April 2008 — News
Print this article | Email this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
21st Century Teaching and Learning, Part 1
Points of Inquiry
Content can also now be presented as launching pads for inquiry. This stimulates critical thinking and immediate application of knowledge in terms of connection, summary, and inquiry. We have heard and seen much about the diminishing of information through information bites; my sense is that this can help us become more intentional about those bites and use them to motivate students forward more critically in their learning process.
Project-Based Mobile Instructional Design
At this point, the smallest distributable points are cell phones, and, starting with the "end in mind," as in a project-based instructional design, we pose this central question: "If this is being viewed via a cell phone, what is crucial for students to know so that connections can be made, summaries can be completed, and inquiry pursued?" Working backward, instructors then decide which supporting questions should be posed, resources made available, and assessments created to facilitate this process. Finally, the starting point of the course becomes the ending outcome: engaged learning.
Impatience with screen information flow is commonplace in Web development. Current Internet users demand efficiency of text and even prefer icons or graphics rather than long titles or long scrolls. Common to current Web development, scrolling past the screen break means that there is too much text, and it should be re-formatted to fit in one screen. That also maximizes the hyper-technology of the Internet and means that "web-out" becomes a skill developed by frequent Internet users. I must confess, even as a digital immigrant, I am becoming increasingly impatient with long, static text pages and even long text link titles directing my navigation. While we can see that this results in students having less attention and concentration on texts, it can force us to think through the outcomes of a course and stimulate students to respond critically, efficiently, and relevantly through content design and distribution. What seems to be having negative affect on students can also become a positive stimulus in the learning process. The implications of that, however, are that we as teachers must become highly intentional and consciously efficient in our instructional design planning.
Therefore, while we do not know enough about long-term affects on thinking and perception, we can make sure of the technical capabilities and work hard to develop in ourselves the instructional skills we need to meet students where they are in terms of expectations and familiarity. We can also become more critical ourselves in how we perceive our own disciplines and more mobile in how we distribute content and intentional in how we stimulate student response. While mobile technology is coming at us via communication demands, we can monopolize these technological advances and think through how we can use them for instructional benefit and effectiveness.
Part 2 in this series will address types of skills needed in teachers, skills required of students, and holistic measurement of success.
References Prenksy, Marc (2005). Listen to the Natives, Educational Leadership, December 2005/January 2006, Vol., No. 4, Learning in the Digital Age Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1999). Schools as knowledge building organizations. In D. Keating & C. Hertzman (Eds.), Today's children, tomorrow's society: The developmental health and wealth of nations Vanderbilt Cognition and Technology Group: http://www.nscc.edu/ |
Get daily news from THE Journal's RSS News Feed
About the author: Ruth Reynard is the director of faculty for Career Education Corp. She can be reached at rreynard@careered.com.
Proposals for articles and tips for news stories, as well as questions and comments about this publication, should be submitted to David Nagel, executive editor, at dnagel@1105media.com.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
