a curriculum that allows for production.

• It seems like a lot of work for the teacher.

• How do I really know students are learning?

• I don’t have enough time.

These, however, are merely excuses. It’s all right to feel apprehensive to change, but sometimes change is necessary. In the case of education in the 21st century, this is certainly the case. The jump from student consumption to production may seem overwhelming at first. It’s all about baby steps, however. In the end, after gradual implementation, you will understand the power of student production. In this chapter, we will explain the importance and the how of moving from student consumption to student production through the following key elements:

• Creating engaging learning experiences in which students become producers

• Developing a digital tool kit to produce evidence of students’ learning

• Assessing products using rubrics

• Using social bookmarking and reflective digital portfolios as students shift to becoming curators of knowledge

Engagement

It would be difficult, if not impossible, for someone to successfully argue that more learning occurs when students are passive than active. No teacher has ever asked for passive listening or passive participation. Active listening and active participation are two keys to successful learning anytime in life. With this being said, sage-on-the-stage, direct instruction, is rarely active. By its very definition, the heavy lifting in direct instruction is done by the teacher. It is hard to be active when someone else is doing much of the work.

In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink very effectively explains the three elements of motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In his cocktail summary, he explains: “Autonomy—the desire to direct our own lives. Mastery—the urge to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose—the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves” (Daniel H. Pink). Although he is writing about motivation, motivation goes hand in hand with engagement. It is difficult to get even one of these elements of motivation in a direct instruction lesson in which students are merely consuming information, and it’s nearly impossible to get two or more. However, a well-designed project that involves student production easily hits all three elements.

When students are given an opportunity to produce evidence of their learning, they are given some autonomy. There is no one way to get to a right answer. Students are able to direct their learning based on their individual needs, interests, and skills.

For many students, the consumption of information matters only to do well on a test or get a good grade. Most people don’t set a life goal of doing well on worksheets derived from textbooks. However, most, if not all, take pride in producing something of high quality. Students eagerly revise products to make them the best they can be. Presenting to an authentic audience, such as local experts or people on the Internet, students are increasingly motivated to work toward mastery.

Purpose is the hardest of the three elements to find through student production. However, looking at the converse makes it much more evident. Simply consuming information in no way feeds the yearning to do something that’s larger than ourselves. Activities that involve student production can be framed in a greater purpose. Students can create a wiki about a book for other students to use and learn from. Students can create videos of their poetry to put on YouTube for others to watch and enjoy. More examples can be found in Chapter 3 of this book. Finding purpose for student productions is key to obtaining full motivation and engagement.

Step 1: A Tool Kit

What Is a Tool Kit?

The first step in moving toward student production is developing a digital tool kit. In our teaching, we use the terms tool kit, toolbox, and tool belt interchangeably when teaching children and adults. These phrases represent a set of skills that can be used. For example, after teaching a lesson on metaphors, we might ask students to add metaphors to their tool belts. Or later on, we might ask students to use something from their toolboxes, such as metaphors, to make their writing more engaging. Teachers and students need a digital tool kit so they can produce evidence of their learning.

These tool belts are built gradually and intentionally. Start with one tool, and grow from there. The amazing thing with most children, though, is that many of them need little or no help learning to use a new tool. They just need a point in the right direction. In the beginning of the school year, we try to introduce a variety of tools. The tools generally fall into three categories: audio, visual, and text based.

We have tools that we are quite partial to, but the speed at which the tools come and go makes it difficult for us to make recommendations. Even while writing this book, our favorite Web-based podcasting site decided to go in a “new company direction.” There are, however, some tools that have withstood the test of time and look as if they should be around for a while. For Mac users, there are iMovie and GarageBand, and for PCs, there are Audacity and Windows Movie Maker. The Linux platform offers Audacity and OpenShot Video Editor. The tools available are bound to grow and change, so the best place to look for tools to add to your tool kit is your personal learning network (PLN), the people from whom you learn, as discussed in Shift 5 of this book, “Isolated Versus Connected.”

What Do I Do with This Tool Kit?

We nearly always suggest starting with the end in mind, but we won’t harp on that until Step 2 of this chapter. To begin with, pick an activity you already do in your class—perhaps something timeless and somewhat boring, such as a book report. There is a chance that the book reports your students are doing are nearly identical to the reports you did as a student. Pick a tool, such as a wiki (more to come on wikis later in this chapter), and have students create their book reports using a wiki rather than by hand or a word processor. This will allow for the use of multimedia and a larger, authentic audience. Obviously, book reports don’t apply to all subjects or all teaching styles, but the logic holds true regardless of subject or content. These kinds of shifts are only a small adjustment to traditional 20th-century teaching methods. As you become more comfortable, increase the frequency and size of the shift.

Step 2: Assessment

Start with the End in Mind

Now that you’ve begun to develop your digital tool kit and your students have had a few experiences with production, start with the end in mind. Think of the standards and objectives you want students to master from this project, and work backward from there—perhaps something students have had a hard time grasping in the past. An example could be add...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Meet the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Shift 1: Consumption Versus Production
• Shift 2: Localized Versus Global
• Shift 3: Searching Versus Filtering
• Shift 4: Standardized Versus Student Centered
• Shift 5: Isolated Versus Connected
• Conclusion
• References