LEARNING IN THE

21 CENTURY
ST
BY ALAN MOLINA
 WHERE
DOES LEARNING
HAPPEN

BEFORE
• Learning use to be something
concentrated mainly in schools or one’s
own ability to observe the world
(From Educational)
around them.
• Vast access to information was limited
to areas such as schools and libraries
and many students did not go out of
their way to learn in these places
AFTER
• Thanks to things such as the internet and
the accessibility to knowledge, learning
can take place at any time. (Oxford)
• Any curiosity or question a students has
can be answered in a few minutes thanks
to the internet
 WHAT
SHOULD WE
TEACH

BEFORE
• Previously, a teacher only needed to focus on
teaching their students the subject they taught.
• Focusing on memorization and repetition,
however this has sense been proven to be
ineffective in teaching higher level thinking
(Robinson).
AFTER
• Given the vast amount of information available it becomes increasingly
more important to teach how to decern valuable and accrete
information
• Another change comes to our ability to find, consolidate, and deliver
needed information at the right (time
Fromand in the right
Educational ) context to our
students.

• A change to collaborative and intercurricular
learning was needed, focusing on the how and
why, not just the what, where and when
• Literacy has become more than just the ability to read and write. In the
21st century one needs to come literate in a vast number of things. From
media to data to politics to computers. The number of things we must
(Davenport)
teach our students has grown but so has their access to these things .
 WHY IS
THIS CHANGE
IMPORTANT

BEFORE
• School use to focus on the fact that if a student
did well and went to college then they will get a
good job.
• Education as we know it was a byproduct of the
renaissance and industrial revolution.
(Robinson).
• Thus the reason why we teach our students has
changed and they way we teach them should
change with it.
AFTER
• The end goal of teaching today is to get
our students into the world with the ability
to collaborate and bringing their own
unique set of skills to the table (Robinson)
• That is to say we are aiming for
globalization while the students still keep
their own unique identities (Robinson)
 HOW
DO WE
TEACH

BEFORE AFTER
• Direct instruction in the classroom was • Teaching can come in a vast number of
the most common way in teaching ways in the 21st century. From the classic
students. lecture to online seminars. (Definition)

• A student could only ask for help, from
the teacher, during school hours or an
hour before/after school.
• Teachers had limited resources when it
came to helping their students
• We can now give instant feedback to our
students. We can more effectively see
were a student is struggling and have
access to a wide array of tools to help.
(Davenport)
 WHAT DO
STUDENTS
LEARN
BEFORE
• Ideally a student never stops learning but the
resent past (about 30 or so years ago) shows that
at one point our society considered some
knowledge more useful than others,
• Thus schools only focused on what they
considered to be useful knowledge (math,
reading, etc.) and ignored growing knowledges
such as computer science and social media from
their curriculum. Now in the 21st century these
things must be address.
AFTER
• With the vast amount of access to information, every
aspect of a student's life is filled with information. As
such, a student is always passively absorbing
information. No knowledge is useless knowledge
(Oxford, Robinson)
• Thus our focus as teachers now should be teaching
students how to actively absorb information while not
being distracted by all the other noise around them. As
well as teaching them how to identify reliable source
from unreliable sources.
 RESOURCES
• Davenport, K. (2018). What Does Literacy Mean in the 21st Century?. Retrieved August 28, 2020,
from https://medium.com/literate-schools/what-does-literacy-mean-in-the-21st-century-
7b6459a38c45
• Definition of Literacy in a Digital Age. (2019). Retrieved August 28, 2020, from
https://ncte.org/statement/nctes-definition-literacy-digital-age/
• From Educational Institutions to Learning Flows. (2013). Retrieved August 28, 2020, from
https://www.iftf.org/fileadmin/user_upload/downloads/ourwork/SR-1580-IFTF_Future_of_Learning
• Oxford B. (2018, September 22). Redefining Literacy in the 21st Century. Retrieved August 28,
2020, from https://medium.com/literate-schools/redefining-literacy-in-the-21st-century-
139894b14fd4
• Robinson, K. RSA Animate: Changing Education Paradigms. (2010, October 14). Retrieved August
28, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U