Information and Media Literacy - Teaching and Learning in The 21st Century

Teaching and Learning in The 21st Century

Many teachers continue the tradition of teaching the way from the past 50 years. Traditionally teachers have been the experts downloading their knowledge to the open minds of children. Technology and the learning tools it provides access to forces us to change to being facilitators of learning. We have to change the stereotype of teacher as the expert who delivers information and students as consumers of information in order to meet the needs of digital students. Teachers not only need to learn to speak digital, but also to embrace the language of Digital Natives.

Language is generally defined as a system used to communicate in which symbols convey information. Digital Natives can communicate fluently with digital devices and convey information in a way that was impossible without digital devices. People born prior to 1988 are generally referred to as Digital Immigrants. They speak with accents and experience difficulty programming simple devices like a VCR. Digital Immigrants do not start pushing buttons to make things work.

Learning a language is best done early in a child’s development.

In acquiring a, Hyltenstam (1992, as cited in Wikipedia, 2007) found that around the age of 6 and 7 seemed to be a cut-off point for bilinguals to achieve native-like proficiency. After that age, learners could get near-native-like-ness but their language would, while consisting of very few actual errors, have enough errors that would set them apart from the group (para. 4).

Kindergarten, Grade 1 and 2 are critical to student success as Digital Natives because not all students have “Digital” rich childhood. Students learning “Digital” before Grade 3 can become equivalently bilingual. “Language-minority students who cannot read and write proficiently in English cannot participate fully in American schools, workplaces, or society. They face limited job opportunities and earning power.” (August 2006, p. 1) Speaking “Digital” is as important as being literate in order to participate fully in society and have full options to life’s opportunities within North America.

When teachers are aware of the IML capacities that are needed to grow in students, they are seeking to meet the diverse learning needs of students. 21st century classrooms could look like this: read an email from Flat Stanley, a fictional character, look up the weather channel, synchronize calendar time with another class via webcam, practice math concepts at home with virtual manipulative, and use digital microscopes to meet the Kindergarten science PLO to “describe properties of materials, including colour, shape, texture, size and weight.” (BC MoE, 2005a, p 27)

Another free resource for students is the online story of Inanimate Alice. Alice grows up in this new age and the episodes combine music, images and text to stimulate the imagination and involve the learner in her digital world.