The 21st Century Classroom

In the past educators were tasked with training individuals to enter the workforce. That workforce was mostly industrial so students needed to learn how to stay in line, pay attention, be productive, do repetitive tasks, and learn the way their teachers learned.

Technology has forever changed that paradigm; if you have ever watched any of the shift happens videos on you tube you know we are trying to train students for jobs that have not been created yet and solve problems we don’t know are problems yet. It sounds like a daunting task.

I feel the solution is in teaching our students to be life long learners (old cliché but still appropriate). At the T3 Grant conference that I attended last week in Austin some of the issues we discussed dealt directly with the 21st century classroom and what it means. Some educators and research suggests that teaching students to teach themselves may be a solution to this dilemma of what this classroom should be like. What is actually meant by teaching the student to teach themselves is really teaching students how to. How to find information on the Internet or in the library. How to determine if information is accurate or even true once they find it; which adds how to examine the motives of those who post the information. Other how to issues are how to use the information ethically and how to create new knowledge with the information.

The how to we need to address as educators is how to incorporate the technology into our curriculum to derive the greatest good.