Lasu Learning Lab

 

What do 21st Century Students Need to Learn?

My first few posts on this blog will be assignments for a course I am taking this year entitled “Technology for the 21st Century.”

Question 1: “Describe the abilities and attributes you want students in your school community to develop in order to succeed. Justify your choices drawing on the readings from this module as well as your own Christian perspectives.”

I desire for my students to leave my classroom ignited to be lifelong learners who have the literacy skills (both analog and digital) to find, analyze and synthesize quality information. I want them to know how to effectively use technology and media for God’s glory in their lives rather than allowing technology and media to use them. I want them to learn to submit their hearts and minds to God so that they may live out love to Him, others and themselves.

I have just consumed a set of videos and articles all relating to how the technological and digital revolutions are changing our world, and the implications for how the education sector should adapt to meet the needs of 21st century students. Some of this material was quite sobering. I will share some of my take-aways from this material before discussing how I may see the situation and the priorities differently through a Christian perspective. 

As AiTT Australia emphasizes in their video, the work force of today and tomorrow need a different and more advanced skillset than those of the industrial past (AiTT, 2017). I agree completely with this assessment. Even within my own short lifetime I see a huge difference in how we interact with information and communicate with others (locally and globally), and the tools available to accomplish a myriad of tasks which were only imagined in futuristic science fiction in my childhood.

Although the world demands more and more skills and knowledge of today’s students, the same technology which necessitates this demand is also a great tool for accessing the training to meet the demand. As Soule explains, technology can be our great tool for imparting skills in the 4 C’s which todays learners need: Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking (Soule, 2016).

Beyond the classroom and into the workforce, Swanson shares the same optimism. While technology is enabling artificial intelligence to take over many jobs, we should be able to use technology to solve the new problems it also creates. “We will depend on the very technologies that ‘destroy’ jobs to mitigate the downside and to help build a far larger upside” (Swanson, 2018).

On a more sobering note, Tucker foresees that technology will continue to further divide society into the haves and the have-not’s. “It is no longer a question of what the machines can do; it is a question of what they cannot do, a domain that is getting smaller quickly” (Tucker, 2017). He goes on to claim, “The American economy is splitting in two pieces. One piece—highly educated and skilled— is benefitting hugely from the new technologies I have been describing—at least so far—and the other, undereducated and less skilled, is being put out of work by them” (Tucker, 2017). As technology destroys many jobs, the privileged and powerful few who do hold the jobs at the top of the ladder may not be motivated to empower those left behind.

Each of these sources I have cited are useful and thought-provoking, but I believe their secular perspective is short-sighted. I agree that education should equip students to function and excel in the global economy of the 21st century, but we need to look beyond that to how we are equipping them to function and excel as members of the Kingdom of Heaven, both during their career as soldiers for the King on Earth as it is currently, and as His children for eternity in an Earth made new. Ultimately our students most of all need to be equipped to compete with Love against Selfishness. Machines and AI can take over many of our human jobs, but they will never be able to take over our most important job of truly showing love to other people and to our Creator.