Students and Teachers Clash Over Learning Tools

You may have seen headlines recently such as “Focus on 21C Skills”, “Funding for 21st Century Tools”, “Technology Rich Classrooms”, and most recently sub-headlines within the stimulus package referring to this topic.

Creating 21st century tools in the classroom; what does this really mean? Are the students actually seeing any real changes? Each state has been working toward their own definition for several years. Is the goal of defining “21st Century Tools” essentially unattainable because of the ever changing nature of technology? While technologies and mandates change, some things in education are certain: (1) students will always need to be learning current real-world skills, (2) students will comprehend and retain knowledge better when they know why learning a particular topic matters to them. How can technology help with either of these two known factors in learning in the 21st century?

Classrooms are being outfitted with project-based learning tools in the context of real-world scenarios. What is a real-world scenario? Today, with so much multi-media and information at the students’ fingertips, it is imperative to integrate video and other media to support instruction. Linking students with outside resources and real-time experiences enables teachers to address many learning styles at once. Ultimately, the ideal 21st-century learning environment doesn’t just wait for teachable moments; it literally creates them at will.

To create such dynamic teaching moments, teachers must move beyond the role of facilitators and become collaborators in learning, seeking new knowledge alongside students. Today’s students are connected and talking to the world all at once on their personal time, and “learning collaboratively” all the time. One of your jobs as a teacher is to help students interpret such a steady stream of information into a learning moment, or into a specific skill set. Integrating these current learning trends and ideas into any classroom can seem most difficult at times, because as a teacher you need to be able to structure the information in a way that meets certain learning objectives. Controlling the pace and access to the information to ensure that the knowledge is absorbed, comprehended, and applicable to the world these students live in is paramount. The students need teachers that understand the information and can apply it in a manner that motivates them to retain the knowledge. That poses two problems:

How can a teacher keep up with the information?
How can the teacher present it so the student will consume it?

LearnKey has worked with many school districts over the years to help create 21st-century tools in the classroom by providing multi-media, highly interactive video-based learning on various subject matters. Each course is provided by a subject matter expert, someone that will provide the most up-to-date information in areas like business applications, office productivity, computer foundations and advanced IT skills, graphic and web design. Courses will help teachers and students learn easily, quickly from a ‘guest speaker’ online, that can assist teachers in reaching learning objectives in an effective and proven method. LearnKey students have proven, through industry certifications and job placement, that the skills provided and the methods used with teachers integrating the online media are not only a success, but also builds self-esteem. These tools provide teachers outcomes that are measurable. Our schools find the cost of the systems to literally be dollars per student with easy curriculum integration.

‘We attribute our growing technology success to the LearnKey Corporation. Thank you again for your initiatives you provide to schools to ensure student academic success in STEM worldwide. We are very fortunate to have LearnKey’s technology training resources as a 21st century approach in career and technical education’. -Cristal Jones, Creekside High School