Those of you that know me (at least in the virtual world), will have realised I have been on a bit of “mission” with regards some of the ideas related to 21st Century LEARNing and TEACHing…of late!
I’ve been…
- posting some images on my Facebook page…
- sharing some of the great 21C resources on Pinterest…
- trying to pull together a “library” with a few of the best books and titles…
- publishing some of my presentations and workshops on Slideshare…
- doing a whole pile of posts on the little ole blog…
I’ve also been sharing a few of my favourite sites about allthings21C:
- The sound “basics” and “pillars of education” put forward by UNESCO
- The great ideas, tools and resources from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills
- The innovative take on 21C Fluencies from the guys at the 21st Century Fluency Project
- The good sense talked about learning power and “LEARNacy” by Guy Claxton
- The insightful and practical ideas on 21C Pedagogy from Educational Origami
and,
- More recent attempts to add a bit more “meat” to these ideas by individual educators themselves…
…and all on twitter, too!
Not too shabby for an “oldie”, a “digital immigrant”…dare I say it…a “Gen X dinosaur”! But, you know what – just shows that technology is not rocket science…
Why is this? Why have I been doing all this?
Well, it seems that – even though we are 12 years into the 21st Century – we are still having trouble getting our heads around what it all means to us as TEACHers and, perhaps more importantly, to our students and classrooms.
Now, this is nobody’s fault – but there are a lot of “voices” out there.
We have IT gurus and companies screaming at us that technology is both the engine and the fuel of the 21st Century…
…and if we “fall behind”, well…our TEACHing heads will be on the chopping block!
Then, we have the “voices” in government and the Academy:
Initially, some these ideas sound around-about “right” (some of them) – until we realise that most of them are little more than “wordbites”, see that many of these proposals have little to do with educational “thunking”…and recognise that most academics in our publish-or-perish colleges and universities do not really “walk” the talk they talks!
To be honest, I’ve actually got a lot of great ideas on what 21C skills are important (and “what matters” with the whole 21C movement) by listening more to “human resource experts”:
…and the voices of “employers”:
However, as is usually the case with major educational decision-making – it is the voices of TEACHers and LEARNers that, shall we say, are not “elicited” as much as they could be…
I mean, after all, why should we bother to listen to those folks that live and breathe the classroom on a 24/7 basis…when we have corporate vendors, bankers, politicians, publishers and academics – with all the “answers”!
Anyways, I offer this set of resources to TEACHers who might want to LEARN a bit more about allthings21C – let’s share, grow and get off the planet quicker…after all, very few decision-makers are that interested in what we might think…
…but, we can get on and do it with our LEARNers…as we always have!
allthingslearning 
