Visions of 21st Century Learning - Everything old is new again?
“Everything Old is New Again”, goes the refrain in the Peter Allen song of the same name from 1974, and the flurry of new teaching and learning standards surfacing during 2007 reminds me of that refrain. 1974 was the year I spent waiting tables, driving cab and trying to wrap my head around the dichotomy I saw between the promise of Open-Area Education to achieve a new vision of vision of “child-centred” teaching compared to the reality I saw in my practice teaching (inner-city schools in Vancouver, B.C.). Technology was the poster-child back then. It was going to play a huge part in achieving that vision of every child achieving to his or her potential.
Over the past 30 years we first added computers and every peripheral we could get our hands on to the lineup of “must-have” technologies in the classroom and the library (the ’80’s). We then populated the ever-increasing RAM and hard-drive space with a plethora of electronic databases and data sets (the early ’90’s) that promised “anything, anywhere, anytime” access to information. When that still didn’t seem to produce the quantum-leap in learning we’d anticipated, we jumped on the “Information Highway” big-time in the late ’90’s and into the early 21st century in order to provide our students with access to “real-world” data and information.
And it seemed to work. Life was good. Technology had saved the day. A slew of studies in the ’90’s and early 2000’s said so. The Ohio Study by Ross Todd and Carol Kuhlthau was just one of these. But in spite of the positive results, The School Library Journal interview with Todd in 2004 ended with;
“We see so many kids coming into the school library with a project to do. At the end, did they learn anything? And what does that learning actually look like?”
Put another way, had all of this “stuff” (Ross Todd, 2008) translate into vastly new and better, “child-centered” Learning? It seems not. Although on the one hand, the data from landmark studies like those of Todd, Keith Curry Lance and others have assured us that there’s a confirmed link between libraries and learning, it seemed that actually, the “Nation’s Report Card” was not showing significant and consistent gains in student performance or learning as we might have hoped, given the promise of Educational Technology over the previous 20 years. Even though several subject areas have shown improvement in 2005 0ver 1990’s scores, the Executive Summary for Reading published in November, 2007 showed that;
“In 2005, the average reading score for high school seniors was 286 on a 0–500 scale. This score was lower than in 1992, although it was not significantly different from the score in 2002. With the exception of the score for students performing at the 90th percentile, declines were seen across most of the performance distribution in 2005 as compared to 1992. More…
The percentage of students performing at or above Basic decreased from 80 percent in 1992 to 73 percent in 2005, and the percentage of students performing at or above the Proficient level decreased from 40 to 35 percent”
Scary? Well, keep in mind that “everything old is new again”. Unfortunately, the Bare Naked Ladies version of the song by the same name might be a more accurate depiciton of the way it’s turned out, at least in the school libraries I’ve worked in. But, to mix in another metaphor, maybe Lenny Kravitz really got it right back in 1991. It ain’t over ’till it’s over… There IS a difference this time around, and the difference is in the technology. It’s called Web2.0.
Web 2.0 has helped us embark on yet another cycle of renewal and rebirth in our dream to take every learner to the limits of his or her personal ability; to help him achieve “to his academic potential” in the parlance of the ISB Vision and Guiding Principles. If we’re lucky, perhaps this time, the vision and the reality will mesh more neatly than it has in the past. Perhaps the technology has matured enough in “Web2.0″ to really help us make “everything old new again” - in the best Peter Allen Tradition. I’m hopeful…
To begin with, the new AASL 
“Standards for the 21st-Century Learner” AASL’s New Teaching Standards offer “a vision for teaching and learning to both guide and beckon our profession as education leaders.”
The Standards describe how learners use skills, resources, and tools to
- inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge;
- draw conclusions, make informed decisions, apply knowledge to new situations, and create new knowledge;
- share knowledge and participate ethically and productively as members of our democratic society;
- pursue personal and aesthetic growth.
While the AASL has been framing its new standards, ISTE, the International Society for Technlogy in Education, has been working to the same ends. In 2007, ISTE completed updated standards for students, and these identify;
“What students should know and be able to do to learn effectively and live productively in an increasingly digital world …”
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Creativity and Innovation
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Communication and Collaboration The new standards identify several higher-order thinking skills and digital citizenship as critical for students to learn effectively for a lifetime and live productively in our emerging global society
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Research and Information Fluency
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Technology Operations and Concepts
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Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
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Digital Citizenship
At the same time, the “Partnership for 21s Century Skills” launched Route 21, an online, one-stop shop for 21st century skills-related information, resources and tools. The group is a veritable “Who’s Who” of the key players in InfoTech today. Their core beliefs?
“We believe schools must move beyond a focus on basic competency in core subjects to promoting understanding of academic content at much higher levels by weaving 21st century interdisciplinary themes into core subjects: “
- Global Awareness
- Financial, Economic and Entrepreneurial Literacy
- Civic Literacy, and
- Health Literacy
And finally, International School Bangkok’s Own own cut on 21st Century Learning comes out of the work of Technology Resource Coordinators Justin Medved and Dennis Harter . They write:
Over the school year we … came up five essential questions that we felt addressed the core elements of a comprehensive technology and learning curriculum…
- How do you know information is true?
- How do you communicate effectively?
- What does it mean to be a global citizen?
- How do I learn best?
- How can we be safe?
When I look at any of these systems of core values, I see, in each of them;
- Critical thinking in a 21st-century context (deep understanding, just-in-time learning, use of appropriate technology, evaluative abilities, communications skills)
- Global Awareness (the environment, and how our stewardship of the planet impacts on the future)
- Global Citizenship (human interactions and how they influence our individual and collective futures)
- Encompasing issues of personal “safety” and “health”
- Metacognition (learners’ reflection on and engagement in their own learning)
The rather sobering thought that follows is that I’ve been seeing these core values in every “system” I’ve encountered since my Open Area days in the 1970’s. In other words, however you label them, people looking to the future of education have been zeroing in on the same fundamental skills, topics and themes for as long as we’ve been thinking about it…
Everything old is new again?…
(planned for an upcoming post - How can we ensure that students who spend a semester, a year, a school division or a complete schooling career with us are adequately prepared for the challenges in those four overarching themes? What do we need to do to reinvent ourselves in school libraries so that we regain the relevance to a learner’s journey that we believe libraries should have? How can we make our libraries, our programs, and ourselves “new again”?
The answers may lie in the new collaborations that Ross Todd exhorted us to forge with the people who can help us best when it comes to using the power of technology to achieve our aims. At ISB we call them “Technology Faciliators” and we’re working hard to make sure that our next efforts really are the “best yet” in terms of achieving our dreams of taking learners to the places they need to go to be successful in the 21st century world they’re facing. -rjr)
