The learing in 21st century becomes so different from the past, which need us to rethink our present schooling and relearn the conception of learning.
OECD, UNESCO, P21 all highlighted the importancs of 21st century skills, but there is no one sigle approach agreed to acceive this goal. They did agree on some characteristics of effective learning environment for preparing these skills. The list of characteristics of of 21st century learning environment may be long and hard to remember, so I want to highlight 4 most important characteristics which can be easily abbreviated as ABCD.
A. Autonomous
Students can actively engaged in learning as an autonomous learner. They can take the control of their learning by setting the learning goals, selecting appropriate learning content and methods with the partner they like.They also take the responsibilities for their own learning.
B. Blended
The learning content should be connected across disciplines and subjects. The experience in and out of school should also be bridged. Blended learning take place where learners learn blended content in a blended way.
C. Collaborative
This characteristic reveals the importance of the social nature of learning. The school should not only promote student’s hard working as a individual, but also provide more chances for students to collaborated with each others. Because the 21st century talents will work in globally collaborative environment where cooperation and communication skills mater very much.
D. Differentiated
Technology rich learning environment give the advantage of supporting each student differently according to their needs and preferences. Learning should be differentiated to help students get most gain from their learning processes, rather than following the same route and pace in a teacher-centered classroom.
Of course, the list can keep growing, but these four characteristics should be recoginzed and put into practice frist by teachers, learners and learning environment engineers.
