21st Century Learning &

Educational Technology
__

Lidia Azouz

Overview
This information is based on Professor Grainne Conole’s course, Introduction to 21st Century
Learning from Bath Spa University in Bath, England.
We will take a look at 21st century learning tools and practices. As a community we will
examine how we can facilitate learning and teaching with the integration of technology,
evaluate our own digital literacies, and create our own personal learning environment
while finding open educational resources.

Goals
1. Describe current learning technologies, resources and practices
2. Analyze our own learning practices in 21st century media literacy
3. Incorporate new practices in our teachings in 21st century media literacy
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Introduction and Digital Literacy .

The Ball Point Pen

When the ball point pen was invented, educators in 1950 argued against this new and
modern instrument of writing. It created a pace that was extremely faster than the older
way of writing while being so affordable. Educators believed that students would use them
and discard them almost immediately. Some argued because it was so disposable that it
would ruin the educational values of thrift and frugality. As a society, we know the
significance of this invention as we still utilize it today.

What is Digital Literacy?

Digital literacy is defined by the American Library Association as the ability to use
information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create and communicate
information while acquiring both cognitive and technical skills.
Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aya43MnWTxQ&feature=youtu.be
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Henry Jenkins
“Educators must work together to ensure that all young Americans have access to
the skills and experiences needed to become full participants, can articulate their
understanding of how media shapes perceptions, and are socialized into the
emerging ethical standards that should shape their practices as media makers and
participants in online communities...Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy
from individual expression to community involvement. The new literacies almost all
involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking. These skills
build on the foundation of traditional literacy and research, technical, and
critical-analysis skills learned in the classroom.”
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Henry Jenkins & Participatory Culture

A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression

and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and
some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced
is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members
believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with
one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have
created). Forms of participatory culture include:

- Affiliations — memberships, formal and informal, in online communities

centered around various forms of media, such as Friendster, Facebook,
message boards, metagaming, game clans, or MySpace.
- Expressions — producing new creative forms, such as digital sampling,
skinning and modeling, fan video making, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups.
- Collaborative Problem-solving— working together in teams, formal and
informal, to complete tasks and develop new knowledge (such as through
Wikipedia, alternative reality gaming, spoiling).
- Circulations — Shaping the flow of media (such as podcasting, blogging).

A growing body of scholarship suggests potential benefits of these forms of

participatory culture, including opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, a changed
attitude toward intellectual property, the diversification of cultural expression, the
development of skills valued in the modern workplace, and a more empowered
conception of citizenship. Access to this participatory culture functions as a new
form of the hidden curriculum, shaping which youth will succeed and which will be
left behind as they enter school and the workplace.

Some have argued that children and youth acquire these key skills and
competencies on their own by interacting with popular culture. Three concerns,
however, suggest the need for policy and pedagogical interventions:

- The Participation Gap — the unequal access to the opportunities,

experiences, skills, and 0 knowledge that will prepare youth for full
participation in the world of tomorrow.
- The Transparency Problem —The challenges young people face in learning to
see clearly the ways that media shape perceptions of the world.
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- The Ethics Challenge —The breakdown of traditional forms of professional

training and socialization that might prepare young people for their
increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants.

Educators must work together to ensure that every American young person can
articulate their understanding of how media shapes perceptions, and has been
socialized into the emerging ethical standards that should shape their practices as
media makers and participants in online communities.

… Schools as institutions have been slow to react to the emergence of this new
participatory culture; the greatest opportunity for change is currently found in
afterschool programs and informal learning communities.

Let’s devote more attention to fostering what we call the new media literacies: a set
of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media
landscape. Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual
expression to community involvement. The new literacies almost all involve social
skills developed through collaboration and networking. These skills build on the
foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis
skills taught in the classroom.

The new skills include:

1. Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of

problem-solving
2. Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of
improvisation and discovery
3. Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of
real-world processes
4. Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
5. Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as
needed to salient details.
6. Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that
expand mental capacities
7. Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes
with others toward a common goal
8. Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different
information sources
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9. Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and

information across multiple modalities
10.Networking— the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate
information
11.Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning
and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative
norms.

Overview of Learning Technologies

I. Tech @ New Roads

Each classroom is equipped with Chromebooks, science classes have new smart
boards, technology and digital media used for filmmaking and school productions.
- Google Applications
- Blackbaud (Learning Tool/MyRoads)

II. Learning Tool/MyRoads

Service utilized by the school as an online learning management tool.
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Open Education

III. 7 Elements of Digital Literacies

Media Literacy - Critically read and creatively produce academic and professional
communications in a range of media
Information Literacy - Find, interpret, evaluate, manage and share information
Digital Scholarship - Participate in emerging academic, professional and research
practices that depend on digital systems
Learning Skills - Study and learn effectively in technology rich environments, formal
and informal
ICT Literacy - Adopt, adapt and use digital devices, applications and services
Career & Identity Management - Manage digital reputation and online identity
Communications and Collaboration - Participate in digital networks for learning and
research
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IV. Bloom's Digital Taxonomy

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEls3tq5wIY&feature=youtu.be
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Social Media

V. Constructivism and Social Interaction

Constructivism refers to a group of theories that sees learning as an active process,
where the learner works to integrate new information with existing knowledge.
Learners are presented with different views of the topic to be learned and invited to
explore, experiment and discuss
With a constructivist approach to teaching, or with less access to a teacher, peer
interaction becomes more important. Participants are likely to use social networks
such as Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Blogger, Instagram, Google plus. The usefulness of
social networks for connecting with peers is even greater when learning
independently - for example, using Twitter to connect with other learners of
trigonometry.
Examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al_SReOmDtI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO0-L1W7-Io

VI. Social Media

Social media gives learners access to the writings of experts in their field of interest,
to teachers and to peers’ discussions on a topic. Twitter is of particular interest, as
users can engage in conversation with a person of interest without them having to
specifically accept the user as a conversation partner. A key feature of Twitter, and
many other social networks, is the concept of a “hashtag”. By adding #conceptname
to one’s tweet it is more likely to be found by people searching for that concept. For
example, a search for #trig will bring up tweets about trigonometry. There is no
central register for hashtags (although some attempts have been made), so not all
tweets will be about trigonometry, but this user-agreed tagging system can be
remarkably effective.

Example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMQCs8mAJ1E&feature=youtu.be
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VII. Collaborative Learning

General file sharing - Examples: Dropbox, Google drive, Microsoft Onedrive. These
applications typically look like an extra hard drive on one’s device, except that data is
actually stored on a server located in a data center somewhere in the world.

Sharing specific file types -

Images. Examples: Flickr, Picasa, Pixabay. Applications may allow discussions on

individual images. You can typically search for images by their tags (descriptions)
and search for images that can be reused due to their Creative Commons license.

Video. Examples: Youtube, Vimeo, Dailymotion. Applications may allow discussions

on individual videos. Uploaded videos can be made private, non-searchable, or
publicly available, and may be embedded in other web sites.

Audio. “Podcast” is a portmanteau of "iPod" and "broadcast", and refers to files

containing “shows” or self-contained presentations or episodes. Usually a podcast is
an audio file, but it can be video, PDF or other media. Podcasts allow learners to
share their ideas in spoken format, or to share music/sound-related ideas. Teachers
can give feedback on student work more easily and effectively as speech than
having to write one papers. Examples: SoundCloud, Podfeed, iTunesU.

Presentations. Examples: Slideshare, Authorstream, Prezi. These websites allow

presentations to be shared publicly. While Microsoft PowerPoint is often the format
of presentations, there are alternatives, such as Prezi (as used in the video of Unit 1
this week). Generally, presentations may be embedded in other web sites and usage
statistics are available to the owner.

Collaborative creation Examples: Google docs, Microsoft Office Online, Hackpad.

Collaborative creation refers to applications where several people can edit one
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document simultaneously, seeing each other's’ typing appear in real time. It a very
immediate form of Web 2.0.

Serious games and Virtual Worlds

Serious games. Serious games allow learners to interact with learning materials and
peers in a 3D game environment. Examples: Gazillionaire (business simulation),
WolfQuest (wildlife), Betwixt Folly and Fate (social history).

Virtual worlds. Virtual worlds use 3D game technology but are devoid of any
intrinsic game elements. This allows teachers and students to create their own
environments, such as simulations, virtual field trips, role play, or, indeed, games.
Examples: Second Life, Open Simulator-based worlds such as Kitely, Minecraft.

Mind maps / concept maps / cognitive maps - While these may all look alike, strictly
speaking, a concept map is a representation of a topic created by an expert, a
cognitive map is a representation of a topic as understood by one person (usually a
learner), while a mind map is another term, popularised by Tony Buzan, for a
cognitive map. They are all forms of semantic network and can be effective in
visualising the relationship between ideas in a topic. Examples: Bubbl.us, Freemind,
Xmind.

Social bookmarking / referencing - These are tools for collaborative research,

allowing groups to build a shared database of information links. Book mark
examples: Delicious, StumbleUpon, Digg. Referencing examples: Mendeley,
EndNote, F1000.

Communications - “Voice over IP”, along with broadband, has given computers the
ability to make, what was at first called, free phone calls. These calls now include
video and multiple callers, to the point where live communication between
computer (and tablet and phone) users has become easy and free. This can be a
powerful tool in education. Examples: Skype, Google Hangouts, VSee (offers secure
communications).
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Virtual Worlds & Augmented Realities

VIII. Games
Examples:
http://www.gamesforchange.org/
https://ecoactiongames.org.uk/
https://www.theplayniceinstitute.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63iVWFaklpI&feature=youtu.be

IX. Gamification
Examples:
https://vimeo.com/24490948

X. Virtual World
There are five main applications of virtual worlds applicable to teaching and learning:

1. Simulation - the representation of physical spaces or objects, real or imaginary.

For example, interacting with expensive, breakable or dangerous equipment, or
visiting distant locations such as pyramids, museums or even other planets.
2. Physical representation of logical constructs. The versatility of virtual worlds (i.e.
the ability to adjust or ignore the laws of physics) allows the simulation of
concepts as physical things. For example, representing mathematical formulae
as objects.
3. Mediated environment. In the virtual world, simulation can go further than the
experience. Because everything that happens in the virtual environment is
mediated by a computer, the computer is in a position to assist the learner by
providing relevant information at critical moments - like a personal tutor. For
example, showing animations of chemical reactions as one conducts laboratory
work.
4. Role-playing. As with traditional role-playing, the learner can experience the
world from another person’s perspective, but in a virtual world this can be done
in context. In addition, the anonymity offered by using an avatar can allow
learners to role-play in the virtual world without the self-consciousness that
many have in face-to-face role-play.
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5. Creativity. The unique affordances of the virtual world allow forms of expression
that may be expensive, or even impossible, in the real world. For example,
creating sculpture that would be impossible in a world with gravity.

Examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibhYkFR2tTM&feature=youtu.be

http://secondlife.com
https://arvr.google.com/cardboard/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/04/23/project-cars-looks-insanely-realis
tic/#1b5a3027173d
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

XI. Augmented Reality

Dr. Alejandra Merriman, DAT, ATC, CES at Dorsey High School in South Los Angeles,
CA uses augmented reality to gage her sports medicine students on human
anatomy. The students use an anatomage table which is a third dimensional human
virtual cadaver dissection table.
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Images Courtesy of Dorsey Sports Medicine

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Please check this promotional video on how she utilizes this technology in the
classroom. https://youtu.be/lYH7_d9f7qY

Further examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKpKlh1-en0&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whUg6ozdGlY&feature=youtu.be

Future Scenarios

XII. 20th Century Myths

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzbFRZjujYk&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=855Now8h5Rs&feature=youtu.be

XIII. Personalizing Education

Examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xnp0IrMdpI&feature=youtu.be
https://moodle.org/plugins/local_smart_klass
https://singularityhub.com/2015/11/05/the-virtual-reality-renaissance-how-learning-i
n-vr-will-inspire-action-like-never-before/
https://youtu.be/m8HkIGdHKcc