Continual learning on 21st Century

As mentioned in a previous paper-based assignment (as written by me, Daniel C, 2015) completed for this class; 

"Most of these literacies that have developed sprout from many interdisciplinary criteria that students can learn and invoke upon the world. These criterion`s are based upon what global inquiries lay within our current knowledge as well as how this shapes the 21^st century. As the world is advancing, the literacies have been categorized into nine different yet transverse understandings, comprising of; Multicultural, Moral, Mental Health, Media, Global, Financial, Environmental, Digital, and Critical literacies. With the curriculum methods being put into place by the Ministry, the educators have been prepared to teach by recognizing and adapting the big ideas, big understandings, and big skills. Finally, once educational professionals teach the interdisciplinary literacies in their classroom students can be well educated and become 21^st century multi-literate advocates."

What I mean by this, is that growing youngsters are continually learning through various forms of multi-faceted lessons. This means that a lot of what students are exposed to inside and outside of the classroom, create learning experiences for developing children,  adolescents, and even young adults. This also hints that most of the 21st literacies can be integrated to both social and academic environments. In one of our classes, the instructor created a jigsaw discussion group, where each of us took turns being experts of a certain 21st century literacy and teach our peers what there is to know. We ended up having a great discussion period where each one of us truly knew what it meant to incorporate topics together and interconnect the literacies together. 

So the real question is, how can we encompass students to take each positive learning experience that they come by and learn from it in a very engaging way. Well with the variability in topics that can provide educational experiences which connect to curricular expectations, it increases the amount of opportunities teachers have to exemplify school subjects for students. The best part of the 21st century literacies, is the capabilities it has to enlighten students to learn unrequited topics that typically create a "lack-of-attention" classroom. These integrable topics when teaching students gives them many different exemplars so that students can understand and relate to the material. An example of this method which is used often in education, and that is advancing in an exponential way, is technology and the use of electronic devices to teach. Both the Digital and Media literacies can symbiotically work together in such an informative way. 

Students at any age love the utility of electronics and the advancing technologies. It creates such an eye-opening  experience for new and interesting lessons, and the greatest adaptivity is that it can be used both in and out of the classroom. With just the expertise of mastering one literacy fluently, children can then branch off and interconnect their knowledge to become literate throughout the other 21 century literacy skills. One example is the 12 year-old app developer named, Thomas Suarez, who took his passion to a whole new development. He is the epidemy of highest tiers of Bloom`s revised taxonomy and uses higher level thinking skills proficiently. In the video below, he explains how he learns, creates, masters and now teaches the production and development levels necessary in order to become an app designer. He has had several fairly successful apps and enjoys his creations with the help of his tech-savvy knowledge which is incredibly relevant to the 21st century skills, especially in the field of digital literacy. 

In my opinion, as a future educator, I think that it proves a disservice to students if teachers cannot become literate in at least a few of the 21st Century Literacies. Of course it is tough to break the barriers of traditional teaching but by incorporating relevant and current topics of discussion and examples, students can actively engage and participate in school with easier pre-requited knowledge and understanding. Hopefully with the inclusion of past, present and future topics and teachable subjects, children will acquire the necessary skills to be successful students implicitly active in their own learning and metacognition, and so that one day in the future they will be even more successful individuals utilizing the essential skills learned in the classroom. 

References:

EDUC 4P28 - 21st Century Literacy Assignment - February, 2016

Image 1; Taken by Daniel Cursio, EDUC 4P28 - 21st Century Literacies Discussion Group

Image 2; http://www.ncphoenix.net/feature/2016/01/26/technology-and-how-it-affects-students/

Image 3; http://kaseyzaspel.blogspot.ca/



Video - Thomas Suarez: A 12-year old app developer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fkd9TWUtFm0