Education Trends and Issues in the World Today
- Oliver Lui
- Aug 18, 2017
- 2 min read
To teach effectively in the 21st century classroom, teachers need to be aware of opportunities to apply, analyze, evaluate, and create in the classroom.
One opportunity of particular importance for teaching and learning is employing digital skills to access and understand the Internet, where around 50% of the material is in English. Another opportunity lies in students using their own smartphone, tablet or laptop in the classroom to make learning more personal and engaging.
Trend 1: 21st century skills
Global Awareness: Teachers should use classroom activities to promote global understanding and raise cultural awareness. An example of this is creating classroom activities around Google’s Beyond the Map project, or using the international news stories and radio broadcasts of Voice of America in the classroom.
Creativity and Innovation: The 21st century classroom has a strong focus on students creating with the information they have in the classroom. Students can create portfolios that use the target language in context, such as creating videos, writing journals or producing podcasts.
Information and Media Literacy: It is important for students to understand how to access information and evaluate it, and so we should encourage the use of transmedia literacy, i.e. the ability to understand information from a variety of sources and make connections between them. For example, students can read an English-language news story and then watch a video on the same subject matter to see the differences and similarities.
Trend 2: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
A wide variety of digital tools exists for increasing classroom participation for students. These tools take advantage of the BYOD approach to encourage all students to ask and answer questions. By interacting through their own smartphone, tablet, or computer, students can all participate at the same time instead of one-by-one when they raise their hands to answer questions. The BYOD approach can also assist shy students by giving them a chance to ask and answer questions without having to speak to the entire class.
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