Connected

Leveraging Technology to amplify learning and develop a 21st Century Mindset

a TLLP Project by Deanna Williams & Fraser Hebert

This website consolidates our learning and resources that we've curated or created from our year long TLLP (Teacher Learning and Leadership Program). It is our hope that it will be a source of inspiration from which to draw on to "Leverage Technology to Amplify Learning and Develop a 21st Century Mindset". This TLLP journey began in September of 2016 when we were assigned Google Educator accounts in the Niagara Catholic District School Board. Reliable WiFi, Chromebooks, GAFE and all the amazing (mostly) free web 2.0 websites were the ingredients needed for the perfect recipe towards transforming our teaching for the 21st Century.

This TLLP was greatly inspired by Tony Wagner's TEDxNYED Talk entitled "Play, passion, purpose". In this talk he argues that in the new global ‘knowledge economy’, where knowledge has become a commodity, “what the world cares about is not what you know but what you can do with what you know, and that is a completely different education problem.” This leads us to question then, "What must students learn today, that is different than what they needed to learn 100 years ago?"

Wagner identifies a set of seven core competencies that “every young person must be well on the way to mastering before he or she finishes high school, not just to get a good job, but to be a continuous learner and an active and informed citizen in the 21st century”. They are:

Critical thinking & problem solving
Collaboration across networks & leading by influence
Agility & adaptability
Initiative & entrepreneurialism
Effective oral & written communication
Accessing & analyzing information
Curiosity & imagination

Tony then concluded that, “the culture of schooling, as we have grown up with it, is radically at odds with the culture of learning that produces innovators in five essential respects.” They are:

Celebrating individual achievement vs. Teamwork
Specialization vs. Interdisciplinary
Risk aversion & penalizing failure vs. Taking risks, learning from mistakes, iterating
Culture of learning is about passive consumption vs. Culture of innovation is about creating real products for real audiences
Extrinsic incentives for learning vs. Intrinsic Motivation

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