Teaching the 21st Century Learner

1. Teaching the 21st Century Learner Darla Runyon Northwest Missouri State University Dave Starrett Southeast Missouri State University Roger Von Holzen Northwest Missouri State University

2. Goals • Define 21st century learners • Discuss how we address their needs

3. Pop Quiz #1 What does this mean? ROTFL • Pneumonic for remembering the 5 plant cell types • Reserve Officers Training Florida • Record of True Foreign Languages • Rolling On The Floor Laughing

4. Bonus 1 What do these chat acronyms stand for? • B4 • LOL • POS • GNSTDLTBBB • CUL8R • KSUSHYGEMA

5. Bonus 2 What do these emoticons mean? ;-) >:-(  ^5 (((((name))))  (::()::) @[_]~~ 

6. Us vs. Them • http://www.sciencemag.org • http://www.brainpop.com • http://www.yahoo.com • http://yahooligans.yahoo.com • http://www.ask.com • http://www.ajkids.com • http://www.hgtv.com • http://www.nick.com • http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com • http://www.sikids.com

7. Terminology • Chat • Blog, Blogging • IM • Online • To Google • Text Messaging • Multi-tasking • 21st Century Learner

8. Children age 6 and under… • Spend 2:01 hours / day playing outside • Spend 1:58 hours using computers • Spend 40 minutes reading or being read to • 48% of children have used a computer • 27% 4-6 year olds use a computer daily • 39% use a computer several times a week • 30% have played video games Kaiser Family Foundation, 2003

9. By age 21… The average person will have • played 10,000 hours video games • sent 200,000 emails • watched 20,000 hours of TV • talked 10,000 hours on a cell phone • spent under 5,000 hours reading Prensky, 2003

10. Games & Simulations • Marc Prensky – data on learning with games (http://www.marcprensky.com)

11. The Natural Selection Game Start Game The Embryo Shuffler Game Start Game

12. Technology & the New Learner • Do video games pose a challenge to education? • The time and money that students spend on gaming indicates pervasive role of entertainment in our culture • Insight into engagement, not entertainment • Video games challenge K-12 and higher ed to foster engagement in learning

13. Dependence on Technology • Are students becoming too dependent on technology to do spelling and basic arithmetic? • Technology empowers today’s students • They can add, subtract, divide, and multiply faster and more accurately than past students

14. Dependence on Technology • If a device can do something better, more efficiently, more accurately, or quicker than we can manually, why not use it? • Isn’t that the true purpose of technology (cars and electricity)? • Our focus must shift from the tools themselves to the capabilities of these new tools to empower students to do new things

15. The 21st Century Learner… • Born in or after 1982 • Gravitate toward group activity • 8 out of 10 say “it’s cool to be smart” • Focused on grades and performance • Busy with extracurricular activities • Identify with parents’ values; feel close to parents • Respectful of social conventions and institutions • Fascination for new technologies • Racially and ethnically diverse Howe & Strauss, 2003

16. Today’s Learners… • Digitally literate • Mobile • Always on • Experiential • Social Oblinger, 2004

17. Hypertext minds: Qualities • Crave interactivity • Read visual images • Weak reading skills • Visual-spatial skills • Parallel processing • Inductive discovery • Fast response time • Short attention span Prensky, 2001

18. Learning Preferences • Teams, peer-to-peer • Structure with flexibility • Engagement & experience • Visual & kinesthetic • Things that matter Oblinger, 2004

19. Learning Preferences • Students want to learn through exploration • Looking for practical applications, real-world context • Focus more on applying classroom lessons to real-life problems, institutions, or organizations • Students want to be challenged to reach their own conclusions, find their own results

20. Learning Preferences • The new technologies can help create a learning culture in which the learner enjoys enhanced interactivity and connections with others • Central issue: How can technology be organized around student learning? • Use tools to help students think and communicate effectively

21. Students: Multitasking Pictures, sound, video Random access Interactive and networked Faculty: Single or limited tasks Text Linear, logical, sequential Independent and individual

22. Teaching the New Learner • Multimedia format pervades nearly every part of life • Television • Audio • Animation • Text • Students live in a world of digital, audio, and text • They expect a similar approach in classroom • Faculty must abandon notion that a lecture and reading assignment are enough to teach a lesson

23. Teaching the New Learner • Teacher’s Role: • No longer the professor dispensing facts and theories • A participant in the learning process • Faculty role will be unbundled--teacher to mentor • Facilitate peer-to-peer learning

24. Teaching the New Learner • Must learn to communicate in the language and style of the students • going faster • less step-by-step, more in parallel • more random access

25. Teaching the New Learner • Instructional implications • Movement toward blended courses • More collaborative learning approaches • Continuous and formative assessment • Greater customization of course content to meet learner needs • Greater flexibility, user customizable materials

26. Teaching the New Learner • Interactive course site features • Online quizzes • Forms for providing feedback or asking questions • Online voting • Games • Features for sharing pictures or stories • Message boards • Forums for offering and receiving information • Features for creating/adding content

27. Teaching the New Learner • Diversity in structure, content: • singular unit should be kept short and alternating • Course redesigns must be systematic • Avoid incremental add-ons • Simply adding a few computer experiences costs more, is more work for the faculty, and adds to the students' burden • True innovations change rather than modify systems Jack M. Wilson—Ten IT Commandments

28. Teaching the New Learner • Requires: • much less emphasis on the amount of material memorized • much more emphasis on making connections, thinking through issues, solving problems • Discard notion that schools can teach everything every student will need to know • Old model: primary challenge of learning is to absorb specific information

29. Technology & the New Learner • The amount of information grows almost as quickly as the new technologies • We process more information in 24-hours than the average person 500 years ago would in a lifetime • Oldest universities established by AD 1500

30. Technology & the New Learner • By the time today’s kindergarteners graduate from grade 12 • information will have doubled at least seven times • technological power will have doubled itself nearly nine times

31. Teaching the New Learner • Learning now a life-long process of coping with change • The content of a particular lesson less important than learning how to learn

32. Faculty Training • We need to have a new set of expectations of faculty • Foster a technology culture • Need for continuous faculty training • Reward innovation in technology-rich learning environments

33. What’s Next? • More conversation • Faculty development and support • A culture change! Darla Runyon: drunyon@nwmissouri.edu Dave Starrett: dstarrett@semo.edu Roger Von Holzen: rvh@nwmissouri.edu