A perfect classroom is an impossibility. Learning is a messy experience, fraught with disorienting new challenges, confusing familiar challenges we thought we had solved already but have presented new twists, and new sets of sometimes hopeful, sometimes despondent faces each hour and each semester. Our job as educators is to meet each of those challenges and each of those faces where they are and to use the most current, research-based methods to engage all learners—whatever their initial and sometimes perpetual countenances—in authentic learning experiences that will prepare them for the critical thinking and creativity required for both a successful academic and professional future (Soule & Warrick, 2015) and a happy life (Kamel Boulos, Tsouros, & Holopainen, 2015).
Technological innovations hit us on all fronts every day in the 21st century. The ability to type at a certain speed is no longer the primary technology prerequisite for most professional jobs. Keeping in contact with friends and family requires intensive skill with mobile devices that did not even exist ten years ago. Paying bills with a checkbook is old-fashioned and often results in fees for not “going paperless”. Students must be prepared to face and integrate these changes into their lives at a pace unfamiliar to many educators today. Not educating with this in mind is doing them a disservice. My vision for a truly impactful education system has this knowledge at its core.
But what does such an education system look like? Theory and problem identification are necessary and provide excellently endless textbook fodder, but solutions need specificity. The specifics of my plan include nuanced components of three major features: collaboration, authenticity, and creativity.
According to a sample of 431 US employers from multiple career sectors, collaboration is a critical skill for the workplace, but it is a skill current graduates lack (Soule & Warrick, 2015). Technology integration offers endless potential for collaboration. Classrooms across the United States should implement such strategies as collaborative wiki authoring (Su & Beaumont, 2010), artifact creation and researched debate on Youtube (Cummings, 2015) and Reddit forums (Keiser, 2014), group information curation and discussion through blogging (Morgan, 2015) or Tumblr, problem-solving with students across the globe through Skype and Flat Connections (Noonoo, 2014) and more.
Simply working together on the same old projects students have always done isn’t enough, however. The goal of all of this collaboration should be authenticity, as measured by the Indicators of Engaged Learning (Williamson, 2013). Teachers should engage students in learning experiences that are closely tied to real world problems either through simulation or real-life engagement with the problem, reflect situations professionals encounter and use the actual technological tools those professionals would use, involve multiple steps to find solutions not predetermined by the teacher, and generate products for consumption or use by real audiences beyond their classroom walls. Students in a Language Arts classroom could research and remake scenes from flopped Hollywood movies and market them on Youtube. Young scientists in Environmental Studies could work toward creating a less expensive glass for solar panels. Burgeoning mathematicians in Analytical Geometry could explore the rift between pre-Common Core math ideology and its successor. Talk about social media shares!
Creativity is the fabric that the collaboration and authenticity weave together to form. Creativity is a necessity for societies to thrive (Sandri, 2013). In a classroom with all the answers predetermined and all the emphasis on what can be gleaned from a dusty textbook, creativity is difficult to spark. In a classroom where students are free to access and mine the Internet’s vast knowledge systems, work together to address real problems relevant to the curriculum they study, ask questions as the answers become necessary to their learning pathways, and seek guidance from and provide guidance to people all around the world, creativity has the potential to benefit a global society and to help it thrive. This should be our goal as educators, and this is my vision for the closer-to-perfect classrooms of tomorrow.
References
Cummings, C. (2015). YouTube: a space made just for YouTube creators encourages learning, collaboration and creation. ADWEEK, (19). 42. Kamel Boulos, M. N.,
Tsouros, A. D., & Holopainen, A. (2015). Social, innovative and smart cities are happy and resilient': insights from the WHO EURO 2014 International Healthy Cities Conference. International Journal Of Health Geographics, 14(1), 1-9. doi:10.1186/1476-072X-14-3
Keiser, B. E. (2014). Cool tools for collaboration and information sharing. Online Searcher, 38(5), 16-19.
Morgan, H. (2015). Creating a class blog: a strategy that can promote collaboration, motivation, and improvement in literacy. Reading Improvement, 52(1), 27-31.
Noonoo, S. (2014). These global collaboration projects go way beyond Skype: Here's how one program is engaging Web 2.0 skills to bridge cultures and
classrooms--one project at a time. T H E Journal (Technological Horizons In Education), (3). 18.
Sandri, O. J. (2013). Exploring the role and value of creativity in education for sustainability. Environmental Education Research, 19(6), 765-778.
Soulé H, Warrick T. Defining 21st century readiness for all students: What we know and how to get there. Psychology Of Aesthetics, Creativity, And The Arts [serial
online]. May 2015;9(2):178-186. Available from: Psyc Articles, Ipswich, MA. Accessed June 29, 2015.
Su, F., & Beaumont, C. (2010). Evaluating the use of a wiki for collaborative learning. Innovations In Education & Teaching International, 47(4), 417-431.
Williamson, J. (2013). Indicators of instruction for engagement, empowerment, and deep understanding, retention, and transfer of knowledge. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1BhCHaU.