21st Century Learners do we learn differently?

Most of us will have a mobile phone with the capability to access more information than is held in a university library, the idea of classroom as the place you go to acquire knowledge is out dated. However, education establishments such as schools and universities, still have a very important role to play as the start point and guidance of inquiry, so the role of the educator is not yet defunct!

As a student you are an expert in your own learning; you know how you learn best, and what you are most interested in. An interest in learning is the key characteristic that teachers share with their students and education establishments, at all levels, stand to benefit from working with students rather than performing for them. With the help of technology and radical re-imagining of time and space, lessons no longer have to adhere to the ‘one size fits all’ approach characteristic of the traditional system. Students stand to gain a lot from more personalised lessons and greater autonomy over their own learning.

But do we actually learn differently?  Most certainly the access to information is different; we are the ‘instant access generation’.  In my house certainly, if someone asks a question that we can’t answer we simply ‘Google it’, if we need to see how it is done we ‘Youtube it’, and if we want advice we ‘Tweet it’.  It can easily be used to challenge too, so that a simple discussion can quite easily turn into informed debate!  This is happening in classroom too.  My second year undergraduate students were debating the value of gaming in education.  The first speaker had made their opening comments, based on literature gathered both online and from other sources, the challenge became much more substantial when the opposing team where researching the comments in real-time.  A very interesting debate ensued!  So it’s not the way we process the information that is different, but our needs have changed.  We have easy access to vast amounts of information, far more than ever before.  As educators our job is to teach our students to be more discerning with the information they find as the need to amass it is less vital, more necessary is the ability to locate, evaluate and disseminate.

It is from this that I begin to assess the range of Google Apps for Education as it seems to be a hot topic in education at the moment. Apparently hundreds of thousands of schools are adopting this free resource which is changing the way teachers and students collaborate on work and share information.  - See more at: http://tinyurl.com/8254ytd.  There is a good write up at http://edgalaxy.com/google-for-education complete with suggestions for use and Twitter feeds for feedback, what more can you ask for?