UNIT 1: The 21st Century Curriculum: background concepts and theories

My Wordle Unit 1 - www.wordle.net

The overwhelming technological changes we have been facing in the last decades imply for us teachers to have a great responsibility in raising a cultural sense in our students, to take care of one another since they are beginning their school lives. Nowadays, the prefix ‘inter’ is really showing its powerful meaning: inter-action, inter-national, inter-cultural, inter-net…

Developing critical thinking is definitely a good starting point if learners are meant to interact successfully in a future unknown society and world. Also, promoting the emotional, conversational/communicative, and physical skills –among others- that are already embedded in most educational contexts, combined with new technological trends that risky pioneers have just started to apply and use effectively and creatively, would serve as a solid basis for the upcoming worldwide citizens.

It is our duty to take part in this huge mission. We have to ‘empower’ ourselves before trying to make our students aware of the great technological resources available around them. Besides, we cannot leave emotional factors aside, such as eagerness, motivation, and self-confidence, among others. Therefore, developing our students’ natural curiosity to discover their own talents and strengths, promoting their capacity of adaptation to sudden changes, and building autonomy step by step, are basic processes learners have to go through.

According to Ianni (2005), ICT and TPD (Teacher professional development) are parallel processes. Our teaching must be based on “learner-centered instructional methods, such as project-oriented learning, problem-based learning, inquiry-based learning and collaborative learning, since the idea is to offer each student the possibility of covering his/her needs as a multi-tasker” (Ianni, 2005).

“The Eight Net Gen Norms”
“The Eight Net Generation Norms” imply great changes in our minds, capacity of understanding, interacting, and reflecting upon the real needs students have nowadays, and new ways of meeting them.

Sometimes, we blame technology because it facilitates students’ lives by providing them with the information, tools, ideas, every single detail at hand, that no effort seems to be needed. The challenge, then, is for us as teachers to train this generation, and make learners skillful in order to classify the huge amount of information they can freely access thanks to the social networking they are immersed in. Besides, students should be committed to be tolerant, collaborative, since it is their own sense of community that has empowered them with affective and academic skills gained through technology.

At last, the capacity of innovation, self-organization and collaboration these Net Geners do have enables them to cope with an ongoing world that will hopefully set a brighter horizon… And communicating in a language that is global only demonstrates that learning it is a must.

I truly believe that this challenge involves all of us as educators in general, but especially -of course-, as responsible for our own students' language learning process. We are here looking forward to meeting their needs, every day with a deeper sense of making our labor productive, reflective, collaborative, assertive… Letting students play the role of actors/actresses in such process is the goal. In sum, we must give our students opportunities to live an enriching life-long learning experience, which in fact, they have already started on their own.

“The relevance of multiliteracies”
The following is a sequence of processes to develop in our learners, which I believe are key in this complex but achievable duty as teachers. Besides, these processes embed the concepts and necessary inter-actions of the different literacies (visual, media, digital, critical literacies), aimed to develop skills and abilities for students to learn:

Identifying --> recognizing --> exploring --> interpreting --> connecting
--> contextualizing --> understanding --> analyzing --> critical thinking
(questioning/reasoning) -->interacting --> sharing --> communicating
--> negotiating --> reflecting --> evaluating --> criticizing --> proposing
-->creating
-->CONSTRUCTING KNOWLEDGE

This task is not easy as I said before. However, through another complementary basic process, we could be ready to comply with this mission: Empowerment. I will cite a description and a real example from the USC Rossier School of Education, which despite its 100 years since its foundation, has always been in the cutting edge concerning meeting students’ needs and forming committed citizens ‘to strengthen urban education locally, nationally and globally.’ This information is given in the document The New Media Consortium (2005, p.6):

“This program prepares educators not only to become fully multimedia literate, but also to integrate these abilities with their instructional visions, objectives, strategies, and classroom practices.”
This means that the direct responsibility relies on us, as teachers of this digital generation, and we must embrace it with no fear, but with eagerness and positivism.

References
Bamford, A. (2003). The Visual Literacy White Paper. Adobe Systems. Retrieved from http://www.adobe.com/uk/education/pdf/adobe_visual_literacy_paper.pdf

Daley, E. (2003). Expanding the Concept of Literacy. Educause Review. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0322.pdf

Lima, C. (2006). A Brief Introduction to Critical Literacy in English Language Education. British Council Brazil. Retrieved from http://www.criticalliteracy.org.uk/images/cleltbooklet.pdf

Tapscott, D (2009) Grown Up Digital. How the Net Generation is Changing your World. MacGraw Hill.

The New Media Consortium (2005). A Global Imperative: The Report of the 21st Century Literacy Summit. Retrieved from http://www.nmc.org/pdf/Global_Imperative.pdf

Unit 2: Community and ICT in Language Learning

Retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/2bck6k9

Modern Learning Spaces

Offering students the best options to carry out their learning processes, that include coping their needs and interests, involves ‘creating’ and ‘designing’ proper spaces with all the facilities possible, according to the context, institutions’ vision and mission, and a deep sense of team collaboration.

Nowadays, learners are the owners and ‘managers’ of their goals. They are exposed to an ongoing transformation that demands quick moves, adaptability, cooperation, teamwork skills, and most importantly, enough criteria for self-assessment and decision-making. These learners do need even more learning spaces than the physical ones.

However, this task could not be carried out without support from very well-trained staff, who can be their own partners, tutors, consultants, and other people with critical perspectives, deeply committed with the effective use the great amount of technological resources, for the benefit of the global community.

Providing such ‘learning spaces,’ either formal or informal, would make a big difference. If we really want students to be engaged and challenged in our classes, at schools, universities, etc., the investment to be made, both economical and motivational, will not be a waste of time and money. These learning spaces will provide more opportunities for knowledge, culture, global cooperation, and for different skills’ development (self- assessment, teamwork, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making) to arise… In only one concept, or better, in only one learning theory, designing appropriate modern learning spaces and environments will surely develop ‘active learning.’

The Role of Community

Based on the readings, and taking into account my personal experience throughout the Masters Course, I believe that in order to form a solid community there must be…
• A real commitment to get involved and to actively participate in its collaborative construction.
• Capacity of listening and communicating assertively, showing interest and abilities for team working, as well as for trusting in the community members.
• Understand others’ ideas with respect and tolerance helped by a well-directed guidance, in charge of an instructor who manages both social and cognitive skills.

I think that definitely NLE is based on collaborative work. By means of the forums, WIZIQ sessions, wiki, collaborative glossary, mindmapping, etc., we are actually building a community. We interact to share points of view and doubts, achieve agreements, which allow us to clarify concepts, and expand what we now. In NLE we are reaching long-life learning, due to its socio-affective and cognitive components. As Shaffer and Amundsen(1993) state “creating a community is a mutually empowering act.” The NLE tutor is enabling us to grow our knowledge and think of the necessary changes we have to go through in order to improve our teaching practices, and updating ourselves with the global technological advances and tools. Besides, being reflective and flexible concerning students’ schedules and tasks have also been positive attitudes the NLE tutor has shown. This is the balance an online class should offer and promote.

One of the strengths gained in NLE is the development of “social presence” we are able to show now, after having being through some other virtual classes before, during the Masters Course, as I said above. I remember, for example, the concept of ‘Netiquette’ which was one of the first things we learned in the second semester. These guidelines were fundamental for making communication flow in a respectful and effective way.

Finally, I think that NLE is a learner-centered designed course, that promotes autonomy at all times. Besides, it also serves to deepen our sense of belonging to a group of committed teachers who share more than knowledge: we also share values and as a consequence, I would say, an identity as a group already characterizes us.

References
Brown, M. (2005). Learning Spaces. In Educating the Net Generation, Chapter 12. Educause. Retrieved on March 2nd, 2010 from www.educause.edu/educatingthenet gen/

Reynard, R. (2009). Designing Learning Spaces for Instruction, not control. Campus Technology. Retrieved from http://www.campustechnology.com/Article/2009/04/29/Designing-Learning-Spaces-for-Instruction-not-Control.aspx