Discovery Mountain: 21st Century Learning and Global Awareness

Decades ago, we built global awareness by teaching geography—especially map-location skills—and asking students to read thin novels written about other parts of the world. Books and maps were tools basic to each classroom. We and generations of students learned to use them well.

With awareness heightened by computer use, we are learning new ways to build global awareness skills in our learning spaces. Many of us have begun walking up Discovery Mountain, exploring new ways to help our students learn, fearing whether or not we have skills to survive the avalanche of technology tools. Like many mountain hikers, we ponder whether the vistas at the top are worth the challenges of the climb.

We continue on, climbing for our students, knowing we need to provide them with learning that transcends knowing a country’s location on a map or the glimpse of another culture through one writer’s words.

We learn new tools to help make connections that build global awareness. Our choices are many. Here we brainstorm a few:

Connect to sites on the Internet so students can…

· track explorers on current expeditions

· see images and hear sounds of regions

· participate in an EcoTourism simulation game

· use an interactive abacus for math calculations

· hear recordings of folk tales

· calculate what items cost in other currencies

· take virtual trips to learn the characteristics of specific climates

· experience celebrations around the world in real time

· tour virtual museums

Use web-based communications so students can build relationships with people in other locations (students, military, peace corps, others) and learn about their location, their discoveries.

· Web-conferencing

· E-mail

· Twitter

We must go beyond merely introducing our students to people and places around the globe as we prepare them (1) to understand and address global issues, (2) to work collaboratively with individuals from diverse backgrounds, and (3) to develop a spirit of mutual respect for people through an understanding other nations and cultures.

PRINCIPLES OF ONLINE LEARNING: A COLLABORATION

We asked a mix of education professionals to create a list of Principles of Online Learning during several synchronous sessions. These dozen or so educators work with students in all grades, K-12, and college students up through graduate school. A couple of them supervise other educators within a regional education agency or as director of a virtual school. Their experience with online learning ranged from nearly none to several years as students/teachers or both.

We have combined and grouped their listing as follows:

Principles of Online Learning

• Standards-based, equal to face-to-face instruction, with defined learning outcomes
• Assigned reading/viewing materials which match learning goals
• In-course instructional communications are clear
• Student-centered, relevant to learning needs, adaptive to differentiated learning styles
• Uses technology appropriate to the learner and accessible to all students
• Interactive in nature with collaborative processing of information/ideas
• Student-to-student engagement which gives opportunity for fun, belonging
• Taps into 21st Century Skills
• Assessment plan is well-defined, built-in, and accurate

Their ideas came quickly, and one idea triggered the next as the lists took shape. The differences in their experience, their educational roles, the age of students they work with didn’t enter the discussion.

These are professionals from across several states unlikely to ever meet each other face-to-face.

This collaborative effort shows us that online learning is as much about processing ideas through interactive engagement as it is about exposure to what one needs to learn.

Helping our students find their online learning “voices,” then giving them the opportunity to process ideas together, leads toward the kind of collaboration which is a shared-learning experience—for students and teachers.

THE CULTURE OF ONLINE LEARNING: STUDENTS AT CENTER

Logging into an online lesson for the first time is like walking into unknown terrain. Navigation may be difficult, and the climate uncertain. Mere survival in the new environment is, for some, a real issue.

Whether or not the new learner will find the right path to move through and complete the lesson is dependent on a supportive climate as well as lesson design.

An online teacher can set a welcoming tone and provide tools of support, but students need more. Many seek socialization as a way of centering themselves within the culture of online learning. Their engagement may be with one another, at first, and take another level as lesson content requires movement together through a task.

Think of students as climbers, navigating a rock face together, with life lines connecting them to one another as each finds the toeholds to move forward. Each student experience is unique and personal, but sharing the climb through preparation, performance, and reflection has its benefits. The shared experience not only motivates completion but enlarges the discovery and assimilation of the new.

The idea of “Center” is related to the concept of community. One goes to college and finds a place to hang out with other students in a Student Center or Commons or a place by another name. New housing developments across the USA boast Town Centers, clusters of cafes and other places for people to gather for socialization.

We can learn about teaching from other metaphors as well. The idea of centering is important in the process of working with clay on a potter’s wheel. At first the clay is a wobbly mass, resistant to direction, seeming out of control. But the clay gives in to the wheel’s momentum and allows itself to be shaped by the supportive hands around it. That moment of centering, which involves finding a center of gravity, shapes the clay into something new.

To teach effectively online—whether one lesson or a course—is to understand how to provide our students with an online experience of centering which propels them toward success.

NEW ICONS FOR EDUCATION?

Visualize a teacher's hand bell, a slate and piece of chalk; and you may think of the early days of public education.

Look at the images of a student desk, a book, a pencil; and it's likely your brain will connect with the education of your childhood and youth.

Visuals have power as symbols which heighten perception. Think of the traditions: the classroom bulletin boards, the teacher-made handouts, the power point presentations--we all know that graphics say more than text.

Research is telling us that our students--in the Net Generation--use technology to be connected, multi-task with ease, and expect to be engaged by an interactive environment.

Yet many adults--those whose taxes fund our public education--see education through the lens of a teacher helping students who sit in desks, books open, working quietly with pencils and paper.

So what's wrong with that picture? It misrepresents education and the shift educators are making toward meeting new learning needs.

• We are shifting away from the expectation that students will learn by listening or reading from one teacher-selected source to an expectation that students will be guided to make choices with multiple sources in a variety of formats.
• We are shifting beyond face-to-face small-group or whole-class discussions to occasionally use digital environments for discussions set up and monitored by the teacher.
• We are shifting to move students away from learning about the course content toward more authentic learning experiences or through simulations, visualizations, or other virtual environments.
• We are shifting from mistrust to find strategies to help students use technology safely, thoughtfully, and ethically while building skills which help them screen our unreliable information.

In summary, we are shifting to think outside the classroom and be willing to explore "learning spaces" which offer viable learning experiences that we cannot provide within four walls.

Such changes suggest a need for new icons for education. How about representing education with a monitor, a microchip, and a mouse?