What 21st-century learning does/doesn't look like

This post points to how technology in the classroom is and isn't done properly in the classroom, thanks to teacher Vicki Davis writing in Edutopia and university student Hillary Reinsberg writing in the Huffington Post. Davis talks about helping students (in the first 5 min. of the first day) turn personal Web portals like My Yahoo or iGoogle into their own "personal learning networks" (PLNs) – the new school locker. Her 9th-grade student says the approach "helps me keep things organized. It lets me know when my agenda changes," and Davis adds: "The fact that a ninth grader would talk about her own research agenda gives a glimpse into the power of the PLN; she is using a term here that is often reserved for grad students." How not to do this?: Reinsberg describes in a way that puts me to sleep just reading it: "The lights go dim, eyes begin to shut and the room gets quiet.... Welcome to a college lecture hall in 2010. Too many classes begin the same way: with an often cheesy PowerPoint presentation. The professor hooks up a projector to a computer and spends ninety minutes clicking through a series of slides." Hopefully, that isn't happening in too many middle and high schools! Because integrating 21st-century learning tools doesn't work with the sage-on-the-stage approach, which makes not allowance for the self-directed learning required for a user-driven media environment and participatory culture.

Students on digital activism, citizenship

Parents and educators interested in what 21st-century learning and "Online Safety 3.0" look like should take a look at "Three Years of Digital Activism," a 15-min. video collection of projects by middle and high school students participating in the Camilla, Ga.-based Digiteens project. This is the new, digitally-enabled project-based (and "passion-based," as lead teacher Vicki Davis puts it) learning. Included is a section about driving while texting, called "Dangerously Connected," reporting that people who text while driving are 4 times more likely to injure themselves than drivers who aren't texting, and 37% of all car accidents are caused by driving while texting (DWT), compared to 14% of accidents from driving under the influence (DUI). See also a 20-min video presentation by a humanities teachers and a library services director about a successful 6th-grade project using "Web 2.0 tools." [See also "Online Safety 3.0."]

9th graders' Lively protest

"It's free expression in a dignified, a powerful and a passionate manner," a School Library Journal blogger reports, referring to Digiteens' protest against the impending shut-down of Lively avatar chat by its parent, Google. The Digiteens are Camilla, Ga., 9th-graders whose goal, they say in their protest blog, "to teach digital citizenship to students via an easy to use 3D virtual world that is easily accessible to people who do not have a lot of bandwidth or good computers and allow schools to create [online chat] rooms at minimal or no expense." The protest has gotten some viral support around the world (see these from the Philippines and Hong Kong). The project received some, to me, surprising flak in the comments section of this ReadWriteWeb post about it, to which the Digiteens' teacher, Vicki Davis, responded in her own blog.