21st Century Learning and Teaching

This concept of connection with the community is an exciting and interesting part of the Wayfinding Academy. While there will be some core courses of study for each student, Michelle envisions learning experiences where you walk into the room and find it hard to tell who is professor, full-time student, and who is a community member participating for personal growth and interest. It is a vision for an open learning community, one that blurs the distinctions between what happens in the school and what happens in the community. Students will spend signficant time in the community, and community members will hopefully be engaged and present in the school. As I listened to Michelle explain this vision, I pictured a community where the role of teacher and student is played by all.

Radical personalization is the core innovation of the Big Picture school model--it was flex before we knew what to call it. Their approach to internships remains a best practice. Twenty years afte...

As Littky describes in The Big Picture, a 2004 ASCD book, the innovative interest-based school model is focused on educating one student at a time. Students are “assessed on their performance, on exhibitions and demonstrations of achievement, on motivation, and on the habits of mind, hand, heart, and behavior that they display – reflecting the real world evaluations and assessments that all of us face in our everyday lives.”

The flipped classroom model generated a lot of excitement initially, but more recently some educators -- even those who were initial advocates -- have express

“One of the most important skills that any student can learn is where to go for information and resources,” Sams said. Instead of following a rigid curriculum, the two teachers decided on the key learning objectives of the class — the things they felt their students really needed to know –and structured the class around those.

Then they offered students a menu of resources that included instructional video, some sort of practice and links to the corresponding section of a textbook. The teachers became resources and helped provide benchmarks to keep students on track.

MC2 STEM High School is an unusual year-round public school of about 270 students, located in Cleveland, Ohio. The school emphasizes integrated project-based learning, partnerships with business professionals, and real-world internship experiences 

===> to help students understand the crucial link between academic achievement and their future economic success. <===

We visited their school and spent time with the dedicated adults and enthusiastic students who have helped create the school’s success. Take a look at this video for a glimpse into three students’ experiences there.

When speaking with colleagues or friends, most of whom are higher education graduates, I often hear the following: I was rubbish at maths, I don’t remember anything; after high school I couldn't even hold a conversation in English; we didn't learn anything about the origin of religions; I memorised the periodic table in chemistry class but I've completely forgotten it all, etc.
If even those who were the most successful in their studies feel that they are lacking entire sections of fundamental knowledge, what is the situation for those who left school early? What purpose does it serve to learning things at different educational levels when these things become dead knowledge when we never use them again?

Reflections such as these often arouse an interest in using competences in teaching. The objective here is not to replace the traditional knowledge that has come to us from the major disciplines with more practical but less lofty competences. On the contrary, the aim is to clearly identify the skills and knowledge – defined as competences – that are indispensable for these important fields, and to organise teaching and learning in a way that guarantees a command of these.

Learn more:

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/learning-path-for-professional-21st-century-learning-by-ict-practice/

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Competency

New OECD study finds that U.S. adults rank low on literacy and numeracy, with dire implications for the future

A guest post from Brent Capriotti, Curriculum Consultant for Pearson, looks at competency based learning and the idea of the 'mastery over minutes' concept.

CBL courses are personalized for students based on their incoming competency and areas of need. Students can focus on higher order thinking skills and higher value outcomes can be applied. They also have the freedom to accelerate their coursework and program completion. In many cases, curriculum is customizable to fit specific areas of student competency, versus “one size fits all” courses, directly altering the development and execution of the course.

Course and topic level outcome data, or data rolled up to higher levels such as program and institutional outcomes, gives institutions detailed information for institutional assessment and improvement efforts. The data is timely, relevant and actionable, at the course or program level.

A chemist with no formal security training has become the latest self-taught high achiever to win the UK Cyber Security Challenge, fending off thousands of rivals in a series of competitions run over the last year.