This is a Presentation Summary that I created to detail the aspects of The Future of Learning:

 

The Future of Learning

Presentation Summary

 

The future is ours to create.  Long gone are the mundane hours spent in a one-room school house with a chalk board and a teacher pointing with a yard stick.  Fast forward to the ever changing accessible technology in this 21st century of learning!  Education is adapted to meet the needs of learners in an altering world.  As the pace of change accelerates over the next 10 years, the social and economic realities in which education prepares learners is predicted to change drastically.  We all have the opportunity to shape what learning looks like in this new context.  There are many predictions of change that point to an expanding learning bionetwork or ecosystem, pointing toward a tailored way of learning.  New relationships with organizations (Kenkel, 2011). 

Over the next decade, the learning ecosystem will progress and continue to diversify.  This expansion will ensure a more personalized approach to learning (Kenkel, 2011). 

For the reasons in which people pursue education and with the methods that they do so could change dramatically over the course of the next 10 years.  We are quickly approaching a new innovative period in time in which our nation, our institutions, and our collective structures are propelling forward in rapid speed!  This will certainly enhance learning in a dramatic way and will play a massive role in affecting the ways education prepares learners and the reasons individuals pursue learning in the first place (Kenkel, 2011).

According to the World of Learning, over the next decade, our lives will become so inextricably linked with our digital companions that we expect to find ourselves living as partners in code. These changes will open a wide set of possibilities that we all can help shape (Kenkel, 2011).

New Agents of Learning that will help to shape the future of learning

Assessment Designer

Community Intelligence Cartographer

EduVator

Learning Fitness Instructor

Learning Journey Mentor

 

Assessments Designer

• Using social networks and insights into cognitive functioning, assessment designers will create appropriate methods for evaluating media literacy, learning discovery journeys, and other innovative forms of instruction (Dhanrahan, 2012).

Community Intelligence Cartographer

• Community intelligence cartographers will tap the collective intelligence of their local communities. They will leverage social networking strategies to develop swarms and smart mobs in order to identify emerging learning opportunities in the community, organize community members, and locate community resources (Dhanrahan, 2012).

EduVator

• Organize and support innovation teams that develop new ideas, get them ready to launch, and bring them to scale.  Works to improve the experiences and performances of learner outcomes.  Provides collaborative mentoring and peer support between partners in the local network / ecosystem.  Advocate for “innovative clusters.”  Uses www.launcheduvation.org to collaborate with other eduvators from around the world, comment on solution strategies, and receive technical and managerial advice from potential funders (Dhanrahan, 2012).

   

Learning Fitness Instructor

• Learning fitness instructors will help learners build and strengthen the basic cognitive, emotional, and social abilities essential to learning by using simulations, biofeedback, and hands-on activities to reduce stress, hone mental capabilities, and learn brain-friendly nutrition (Dhanrahan, 2012).

Learning Journey Mentor

• Learning journey mentors will work with personal education advisors, learning fitness instructors, community intelligence cartographers, and assessment designers to co-create and navigate learning itineraries with small groups of students.  Guide students and learn right along with them.  A supporting role in the learning community by connecting with resources to obtain answers needed to enhance comprehension (Dhanrahan, 2012).  Collaborate with learning pathways designers to meet learner needs (Foundation 2015).

 

Current Trends that Lend to the credibility of these forecasts:

• Collaborative

• Tech-Powered

• Blended

(The following data has been taken from the website: MindShift in an effort to give adequate, substantial examples of how the trends are current in our society and in education.  I will be emailing each of you a link to this PDF so that the hyperlinks will be easily accessible to reference, and to gain further insight into each trend).  

 

Collaborative:  If Web 2.0 has taught us anything, it’s to play nicely together. Sure, there are times for buckling down and working alone, but in most cases, the collaborative process boosts everyone’s game. In progressives schools across the country, students and teachers are learning from each other in all sorts of ways.  Sharing information and connecting with others — whether we know them personally or not — has proven to be a powerful tool in education. Students are collaborating with each other through social media to learn more about specific subjects, to test out ideas and theories, to learn facts, and to gauge each other’s opinions.  They’re finding each other on their own kid-specific social networking sites, on their blogs, on schools’ sites, and of course on Facebook and Twitter. Though Facebook is still a red herring when it comes to school policy (Massachusetts districts have threatened to fire teachers who friend students on Facebook), and educators are split over whether tweeting in class is disruptive or helpful, the sites continue to be pervasive in both higher-ed and K-12. Educators know they can grab students’ attention where they naturally live outside the classroom — the online social world, whether or not it’s Facebook.  “If you’re teaching something that’s usually bland and you insert a simple tool that allows students to connect with each other or their peers in other schools and countries whenever they want, you just see kids’ faces light up,” says veteran educator Chris Lehmann of the Science Leadership Academy (Barseghian, 2011). 

Educators Unite

But social networking is not just for teens, as evidenced by the 500 million-plus Facebook users. Teachers are putting their collective smarts together to find the best ways of engaging students, using social media to teach everything from reading and writing to Shakespeare. Educators are also using social media to connect with each other, share ideas, and find the best teaching tools and practices. Sites like Classroom 2.0, Teacher Tube, PBS Teachers, Edmodo, Edutopia, and countless others are lit up with teachers sharing success stories, asking for advice, and providing support. Collaboration is happening offline, too, at schools where educators team-teach and organize professional learning networks

Collaboration is also finding its way into curriculum with open-source sites to which everyone is encouraged to contribute. Working together is woven into the fabric of project-based schools like the Science Leadership in Academy, which focuses on science, technology, math and entrepreneurship, and Napa New Tech High High. The idea is simple: by working together, students figure out how to find common ground, balance each others’ skills, communicate clearly, and be accountable to the team for their part of the project. Just as they would in the work place (Barseghian, 2011). 

 

Tech-Powered:  Pens and pencils are far from obsolete, but forward-thinking educators are finding other interactive tools to grab their students’ attention. School programs are built around teaching how to create video games. Teachers are using Guitar Hero, geo-caching (high-tech scavenger hunt), Google maps for teaching literature, Wii in lieu of P.E., VoiceThread to communicate, ePals and LiveMocha to learn global languages with native speakers, Voki to create avatars of characters in stories, and Skype to communicate with peers from all over the world — even augmented reality, connecting students to virtual characters. And that’s just a tiny sampling.  Creating media is another noteworthy tech-driven initiative in education. Media permeates our lives, and the better able students are to create and communicate with media, the better connected they’ll be to global events and to the working world. To that end, programs like Digital Youth Network focus on teaching students to create podcasts, videos, and record music; and Adobe Youth Voices teaches kids how to make and edit films and connects them to documentary filmmakers.  Tech-savvy teachers are threading media-making tools into the curriculum with free (or cheap) tools, like comic strip-creation site ToonDo, Microsoft Photo Story 3 for slide shows, SoundSlides for audio slide shows, Microsoft Movie Maker, and VoiceThread to string together images, videos, and documents, to name just a few.

Students in high school and college are using digital portfolios — the equivalent of resumes — to showcase the trajectory of their work on websites that link to their assignments, achievements, and course of study, using photos, graphics, spreadsheets and web pages.

 

Blended: Simply stated, blended learning is combining computers with traditional teaching. Knowing that today’s learners are wired at all times, teachers are directing students’ natural online proclivity towards schoolwork. It’s referred to as different things — reverse teaching, flip teaching, backwards classroom, or reverse instruction. But it all means the same thing: students conduct research, watch videos, participate in collaborative online discussions, and so on at home and at school — both in K-12 schools and in colleges and universities.  Teachers use this technique in different ways. Some assign interactive quizzes and online collaborative projects at home, some use computer time in class, some assign watching videos and lectures at home and use class time for hands-on projects, some place most of the curriculum online and work one-one-one with students in class. However they choose to do it, the best examples of blended learning programs involve teachers who use home-time online discussions and collaborative projects as fuel for content and discussion in the classroom.  This movement is growing quickly — the Department of Education plans to spend $30 million over the next three years to bring blended learning to 400 schools around the country.

 

What Do These Trends Mean?

 

Given the growing momentum of these trends, what does it mean for students, teachers, schools, and the overall education?

 

• Teachers’ and students’ relationships are changing, as they learn from each other.

• Teacher’s roles are shifting from owners of information to facilitators and guides to learning.

• Educators are finding different ways of using class time.

• Introverted students are finding ways to participate in class discussions online.

• Different approaches to teaching are being used in the same class.

• Students are getting a global perspective.

   

   

Resources

 

Barseghian, T. (2011, February 5). Three trends that define the future of teaching and learning. Retrieved July 29, 2016, from http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/02/05/three-trends-that-define-the-future-of-teaching-and-learning/

Dhanrahan. (2012, February 23). 2020 forecast: Creating the future of learning. Retrieved July 29, 2016, from http://www.nextgenerationschools.org/blog/?p=115

Freifeld, L. (2014, August 28). 5 trends for the future of learning and development. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from https://trainingmag.com/5-trends-future-learning-and-development

Foundation, K. (2015, December 22). Learning journey mentor -. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from Jobs, http://vibranted.org/learning-journey-mentor/

Kenkel, M. (2011, September 26). Meet our experts. Retrieved July 29, 2016, from http://www.knowledgeworks.org/learning-agents

Institute, & Future, the. (2016, July 26). IFTF: Future now. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.iftf.org/future-now/

LP, is. (2016). Stock photography: Search royalty free images & photos - iStock. Retrieved July 30, 2016, from http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/trends-2016-message-on-business-card-held-by-a-man-gm501883072-81588815

Retrieved July 31, 2016, from https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/program/future-learning-institute-project-zero

Retrieved July 29, 2016, from http://www.googleimages.com

Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/FINAL_REPORT_PDF09-29-06.pdf

2016. (1995). Eduvator is a new crowd-funding platform for educational needs. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.designindaba.com/articles/creative-work/eduvator-new-crowd-funding-platform-educational-needs

What is an educational assessment designer? (2016). Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.topeducationdegrees.org/faq/what-is-an-educational-assessment-designer/