Education 2.0 & 3.0

The world is morphing into a place that no one can foresee. How can we prepare students to live and work in that place?

Not long ago, people could learn job skills and use them indefinitely, but now jobs and skill sets are becoming obsolete at an alarming rate. This means that students, and later adults, need to expect and thrive on challenges and know how to turn failures into stepping stones to a brighter future.

When I was a beginning researcher I wanted to see how children coped with setbacks, so I gave 5th graders simple problems followed by hard problems—ones they couldn’t solve. Some hated the hard ones, some tolerated them, but, to my surprise, some relished them. One unforgettable child rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips, and declared, “I love a challenge!” Another said, “I was hoping this would be informative.” They didn’t think they were failing, they thought they were learning. Although this was years ago, they were already 21st century kids.

What can you do to combat "fake news"? And how do we help kids get savvy about what they're reading? You can start by not lumping all dubious content into one category called fake news, says Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, executive director at the National Association for Media Literacy Education.

Today’s student typically arrives at university equipped with a smartphone, a tablet, and an intimate knowledge of digital devices. University staff can be forgiven for feeling naïve alongside these tech-savvy “digital natives” - but is this perception of students’ skills based on reality?

Yesterday Carnegie Mellon University announced a new partnership with technology company Digital Science. CMU’s Keith Webster describes the mutual commitment to research discovery and smarter workflows that underpins this collaboration, and also outlines some of the ways in which academic libraries have changed; from their more dynamic use of space to the redeveloped tools and services made available to students and researchers looking to navigate the vast information landscape.

If we want to see our digital learning environments evolve quickly and in a particular direction, we need to understand what evolution means. 

Today, the blackboard has become a whiteboard; chalk has become a magic marker; the slates that students used have been replaced by notebooks; and classes have sometimes gotten smaller. Little else has changed. True, some schools are providing their students with laptops, and teachers are increasingly using technology and encouraging collaboration. But the methods are essentially the same—with the teacher dictating learning.

Let's take a look at 10 useful and versatile digital age skills for students to have as they leave school for life and work in our ever-changing world.