Technology Literacy in the 21st-century

John Henry ©1996, United States Postal Service. All Rights Reserved.  Used with Permission.

In the book 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn, edited by James A. Bellanca, we read of a quickly changing educational and employment milieu.  In our world, the power of the individual is replaced by computing power.  If John Henry is the allegory of 19^th and 20^th-century change, then we don’t need to look further than Craigslist to find ours. There is a subtext in the job descriptions that suggests a technology revolution in our workplaces that reaches further down into lower wage jobs than ever before.  Computing power subsumes, forgive the euphemism, human capital, but to point of replacing creativity.  This is assuming that you can find work at all, because even the definition of creativity is changing.

In our society, we have even designated a de facto Luddite caste.  As early in the 21^st century as the period from 2008-2011, people 50-61 years old, who were unemployed for longer than just 6 six months were 20% less likely to become reemployed than workers who were 25-34 years old.  To me, this says something, about the nature of technology education; that it is, or is perceived to be, for older adults, available solely, if at all, through employee training.  Further, that on average, we might deduce, if technology literacy is, in fact the key factor that employers are considering when reviewing older applicants resumes, a six month gap in employment, or termination of previous employment, is perceived precipitate, or precipitate from, technology illiteracy (or else flat out replacement of one’s function by technology). 

As educators in the 21^st century, the information century, but products of, either 20^th-century education or recalcitrant 20^th-century education practices, we ponder the role of technology literacy in the employment world and in teaching our standards.

I would like to discuss a few insights from the text 21^st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn.  The text argues that teachers should be considering that 21^st-century jobs require “expert thinking and complex communications tasks that computers cannot do”, and that expert thinking is comprised of pattern recognition and meta-cognition.  Here the concept of metacognition is really that which cannot be whole subsumed by computing power, it is the creative aspect that adapts to encountered problems.  Here is what the International Society for Technology Education has to say about creativity, which is one of their eight standards.  I noted that one component of their standard for Creativity and Innovation is to construct knowledge.

On this point, the authors of 21^st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn seem to agree.  This construction of knowledge is a large part of what separated 20^th from 21^st-century education, as they point out, “people are- for the first time in history- inundated with enormous amounts of data that they must access, manage, integrate, and evaluate”.  Further, they observe, that when searching for relevant information online, “many of these resources are off-target, incomplete, inconsistent, and perhaps even biased”.  To this point, the authors feel, this is where the old, 20^th-century paradigm fails to rise to the new challenges.  “Conventional, 20^th century k-12 instruction emphasizes manipulating predigested information to build fluency in routine problem solving, rather than filtering data derived from experiences in complex settings to develop skills in sophisticated problem finding.”  So, in the 21^st model of education, students are (proportionally commensurate with the demands of changing workplaces) creating knowledge from the large volume of information available online, and defining a problem that requires solving. 

21^st-century students are defining the problem, not just problem solving.  20^th-century problem-solving skills suffered from a difficulty of transfer to real world applications, largely because it was abstracted from transferable scenarios.  21^st century will not displace equivalent amounts of existing educational standards (core or content); rather better pedagogical methods are expected to displace adequate time to teaching these standards.  So, the idea of 21^s- century education is not to produce adroit researchers and media creators, but to involve students creatively through the production of knowledge, and the solving of problems related to that knowledge.

Education in the 21^st century, and technology literacy generally, will require collaboration through digital communications to create knowledge.  Shifting from education that is focused on intrapersonal communication to digital communication has benefits for teachers, and may be considered a strategy for more efficient teaching.  In other words, there is positive feedback. Consider, as the text’s authors do, that online discussions, like forums, emails, comment sections, or Wikis, are examples of “mediated dialogue” with a shared “shared design”.  Contrary to what is often claimed of digital communication (i.e., that is frivolous and unfiltered, because it is impersonal), it has an intentionality that is lacking in face-to-face communication, which often drifts and rarely has an expressed purpose.  Since it may elapse over such an extended period of time, with an accurate record of its’ content standing in wait for further contribution, digital communication has a greater potential to accumulate valid well-researched information.  ISTE standards for Communication and Collaboration stress also the goal of producing original works, such as creating knowledge, and solving problems.

Standardized testing of 21^st-century skills is lacking, and there is a perverse incentive to use technology to speed the teaching or drilling of skills that are tested.  “Current approaches to using technology in schooling largely reflect the 20^th-century pedagogy of applying information and communications technologies as a means of increasing the effectiveness of traditional instructional approaches”, points out the text.  There are serious logistical barriers that prevent the standardized testing of ISTE standards, or even the technology standards that are emphasized in the Common Core.  Yet, in my opinion, technology literacy standards, and 21^st-century learning, in general, is not immeasurable, ephemeral, nor subject to daily revisions to keep pace with the latest technologies.  The ISTE Standards are broad guidelines that will improve the quality and scope of education, they are not antithetical to accountability because they are require constructivist and collaborative approaches.

Assignment 1A, 21st Century Experience as a Student and Educator

The concepts of linear and procedural learning, as opposing paradigms of learning, help me cope with what seems like the insurmountable task of learning new technologies.  One thing that has eluded me is the fact that I use, or consume many of the products (software/applications or hardware) that I feel so intimidated by learning further, and therefor have a cursory knowledge of them that would help me produce or improve them, if I only knew how.  I am, at this point, the “elegant consumer”, but with all that consumption comes knowledge, historical perspective maybe, of the recursive process through which a lot of this technology has evolved.  As a 28 year old, I can recall the evolution from personal computer to modern mobile device, and all my favorite software that came in between. 

As Mark Surman pointed out, a person’s point-of-interest directs, or motivates, technology learning.  For me, I see the primary function of Internet technology is as a communication tool.  As a young student, in grade 8 or 7, my point-of-interest was skateboarding, and I recall learning how to use very early forums of web-development tools to create websites to post digital photography of skateboarding (my friends, that sort of thing).  So, I remember that merely learning new technologies for their own sake does not motivate technology learners.  Personally, the act of mastering technology literacy (especially code) seems like climbing an ivory tower.  Partially, this reflects my age, though not necessarily my generation.  When I was younger, the emphasis of my formal technology education was in using it, playing the part of elegant consumer.  I was proficient in using word processors, Power Point, some digital photography/video editing software tools, Internet search tools, and online academic journals.  I must admit, I feel this is still where my emphasis falls, in using tools proficiently (currently I am trying to learn to better use Cloud storage). 

Growing up, and this is just me speaking for myself here, coding, despite having many friends involved in the field, felt very complicated; and if I understand my history, it was in fact far less user friendly, even as late as by my freshman year of college (2005).  I was always a poor math student, and so coding seemed, still seems out of the question for me to learn.  Though, again, for all this talk, I did take a coding class in my freshman year of high school (2001!), and I remember doing ok. 

Throughout my time in college, earning my B.A. in English, I saw my education in digital literacy as focused more on learning advanced search tools when using academic journals.  Also, it involved learning to be a responsible digital citizen through proper citation methods and vetting of online text resources prior to their citation in my work.  Though, with my interest in film and creative writing, I would have liked to learn more about the creative application of video editing technology. 

Today, as a prospective teacher and student (of new technology) this is my point-of-interest, which should motivate me to learn new video editing software tools (I know how to use some older versions).

Today, I am not yet a teacher, but I do work in an after-school program with primary school students (though I am working toward my credential in secondary education, in English Language Arts).  With my students, I work in the computer lab with several educational resources.  One of my favorites is the website Makebeliefscomix.com, which helps students create comic strips.  This is a fun way for them to learn to tell simple stories, explore new vocabulary, and to play with dialogue, context and graphic representations.  I am so far pleasantly surprised the amount of pre-literate skills that they possess, those mentioned in the TEDx video. Ignorance of these is a major impediment for older people who are learning new technologies. 

My students rarely ask for my help, they are not afraid to make mistakes, and largely intuit the functions of the website on their own (despite limited reading skills).  My function is to find ways for these students to apply those skills to learn new things.  Currently, after witnessing a game they call Chess, played on a Chessboard, with Chess pieces, following the laws of anarchy, as well as some-borrowed Checkers, I am thinking we need to find a good resource to learn the actual rules of Chess online.  By second-grade, these students gawk at a world before the Internet, though I’m sure they’d do the same if they understood more about it’s full potential.