Screen Shot 2015-10-28 at 9.39.15 PM.png

Goals for this Resource

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Creating a Culture of Learning in Your Classroom

Humans are biologically hardwired to solve problems -- it is in our DNA.

In this resource we will:

Explore the 4Cs

Learning Materials for this Resource

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As we have worked through the previous resources in this Module, you can begin to see the roots of a noticeable paradigm shift taking hold. While technology has provided many unique challenges for teachers and learners alike, it has also enabled a renaissance of learning. In many ways, technology has removed the barriers that once prevented educational resources from reaching the masses. In this section, we will explore the ways this has changed our learners and, simultaneously, changed what our communities are asking of our learners.

Where Have We Come From?

The

A Very Brief History

Society has changed significantly since compulsory education was first mandated in Massachusetts in the 1850s. Modern Teacher, an education professional development organization whose methods involve partnering with districts to support the transition from traditional classrooms to modern learning environments, suggests that, throughout American history, education has always responded to society's needs. Modern Teacher refers to this phenomenon as answering society's "Ask" for education. In Modern Teacher's seminal work, Teacher as Architect, the authors posit that society has "asked" something different of education as society has shifted from the agricultural age to the industrial age to the information age and finally to the conceptual age--where we find ourselves today.

"The narration of the Conceptual Age probably began around December 2006, when Time Magazine revealed their Person of the Year as ‘You’. Headlining, You Control the Information Age, user-generated content began to radically change our world. From YouTube to Facebook to a host of other early Web 2.0 tools, our world forever changed during the first 10 years of the 21st century. End users became content creators, not just information retrievers. User-generated content or digital content became one of a series of conditions that propelled us into this digital revolution. The first condition, however, probably began with people’s increased access to connectivity. During that same time, from 2000–2010, the number of people connected online rose from 350 million to over two billion. Global connectivity, through widespread broadband access, is progressing at unparalleled rates. If this pace continues, it is estimated that within the next 10 years nearly all of the world’s eight billion people will be online."

The participants in the course were educated during the industrial and information ages where the pedagogical strategies and curricular design focused on learners who would eventually fulfill society's "Ask" during those ages. However, the rapidity of change accelerates inexorably, and even our learners come to us changed by the society in which they participate. (PHYSIOLOGICAL BRAIN CHANGE RESEARCH?)

Who is the Modern Learner?

WHO ARE YOUR LEARNERS - What does it mean to be a modern learner? How has growing up in the digital age changed the way students' brains work? (Mindy's research about how technology has physiologically changed brains)

Bersin by Deloitte, a human resources consulting organization, recently developed the infographic below to help employers understand more about the context of modern learners in the workforce. The information reflects significant changes in how and where professionals work, when and from where they receive their information, and how often they must work together to solve problems.

Understanding Society's New "Ask" for Education

"The new ask of society has become not only to educate all students to higher proficiency levels (as indicated by policies like NCLB), but to produce a new workforce that can compete in a 21st century global marketplace. With the rise of the Chinese and Indian economies, new advances in technology, and a changing international landscape, America finds itself competing for both skilled and unskilled jobs."

One of the major challenges is for "public schools to find solutions that simultaneously educate all students to a basic level of proficiency and produce graduates that are creative thinkers, problem solvers, analysts, synthesizers, and navigators of information. To accomplish what Florida and Friedman write about requires graduates to understand their own thinking processes. It requires our schools to explicitly teach students to have executive control over their own thinking – to know what they know and what they don’t know. Metacognition may indeed be a critical skill that students need to solve society’s new ask."

Revisiting Bloom's Taxonomy for the Conceptual Age

Bloom's Taxonomy, one of the most influential models in American education, was developed in 1948 and published in 1956, right in the middle of the industrial age. This does not suggest that Bloom's Taxonomy is no longer relevant. On the contrary, rather than eliminating Bloom's Taxonomy, Teacher as Architect offers revisions and amendments to the taxonomy through its Cognitive Growth Targets to help educators revise existing and/or develop new learning tasks that respond to society's "Ask" in the conceptual age.

Screen Shot 2016-04-02 at 12.52.14 AM.png

If we look back, we'll see the "Meet the Modern Learner" infographic indicates that it is becoming much important for learners to retrieve information than remember information because the constant change in and ubiquitous access to information makes retrieval a more relevant skill. Furthermore, the constant change requires significant aptitude for metacognitive thinking to ensure learners know when they know, and know when they don't know. In the conceptual age, the concept is king, and content is close behind.

A final revision in the Cognitive Growth Targets model involves two critical changes:

Many educators see Bloom's Taxonomy as more of a hierarchy than a merely of classification of different categories of learning. The graphic many of us learned brings to mind the food pyramid or images of Maslow's Hierarchy, which leads us to assume that one can't perform in a certain category of learning without learning everything in the previous category. The Cognitive Growth Targets "flatten" the process to imply that metacognition and self-actualization are the ultimate targets; however, it doesn't eliminate the relevance of other categories of learning. Yet, it does acknowledge that these are not the ultimate goal.

Internal versus external

Flat versus

Reimagining Education

Modern Teacher - Society's "Ask" for 21st-Century Education.pdf

Blooms Taxonomy was developed in 1948 and published in1956 - Is this still relevant in 2016? Will is still be relevant in 2029 when our Kindergartners graduate?
How has the importance of learning levels evolved in the age of instant access?
Modern Teacher Levels of Learning
Include a few video choices that addresses the new "Community Ask" in terms of what we need from learners