Jounal 1 - Creating Our Future: Students Speak Up about their Vision for 21st Century Learning

In 2009, Project Tomorrow, as part of the continuing initiative Speak Up, conducted a survey of almost 300,000 K-12 students, parents, teachers, and administrators, to gain their insight on education and technology.  As we move into the 21^st century, it is important that we understand just how students are managing and using technology, not just in the classroom, but beyond it, in their everyday lives.  This study finds that many students are using technology much more widely outside the classroom than in it, and that we as educators need to find ways to expand our use of technology to meet the needs of our students and of the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS).

Through the survey, the students were able to conceptualize their vision of what learning should be in the 21^st century.  A vast majority of students strongly desired a more technology-based way of learning, using technology that they were already familiar with and comfortable using.  Yet, the schools seem to be falling behind, even to the point that their policies and procedures were preventing the use of the very technology which would allow the students to learn most effectively. 

In the study, three essential elements of technology-based learning were identified in the student’s vision of 21^st century learning.  These elements were social-based learning, un-tethered learning, and digitally-rich learning.  In the first element, social-based learning, students expressed a desire to tie emerging communications and collaboration technology to their learning process.  Just as many adults do in their jobs and personal lives, students are relying greatly on technology as the main means to communicate among their peers and strongly desire the ability to use that technology to communicate with their teachers and other experts in the areas that they studying and to collaborate with other students on their projects and assignments.  Many students use email, text, IM, social networking, and discussion boards to communicate, however, students report that the biggest problems they have in using technology in schools is the ability to access their communication accounts and send massages to classmates and teachers during the school day.  However, according to the NETS, teachers should be encouraging and enabling students to use digital media to communicate and work collaboratively.  By preventing the use of these tools during the school hours, we are failing to meet the NETS. Since most students already have the skills to use these tools effectively, it is a wonder why we do not implement a more open policy for their use in the classroom.

The second element was un-tethered learning, where students use technology-enabled experiences that transcend the classroom walls. Many students are finding that internet resources allow them a much broader spectrum of information than is provided within their communities and that the internet can provide a better quality or more effective presentation of information than they receive from their teacher or textbook.  Students claim that the primary way they use technology for schoolwork is by accessing the internet for research.  However, many students are not allowed to use their own personal computers or devices and the number of computers provided by the school for use by the students is very limited. Additionally, many schools provide little to no internet access for the students during the school day. Schools need to move to a more technology-open campus, where students can bring and use their own devices and have school wide internet access. By providing greater accessibility to the internet students would be able to meet many of their NETS goals in research and information fluency, and digital citizenship to name a few.  We cannot expect students to compete in our technically advanced world if we cannot even provide them the access required to this technology in school.

Finally, with the third element, digitally-rich learning experiences, students see the use of relevancy-based digital tools, content and resources as a key to driving learning productivity. From the survey, we find that students are doing more creation and manipulation of digital media in their personal lives than in the classroom. In a digitally enriched learning environment, often the process of creation is as important if not more important than the end product. One way that students and teachers are using more digitally-rich learning experiences is through educational online or video games, and a more interactive online textbook.  The textbooks would not just have a digital copy of the printed material, but would also include interactive games, online tutoring, links to data and websites, video clips, animations and simulations to name a few.  These interactive learning tools would assist educators in meeting a number of NETS, including critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making and technical operations and concepts.

It is startling to find that many of the obstacles preventing our students from meeting their NETS goals are actually created from the policies and procedures put in place by our schools.  As educators, it is clear that we need to find ways to embrace these methods of learning and to use the resources that our students already posses instead of limiting the technology that they use.  As adults, we incorporate these tools on a daily bases at work and in our personal lives. In training our students to be productive in our technology-based society, it is imperative that we adapt our schools to be more reflective the work environments are students will be entering into in the future.