21st Century Learning

No one talks about the Millennium anymore, which as I've said a thousand times before, is perhaps a good thing. Once it was 'millennium this', and 'millennium that', and we all got a little sick of it. But the turning of the century was significant if only as an artificial, psychological transition from the 'old' to the 'new'. In the first few years of this new century we have made some tremendous advances in social media use, mobile technology and telecommunication. Educators are putting these tools to use, and the relentless advance of technology seems to be inspiring teachers everywhere to innovate and create new ways of teaching. But as I was at pains to emphasise during one of my talks this week, learning remains the same. We learn because we have to, but we also learn because we want to. The tools are there simply to support, enhance and extend the opportunities to learn.

A report landed on my desktop yesterday, courtesy of my good friends at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona. Entitled 'What does it mean to be educated in the 21st Century?', the report captures the intensely creative two days some of us spent together in Barcelona last November. The name check was impressive: Vijay Kumar, Sugata Mitra, Brian Lamb, Paul Kirschner, Neil Selwyn, Mark Bullen, Debby Knotts, Paul West, Albert Sangra, Ismael Pena, David Wiley.... In fact, many of the people whose work I had been reading seemed to be present at the Open Ed Tech Summit. Some interesting, and perhaps far-reaching ideas were generated and articulated at the event during our discussion session, and these are now presented for you to read. We don't know what will be the final outcome from this report, but we will all be meeting again in Barcelona in October this year, to continue our discussions around how we think education will shape up in the coming years. As ever, your comments on this report are most welcome.

In the pictures: Paul Kirschner, Paul West, Debby Knotts, Brian Lamb and Steve Wheeler