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A few months ago I was solicited for my thoughts on the top priorities of 21st century education. At first, I thought of the general technologically-defined contexts of web2.0 social and participatory learning. I thought about blogging, social media, virtual worlds, mobile technology, classroom technologies and, of course, multi-tasking. But the more I reflected on my own experiences as a teacher, the more I thought about the misgivings and criticisms of students for whom the challenges weren’t especially technical.

This led me to the conclusion that few 21st century learning priorities are less about technical skills, tools, services, software or hardware but far more social, cultural and behavioural as they relate to states of being, thinking, feeling and acting with technology.

The basis for this post is the problematic notion among some educators that these “softer” skills are either already present or easily accessible to learners (or else constitute some sort of “giftedness” or intrinsic “aptitude” or need not be explicitly taught or modeled). Furthermore, I’d like to suggest that these priorities be socially, culturally and cognitively differentiated according to the unique needs of varied learners and learning communities.

Continue reading The hidden curriculum of 21st century learning

Remix music video for Pogo’s Alice

A few weeks ago I came across this most amazing collision of music, animation and technology via a tweet from Youtube ethnographer Mike Wesch. This led me to ‘Alice’ (above), which led me to Pogo.

Given my own recent explorations of remix culture, I was inspired to contact Pogo via his Youtube channel and ask for an interview. To my delight, he agreed.

The following is the first in a series of interviews with people who are changing the way we learn, think and engage via emergent technologies.

Continue reading Remixing Wonderland: An interview with Pogo

TED: Larry Lessig – How Creativity is being strangled by the law

Scaffolding 101

I’ve been talking a lot lately at conferences and consultations about the idea of “scaffolding” content. Scaffolding isn’t new. It’s teacher talk for supporting a resource or learning objective with various structures such as: questioning sequences, introductory discussion, activities or some form of production (an written, oral or multimedia item) connected to the chosen resource. In this way, we don’t just show or share an item, we provide an explicit and directed inquiry to actively engage participation in meaning.

Continue reading How to scaffold your content: Activating engagement v. passive consumption

The slides above were prepared for a talk I gave with the Canadian Association of Communicators in Education, which represents Canadian information officers from school boards and principals associations.

Designed for non-techies, my presentation provides an introductory overview of web2.0 social media tools and trends. It also concerns challenges unique to school boards, their members and the communities they serve.

In addition to these slides, I created a selection of bookmarked resources, tools, articles and studies referenced in the spoken presentation.

Note: This non-commercial, educational talk is licensed with a share and share alike Creative Commons license. You may re-distribute and remix my presentation with attribution and under a similar CC license.