I felt compelled to reply to a LinkedIn article published by Bernard Marr on June 29, 2016 “If these Predictions are Right, We Will Lose Millions of Jobs (But not to Brexit)”
I had been doing research for a professional development presentation explaining 21st Century Education and had found myself drawn to multiple off-topic but very interesting articles so I was pleased with the opportunity to cite several of them. And then to my horror, I discovered that spell check had changed the name of one of those authors. Not some random stranger but someone who might actually read my article because he is a work colleague of a family member. Technology had replaced the old saw, “The dog ate my homework”.
Here, in its entirety, is my response: “Big-Picture Thing for Real-World Success” with plenty of links to interesting resources!
If data is an element to be manipulated and computers that learn will reduce the need for programmers among the anticipated 5 million humans that computers will outpace, then maybe the big deal isn’t big data, the internet, or even the potential for lost jobs. It is time to develop a new mindset “that can take account of the meaning of the Knowledge Age and the new contexts and purposes for learning. ‘21st Century Learning’ is a shorthand term that draws together some of the ingredients of this new mindset.”
The need for higher order thinking skills is not new, but the emphasis on them will continue to increase for students earlier and earlier in their education. Digital literacy skills are now as fundamental as the ABC’s of yesteryear.
Michael Trucano who explained in a 2012 article from the World Bank ’ICT literacy’, ‘computer literacy’ and the term ‘digital literacy’ really aren’t interchangeable. For purposes of accuracy, digital literacy is the correct term used by members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
One of the greatest benefits of 21st-Century Learning is also one of the key mandates for successful technology integration, to help students develop their ‘computer skills’ as a natural by-product of technology use as part of their primary learning activities. Traditionally, students have composed their work for an audience of one—the teacher. By using technological resources to establish authentic audiences for student work, we tell students that their work is worth seeing, worth reading, and worth doing. Authentic audiences come in many forms—class presentations, school news shows, school websites, film festivals, literary publications, online publishing through blogs or other web-2.0 tools, contests and competitions, and don’t forget Skyping with other classes around the world or around the corner. We need to proudly broadcast the most valuable results of our student/innovators.
Looking forward, flexibility to move across platforms will certainly be an advantage. Students who are exposed to MS-DOS with Office products, Google’s Chrome and Android, and Apple iOS will be more nimble as they traverse the platforms and technologies deployed by their schools and their employers.
I have to confess that I have a prejudice towards 21st Century Learning. I sought and completed three teaching certifications under New Jersey Common Core Standard 9, “21st Century Life and Careers”. I see a strong synergy between 21st Century Learning and 21st Century Life and Careers. To that end, I would like you to consider how cross-curricular projects and interdisciplinary studies can be vehicles to increased student engagement and greater understanding.
I believe that cross-pollination of 21st Century Life & Careers and 21st Century Learning with each of the core subjects being taught can provide real world connections to the material that students are learning today. And I am not the only one: “The cross-pollination of disciplines is fundamental to truly revolutionary advances in our culture.” Neil deGrasse Tyson
Finally, to the commenter who suggested that we replace the text “lost jobs” with “changing jobs” I have a few observations:
- Perhaps if you sit up high enough to look at a global landscape you might be tempted to think that fewer than two-tenths of one percent of the total global workforce represents a small enough number of workers to be absorbed by other jobs, but the displaced will need to be retrained for those other jobs.
- According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, those 5 million lost jobs exceeds the total 3 million U.S. workers with wages at or below the federal minimum wage. As anyone who’s worked in automotive manufacturing can tell you, the livelihood of displaced auto workers and the viability of their communities are in question.
- The United Nations reports the number of displaced people at a record 65.3 million people in 2015. More than 1 million immigrants applied for asylum in Europe between July 2015 and May 2016. In 2015 more than 1.8 million people crossed the European Union’s borders illegally. So far in 2016, the U.S. had admitted 40,000 refugees.
Every age has seen new technology, and every age has observed a quickening of the pace of innovation, so really, why is the 21st Century different?
“In Industrial Age (20th century) societies people needed abstract – or ‘know what’ – kinds of knowledge. Schools were set up to deliver this kind of knowledge to the young, and mass education began. In Industrial Age schools, trained professionals package “know what’ knowledge into a logical, controlled, cumulative sequence. Students are organized into age-related cohorts who receive this knowledge altogether, in the same order, at the same pace. Industrial Age schools also teach social and citizenship skills. Students are disciplined to follow the rules and respect the authority of certain bodies of knowledge, and to follow the rules and respect authority in the society they live in. The schooling system is managed by a bureaucracy, set up to ensure the efficient and standardized functioning of all parts of the system. The efficiency of the system takes precedence over the needs of individual students. This one-size-fits-all system works reasonably well as a way of sorting people into the different kinds of worker-citizens needed by Industrial Age societies: however, it produces a great deal of ‘wastage’.
Post-Industrial – or Knowledge – Age (21st century) people still need ‘know what’ kinds of knowledge. However we need more than this. We need to be able to do things with this knowledge, to use it to create new knowledge. The ‘know-what’ kind of knowledge is still important, but not as an end in itself. Rather, it is a resource, something to learn (or think) with. In the Knowledge Age, change, not stability, is a given.
Because ‘know what’ and ‘know how’ kinds of knowledge have only a short shelf life, it is no longer viable to ask schools to ‘fill up’ students with all the knowledge they need beyond school. Nor is it viable to teach students any particular ‘one best way’ of knowing – or doing – things. Instead, we need to teach students how to work out for themselves what to do.” The Knowledge Age
Christine Heinicke 