gail dyer

Back in the classroom again but this time it is a luxury … an aid to set up the Macbooks and working alongside Kim.

We have a presentation to get together before Friday… with a new class.

Having the class for the first 45 mins of the day I couldn’t resist doing a bit of research. It was a fascinating exercise and the students were wonderful.

They were prepared to explore with me what it means to be students in the 21st Century and then either singly or in groups record their thoughts.

The thing that I found most interesting is that it is not only we the educators who need to make a huge paradigm shift to become 21st Century learners so do they.

How can students conceptualise what 21st Learning might look like if they only have 19th and 20th century models to refer to?

What views do they hear from home in the media? 

It was then that the questioning needed to take a different tack. We then explored what they considered to be the most important aspects of their schooling.

They feel they can communicate and collaborate really well. We talked about man going to the moon and especially about the Apollo 13 mission where creative problem solving saved the crews life.

Some suggested it is necessary to take risks and try doing things in different ways. Tony and Deon pointed out that if you do the same thing all the time nothing changes, nothing is exctiing. Doing things differently is exciting and interesting.

The boy, on the whole, were more animated and more engaged by the notion of risk taking, stepping outside the box, being creative and using technology to support the creativity.