The exciting learning that took place this week for me was to watch (several time, I might say) the "Big Thinkers" videos from Edutopia. I was excited to learn from both James Paul Gee and Sasha Barab about how important it is for today's students to be involved in innovation and creativity and not just memorizing facts from textbooks. Schooling today must be about solving problems, finding solutions and doing it collaboratively. Both video speakers emphasized the use of gaming or new media literacies to reach our 21st century students - gaming creates learning environments in which problems are solved. Textbooks should only be for reference material to obtain more information. In gamining, failure can be a motivator because students will return using what they have learned in failing to succeed the next time.
Teachers must be allowed to be professionalized again and allowed to create their own curriculum instead of being told what to teach and when to teach it. The tools that are used in today's classroom are not the tools student's use outside of the classroom. As teacher's we need to embrace these technology tools and bring them into the classroom and into our student's learning environments.
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