Tag: 21st century

Ten big questions for education

Posted on March 4, 2010September 6, 2019 by Doug Belshaw

Hello! It’s been a good few years since I published this post. Sadly, the wiki that I linked to at the end of the post no longer exists, but the ten questions remain pertinent.

You may find some of these things useful, too:

Oh, and if you’re reading this as preparation for, or part of, your teacher training, good luck!

I need your input and help. It’s for a good cause. I’m a firm believer that educational innovation is a bottom-up process. Could you help me (and others) prove that?

I’ll try and keep this as brief as possible if you promise to do the background reading and try to contribute in some way. :-p

Introduction

EduCon 2.0 is both a conversation and a conference.
And it is not a technology conference. It is an education conference. It is, hopefully, an innovation conference where we can come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. Every session will be an opportunity to discuss and debate ideas — from the very practical to the big dreams.

This year’s was 29th-31st of January at the Science Leadership Academy, Philadelphia, USA (which is why I wasn’t there).

Background Reading

Will Richardson blogged about what happened at Educon and the next steps required to turn conversations into action:

Results

Will crowdsourced 10 questions that educators need to answer effectively:

What is the purpose of school?
What is the changing role of the teacher, and how do we support that new role?
How do we help students discover their passions?
What is the essential learning that schools impart to students?
How do we adapt our curriculum to the technologies that kids are already using?
What does an educated person look like today?
How do we change policy to support more flexible time and place learning?
What are the essential practices of teachers in a system where students are learning outside of school?
How do we ensure those without privilege have equal access to quality education and opportunity?
How do we evaluate and validate the informal, self-directed learning that happens outside of school?

Actions

The next step was the creation of a wiki – 10fored.wikispaces.com. This is a place to continue the conversation and provide tangible results. Taking a step back but keeping an overview, Will has asked for volunteer moderators for each of the questions.

I volunteered for Question #6: What does an educated person look like today? I’m interested in how it relates to my thesis, the original title of which was ‘What does it mean to be ‘educated’ and ‘digitally literate’ in the 21st century’.

Help me out. Send a tweet to @dajbelshaw with the #10fored hashtag with some ideas. Or, better yet, add your thoughts to the wiki page!

10fored.wikispaces.com/educated

Thanks in advance! 😀

(image CC BY CarbonNYC)

Why ‘digital literacy’ is central to 21st century education.

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Doug Belshaw

ChangeThis is a website dedicated to manifestos written by anyone (but usually professionals and experts) about something they feel passionately about changing. There are some really great ones – for example Hugh MacLeod on How To Be Creative and Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start. I’ve just had a proposal accepted entitled, Why ‘digital literacy’ is central to 21st century education. I’d like you to vote for the proposal so I can write the full manifesto, please! :-p

Here’s the summary I added to the site:

Society is in flux. The global economy is in meltdown. Education is in turmoil. Why? The world has, and is, changing faster than we can keep up. One of the reasons for this disconnect is our insistence on teaching our young people in the same way that we ourselves learned. We’re teaching as if there were a dearth of resources, when actually we’re spoiled for choice.

‘Digital literacy’ is a term much debated, but which allows us to grasp hold of an important concept. Literacy in the digital arena just isn’t the same as it is when sitting at a desk with paper and pencil. But how is it different? And what can we do about it?

Allow me to suggest some ways in which we can come up with a workable definition for ‘digital literacy’ and show you methods by which we can educate our young people for the blended digital/physical world they do, and shall, inhabit!

Writing the manifesto will give a focus to my thesis-writing over the next few weeks and will hopefully be something you can point people towards to explain the importance of moving to 21st century skills and learning! 😀

Please vote.

My Ed.D. thesis proposal: What does it mean to be ‘digitally literate’?

Posted on May 17, 2008 by Doug Belshaw

I submitted the second version of my Ed.D. thesis proposal a while back now. I had to re-submit as I failed the first submission. This was a bit of a shock to the system, never having failed anything academically before. It was actually partly my supervisor’s fault – who has now left the University of Durham and doesn’t have a doctorate himself… :p

I was advised to wait until I had the marks back for the thesis proposal before posting it on my blog. Upon reflection, I could see this was a sensible thing to do, so now I’ve heard back and I’ve passed I’m going to post it in its entirity. I received 63% for the following, which isn’t disastrous but less than I would have hoped for. Because it’s my second submission, however, the mark that’s recorded is 50%. At the end of the day, I’m not overly concerned: my Ed.D. overall is pass/fail… 🙂

The comments on the following were:

This is a solid proposal which provides a detailed reflection of the relevant literature in which the proposed study is to be grounded. Although covered in less detail than the literature section, the proposal provides an appropriate methodological base for the research. The proposal suggests a cross-cultural component and it is important in this context that similarities as well as ‘discrepancies’ are identified and that the study does not become unmanageable. In general this is a good solid proposal.

(emphasis mine)

The proposal itself follows after the ‘tag’ cloud that is indicative of its contents (courtesy of TweetClouds)

Continue reading “My Ed.D. thesis proposal: What does it mean to be ‘digitally literate’?”