Becoming a 21st Century Teacher

Imagine you are designing the ultimate school for the 21st century.

Which technology tools will have the greatest impact on teaching and learning and why?

"No longer are children and young people only or even mainly divided by those with or without access, though ‘access’ is a moving target in terms of speed, location, quality and support, and inequalities in access do persist. Increasingly, children and young people are divided into those for whom the Internet is an increasingly rich, diverse, engaging and stimulating resource of growing importance in their lives and those for whom it remains a narrow, unengaging, if occasionally useful, resource of rather less significance."

(Sonia Livingstone & Magdalena Bober, 2004, p. 12)"

Highlights:

• 50.7 million students attend public elementary and secondary schools
• White students will account for 24.4 million. The remaining 26.3 million are composed of
  • 8 million Black students,
  • 13.6 million Hispanic students,
  • 2.8 million Asian/Pacific Islander students,
  • 0.5 million American Indian/Alaska Native students,
  • 1.5 million students of Two or more races.
• The percentage of students who are White is expected to continue declining as the enrollments of Hispanics, Asians/Pacific Islanders, and students of Two or more races increase through at least fall 2026, the last year for which projections are available.

In Fall 2014, Latino, African American and Asian students became a majority of students (50.3%) in the nation's public schools.

• Click for a table of enrollment projections through 2023 from the Digest of Education Statistics.

Low-Income Students Now a Majority in the Nation's Public Schools from the Southern Education Foundation, 2015

• In 40 of the 50 states, low income students comprised no less than 40 percent of all public schoolchildren.
• In 21 states, children eligible for free or reduced-price lunches were a majority of the students in 2013.
• Most of the states with a majority of low income students are found in the South and the West.
  • Mississippi led the nation with the most low-income students: ­71 percent, almost three out of every four public school children in Mississippi.
  • The nation’s second-most low income students was found in New Mexico, 68 percent of all public school students in 2013.

Rural Students: Technology, Coursework and Extracurricular Activities, ACT Center for Equity in Learning (2019)

The Alpha Generation

• Generation Alpha are children born from 2010 to 2025

Meet Alpha: The Next Generation, The New York Times (September 19, 2015)

Generation Alpha: The Children of the Millennial, Interesting Engineering (December 18, 2018)

21st Century Education Technology Statements by Professional Organizations and ISTE Standards for Students and Educators

Beliefs for Integrating Technology into the English Language Arts Classroom (October 2018)

Strategic Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning Mathematics (July 2015)

Teaching Science in the Context of Societal and Personal Issues (July 2016)

Technology Position Statement and Guidelines (December 2013)

Technology and Interactive as Tools in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children Birth through Age 8, NAEYC and the Fred Rogers Center (January 2012)

Writing and Discussion Activity: Defining 21st-Century Learning

How do you know 21st Century teaching and learning when you see it?

• Is it a habit?
• A skill set?
• A mindset?
• Or is it simply the employment of a tool set?

As you begin building your skills and competencies as a teacher, so too will you build a definition of 21 Century learning and teaching.

• Read the article, How Do You Define 21st Century Learning? One Question. Eleven Answers. As you read, note the wide range of perspectives on the topic.
• Choose a perspective or two and explain why it aligns with your current definition of 21st Century Learning and 21st Century Teaching.

Do You Teach with a Paper-Based Mindset?

The National Technology Education Plan

Re-Imagining the Role of Technology in Education, the National Education Technology Plan offers a policy vision for technology in schools.

Internet Facts and Figures

The Size of the World Wide Web (the Internet)

3.8 Billion Users in 2018

More than 45 percent of the world's population are accessing the Internet

• 1.3 billion websites in 2018
  • How large is a billion? One billion seconds = 32 years

Link here for the First Website, published August 6, 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee

• What Happens in a Internet Minute (2015)
• The Internet Then and Now an infographic from Technorati (August 2013)
• Who's Not Online and Why from Pew Internet & American Life Project (September 2013)
  • 15 percent of Americans age 16 and older do not use the Internet or email.
  • 7 percent of non-users cite the lack of availability or access for their reasons for not being online
• Mary Meeker's Eye-Popping Annual Internet Trends Report hits the Web, May 2012.
  • At that time, there were 2.4 billion Internet users worldwide and that figure was expanding by 8 percent yearly.
  • There were 1.1 billion smartphone subscribers worldwide.
  • Nearly one in three (29 percent) of adults in the U.S. own a tablet or e-reader.
  • Mobile devices accounted for 13 percent of worldwide Internet traffic, up from 4 percent in 2010.
• The State of the Internet Now! noted that in July 2011 this world wide network had 1.97 billion users and 266 million websites.
  • See also the Internet Map for a visual representation of different sizes online.
• People with More Education Have a More Positive View of the Internet, THE Journal (June 12, 2018)
• In 2011, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Opinion and Expression declared that access to the Internet is a fundamental human right and governments must "ensure that Internet access is maintained at all times, including times of political unrest."
• Click here for the home page of Internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• The Birth of the Web reviews the creation of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.
• The Document that Officially Put the World Wide Web into the Public Domain on 30 April 1993
• Teen Trend Data from Pew Internet & American Life Project including teen Internet user demographics.
  • Search and Email Still Top the List of Most Popular Online Activities from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2011.
• Every 6 hours the National Security Agency collects as much information as is stored in the entire Library of Congress.
  • For comparison, see Library of Congress Statistics for 2010

Professional Learning Networks

Disruptive Technologies

10 Characteristics of Disruptive Innovations

Clayton Christensen on Disruptive Innovation

10 Jobs Where Robots Really Are Replacing Humans, Disruption (May 2017)