Over the past few months, my classmates and I have engaged in deeply meaningful conversations and browsed some eye-opening research. We interacted with engaging content that undoubtedly altered our perspectives. Through research this semester and the transformative coronavirus pandemic’s impact on education, I have some new outlooks intertwined with some of my past beliefs in regards to learning. This learning philosophy comes from the angle of child-development during the school-aged years.
After researching on Webster’s Dictionary, I found these definitions to be most applicable to my context. These definitions serve as a solid launching point for discussing my views of learning and teaching during the school-aged years:
- Learning:
- knowledge or skill acquired by instruction or study
- modification of behaviors based on experience
- Teaching:
- to instruct by command, example, or experience
Learning is a lifelong process that begins at birth and ends at death, and humans are hard-wired to learn. In a 21st century society, learning is vastly different from traditional school culture many adults are accustomed to. Smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other forms of technology speed up the rate at which knowledge can be acquired. Literally, anything can be learned with just a few clicks on a screen. This isn’t to say old-school techniques such as apprenticeship aren’t valid or have their place in contextualized situations, because they certainly do.
In this day and age, learners are more connected than ever, which has massive implications for how kids learn. The theory of Connectivism is at the forefront of 21st century learning. Web 2.0 technologies open up new doors to allow students to explore new avenues of learning. Students are connected to the Web as long as they have access to a laptop, smartphone, tablet or device similar, which are now commonplace in homes and schools nationwide. A few clicks, and students are connected to whatever type of content they would like to invest their time and energies into. According to the definition from above, it’s fair to say learning is taking place.
Kids are acquiring knowledge and skills through studying. This self-guided inquiry paired with Web 2.0 technologies open up a world of content accessible easily. Self-guided learning takes place on Youtube videos or wikis. It exists in blogs and on social media like Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter and others. Research articles and the comments sections are full of meaningful content waiting to be consumed. Browsing the multitude of Web 2.0 available allows for learners to follow their interests, and immerse themselves in those topics.
Prerequisite skills of basic literacies help aid in learning. It is the duty of the child’s teachers, guardians, and mentors to work towards developing such skills. Reading, writing, speaking, listening, and number sense all serve an enormous purpose in learning how to learn. In the 21st century, one could argue that digital media literacy is just as important. Web navigation, text entry, keyboarding, coding and even programming should begin being taught at a young age.
The role of the teacher in 21st century stretches beyond those teachers in the classrooms. Shared content on the Web is as much of a teacher as any actual person. By contributing meaningful content online, the producer is helping to teach somebody on the other end of the screen. Wikis, social media, and video sharing double as both a learning and teaching tool. Online participatory culture can be a great teacher, and seems to be a preferred method for today’s youth. When learners begin imitating content online and go to their phone in order to problem solve rather than a person, learning is taking place. Reliance is shifting to depending on people to depending on devices in order to acquire knowledge.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that formal schooling is an absolutely critical part to our nation’s normalcy. Teachers certainly have their place, and play a role for a period of time in a child’s life. But teachers jobs are shifting. No longer is the teacher the all-knowing entity or the keeper of information. Above all else, today’s teachers need to adopt a mentality of teaching their students self-reliance and knowing where to find and access information. In this digital age, knowing how to find information is just as valuable as storing that knowledge into long-term memory. Teachers are the gateway in order to direct learner’s attention to necessary knowledge acquisition. In schools, sets of standards pave the learning pathways for students within a specific age bracket. Within these age brackets, teachers must select-developmentally appropriate resources in order to aid in child development across multiple domains. Teachers challenge students cognitively, and exposure to natural experiences help them develop socially.
My goal to be the best educator I can be is to build each student a customizable curriculum in order to benefit the needs of all my students. Along with this, I want to connect them to rich learning resources online. The 2020 pandemic has opened up a world of possibilities with online teaching, and I predict a booming enterprise of online learning in the near future. Along those lines, student’s access to devices will only increase the demand for learning resources. Education’s movement and presence in the private sector will have profound impacts on our school system. Savvy Web 2.0 software will be able to provide more data-driven, personalized, rich, and meaningful content to learners as opposed to the rigmarole of public education.
You can check out my video to summarize my thoughts by clicking HERE.