Bado Dangwa National High School

Bado Dangwa, Tabuk City

The 21st Century Learners

A Research Paper Submitted

in Partial Fulfillment
Of the requirements
In English 10

Submitted to:
MRS. ELENOR MAY CHANTAL L. MESSAKARAENG
T-II

By:
Bogga, Novalyn
Edas, Myline,
Eckman, Jovilyn
Pablo, Michaela
Pawac, Mialeen
Ontis, Joey
Gayudan, John Robin

March 14,2016

21st Century Learners: Welcome to the 21st Century

Most of us have met them. If we teach in independent schools, higher docile schools or
teach in more privileged areas they are becoming increasingly common. Even the more short
sighted of teachers can see them increasing as our future becomes increasingly electronic.
Whether we call them Digital Natives (Marc Prensky), Digital Children (Ian Jukes), NeoMillennials (Dieterle-Dede-Schrier) or 21st Century Learners (Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach ) they
are increasingly becoming the future of teaching.
So what are they?
They are students who are shaped by their environment. The environment they are
exposed to is media rich, immediate, fast, engaging, dynamic and instant. Its electronic and
digital,
Its a communication medium with instant gratification. Marc Prensky, described the
array of media the students are exposed to in his papers on Digital Natives (See Readings) . This
is not all of youth today, many still struggle to gain education, to have a classroom to be taught in
or to have seen a computer, let alone used one. Nor is it limited to just students, Adults too, can
be "Digital Natives" as their brains like the brains of our students will adapt to exposure to
Technology

.
But for those who by good fortune have had exposure for the entire of their lives to
technology the effect is huge. Digital Natives, those people who, through consistent exposure to
these factors and access to a variety of digital media, whose brains are adapted to using tehse
tools; are engaged and motivated by the use of digital technologies. They are adept in the use of
digital medium, and as Dieterle-Dede-Schrier, Ian Jukes, Gary Small (MD) and Marc Prensky
insist, they are wired to use these tools.
So what is a Digital Native, a Digital Child, A Neo-Millennial or 21st Century Learner?
It helps perhaps to look at a digital native in reference to someone we are familiar with: A
teacher, who is more often than not, as Marc would describe them, a Digital Immigrant. (source:
Educational Origami )

These changes in preferred method and mode of learning are changing and shaping the way we
teach (21st Century Teachers), how we design and build our classrooms (21st Century Learning
Spaces) and how we are resourced (facilitating 21st Century Learning or taking a measure of
ICT integration). For teachers to engage and educate, to facilitate and motivate, our methods of
teaching must match their methods of learning; our teaching spaces must reflect their learning
spaces; our teaching tools and resources must support their learning strategies. There must be, in
short, a paradigm shift in education. Teachers must become 21st Century learners and more.
Teens and the internet
PEW Internet is an American organization researching the effect of the Internet on American life.
The data below is extracted from one of their presentations at CES 2009. The paper is called

Teens and the Internet . These are some of the key points for me that make interesting reading.
Key to this is that this is an American Life project.

email - 22 years old - today 87% of teens use email

PCs - 15 years old - today 60% of teens have desktop or laptop

Pong is 18 years old - today 97% of teens play computer games

Commercial cell phones - 12 years old -today >75% of teens have a cell phone

1990 Tim Berners-Lee creates internet -today 93% of teens use the internet & >90% of
online teens use their browsers for cloud computing activities

ICQ - 1996 - today ~ 68% of online teens use instant messaging

First PDA - palm pilot 1996 - today ~20% of teens have pda/blackberry

1997 First blogs - today ~30% of online teens keep blogs and regularly post & 54% read
blogs

Napster - 1999 - today ~35% of online teens find out about new songs by free downloads
~ 33% of online teens swap files on peer-to-peer

Wikipedia - 2001 - today ~ 55% of online teens use Wikipedia

iPod - 2002 - today 74% of teens have an MP3 player

MySpace - 2003 - today >70% of online teens use social network sites

Del.icio.us - 2003 - today 40%-50% of online teens tag content

Flickr - 2003 - today ~60%-70% of teens have digital cameras & ~50%- 60% of online
teens post photos online

Podcasts 2004 - today >25% of online teens have downloaded podcasts

YouTube 2005 - today ~40% of teens have video cameras, ~25% have uploaded videos
& >75% view videos on video-sharing sites

These statistics and the rest of the presentation are worth pondering. The impact of
technology on teens and their uptake and adoption of these tools and technologies is formidable.
Here are some of the other key points about online teens:

Close to 75% have created content for the internet

39% have shared their own creations online

37% have rated a person, product, or service online

26% report keeping their own personal webpage

~25% have created or worked on webpages or blogs for others, including those for
groups or school assignments

20% remix content they find online into their own artistic creations
21 Characteristics of 21st Century Learners

Whether you are a teacher, a parent, an aunt or an uncle, it is important to know that todays
students are wildly different in some ways, from past generations.
21st Century learners
1. Want to have a say in their education. Theyll respond better when their voices are
heard.
2. Often have higher levels of digital literacy than their parents or teachers. They dont
know a world without computers.

3. Expect transparency in their parents, teachers and mentors. Theyll see right through
you. (Makes it really hard to plan a surprise birthday party for them!)
4. Want you to tell them when you have messed up, apologize for it, and move on.
Everyone messes up. No big deal. Just dont try to hide it. If you do, they are likely to
post it on Facebook.
5. Dont care as much about having a job as they do about making a difference. The
very concept of a job has changed so much in the past decade, the future is about
making a difference.
6. Demand the freedom to show their wild creativity. 21st century learners balk at rote
learning and memorizing. Theyll do it if you make them, but be prepared to let them
loose to be creative, too.
7. Want to connect with others in real time on their own terms. They want their social
media, their phones and their mobile technology. They want to be connected. All the
time. In a way that makes sense to them (not necessarily to you).
8. Collaborate amazingly well. They love teamwork and figuring things out with their
friends.
9. Really can multi-task. To do other wise is yawn! Bo-ring!
10. Appreciate a trial and error approach to learning new skills. Thank you, videogame industry.
11. Learn by doing. Just try making them sit down and learn from you by watching. See
what happens.
12. Have a can do attitude. Of course, they can do it, silly! There is nothing to be afraid
of.

13. Thrive in an atmosphere of controlled challenge. They must be challenged or they

zone out, but they need structure, too.
14. Have multicultural awareness and appreciation. This generation is more aware of a
variety cultures, countries and ways of life than any generation before them.
15. Open to change. Really, whats the big deal?
16. Are equal parts consumer and creator. Todays learners download their own
songs and apps from iTunes and then they create their own stuff and upload it to share
with others.
17. Increasingly aware of the world around them. From the environment to politics,
todays learners are asking questions and demanding answers.
18. Know where to go to find information. Google was first incorporated in 1998. 21st
century learners have never known a world without Google.
19. Are better educated than any generation before them. (See #17.) 21st century learners
really do know more than their parents (but that doesnt necessarily make them wiser!)
20. Expect inter-disciplinarity. It is we, the older generation, who organize topics into
subjects. The 21st century learner understands that subjects are inherently
interconnected. Like, duh!
21. Know that they are the future. They look at their parents and their peers and understand
that the worlds future rests in their hands.

Classrooms in the 21st Century

No More Rows
The days of desks arranged in straight rows facing the teacher and the blackboard are over.
Classrooms in the 21st century invite learners and educators alike to come in and delve into deep

and authentic learning. They are comfortably-appointed like a family room and rich in
learning materials and resources.
In this sort of environment, there are all kinds of nooks and crannies to meet a variety of learning
need, including areas for group work and discussions, areas for creating, places to study and
think alone, and whenever possible, outdoor spaces to breathe in fresh air and actively play.
More Than Books
The classroom is also filled with all kinds of learning tools: mobile devices, art supplies, lowand high-tech materials for do-it-yourself projects, equipment for tinkering, and other materials
as determined by the unique needs of the learners.
The use of flexible, interactive learning environments is supported by research on the ways in
which spatial environments affect student learning. The HEAD Project (Holistic Evidence and
Design), in a study of the impacts of the classroom environment on the learning rates of students,
noted six factors that are particularly influential to learning progress: light, user choice,
flexibility, connections (as in corridors and the ways different areas fit together), complexity
(such as having different types of learning areas), and color.
The 21st-century classroom mimics the look, feel, and energy of peoples favorite informal
learning spaces: coffee shops, libraries, makerspaces, art galleries, parks, and museums. They are
places where students want to go and spend hour after hour of their time engaged in deep and
meaningful learning.
Learning in the 21st Century
Choice and Multiple Modalities
Education in the 21st century offers a huge variety of learning options: direct instruction via a
teacher; blended learning; face-to-face or virtual peer collaborations; and through local or virtual
access to experts and professionals. Students are not dependent on the teacher alone for content
specific knowledge, and can be the primary agents of their education with access to an almost
limitless number of online resources articles, informational websites, videos, social media

sites, interactive features, simulations, and games. The result is a personalized learning
environment in which students may choose what to learn and how and when to learn it.
Author and educator Barbara Bray explains that a personalized learning environment should
allow each student to proceed according to her own level of competency rather than with a onesize-fits-all curriculum. This enables teachers to accommodate different learning styles and, in
the process, change the educational environment as a whole.
Having multiple avenues, means, and methods to support students aligns with guidelines from
the National Center on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which state that learners should be
presented with multiple means of representation. Learners should have options regarding the
ways they are introduced to different ideas.
The UDL points out that learners take in and process information in varied ways, and that the
most effective way of facilitating such learning is by using multiple representations. This sort of
approach would provide models and examples that appeal to visual, auditory, and kinesthetic
learners. No one way of representing information is best for every kid.
Interdisciplinarity and Context
Twentieth-century education often focused on learning the content and broader disciplines as
separate distinct both from one another and from the context in which that learning naturally
occurs in the real world. Learning in the 21st century focuses on the exploration of authentic,
real-world, and relevant topics, issues, and problems in the contexts in which they occur.
Learning should not be thought of as memorizing subject-specific facts and concepts in a
vacuum, but rather as cross-disciplinary and in real-world contexts.
A system that privileges learning in connection with the social state of affairs in which it occurs
is known as situated learning. Two of its early proponents argue that learning is a social process
and that teachers and learners participate in the co-construction of knowledge. As such,
education should be experienced in an appropriate social and physical environment.
For example, learners might wonder how they could create more storage in their classroom. They
would do research on types of storage, develop plans, and build storage units. Their learning

would be cross-disciplinary they would use research skills to conduct searches, group
discussions to come up with ideas, and math and engineering skills to design and build their
storage unit.
Personal Learning Networks
The Internet and social media enable networked learning, or learning that connects people to
both information and other people. Learning in the 21st century takes advantage of those
networks by encouraging students to make connections with peers, experts, and additional
teachers both locally and globally in order to enhance their personal learning. Learning
becomes connected learning, whereby students develop their own personal educational
networks.
Professor of education Bernard Bull proposes that such personalized networks be a key part of
the learning experience. Starting early, theyll have the ability to increase both the depth and
breadth of these connections. Not only will students learn about specific concepts, theyll also
learn to seek out and build relationships with both educators and learners.
Creation and Consumption
Todays kids are creating they are making videos, writing posts for social media, sharing
where they go and what they are doing via Snapchat and Instagram. This need to create is part of
todays mainstream youth. This can and should be leveraged in the classroom. In a 21st-century
learning environment, students are not just consumers of content, but should be given
opportunities to have a voice and to contribute to the real world by creating content and artifacts
to share with an authentic audience as part of their learning processes.
Kids dont want (or need) their hands held throughout their education. And they certainly dont
want to be micromanaged. They are used to getting the information they need from a website or
on social media. What they want and need is learner agency, which involves having the ability
and opportunity to do things on their own. As one supporter of the practice puts it, agency in
learning involves letting students have a say in decisions about curricula, projects, resources, and
assignments. This might look something like phenomenon-based learning, which is gaining
popularity worldwide.

Encouraging All Learning

Too often young people are bored by school and excited about pursuing their own hobbies on
their own time. We should channel their enthusiasm for this informal learning (often using the
Internet and other online tools and resources) in the classroom. Educators must implement
strategies and teach in a way that provides students with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that
will assist them in successfully navigating the real world, both now and in the future.
(https://www.noodle.com/articles/what-a-21st-century-education-should-look-like-opinion)