Making STEM Relevant for the 21st Century – A Free Webinar Oct 25th
It’s time we start talking differently about STEM learning. This free webinar can get us started…
(cross-posted from Guide 2 Digital Learning)
I’m not really sure when we’ll stop talking about “21st Century Skills”. Perhaps when we come to grips with the fact that the 21st century is already 10% used up, yet too many students are still being prepared for the 20th century – if even. Reading Brad Flickinger’s recent post “A Teacher in a Flat World”, you’d think he and I were conspiring (see my recent post, “4 Reasons Why Global Fluency Matters”). You’ll have to trust me that we have not conspired – but clearly we are both noticing with increased clarity what a “21st Century Education” is all about.
It’s true that “21st Century Skills”, as commonly described (synthesis, teamwork, digital literacy,…) are not actually new to the 21st century. What is more significant, however, is that the world has significantly changed since we said goodbye to the 20th century. For example, Twitter didn’t exist before 2006. Yet now we’ve seen the power of real-time connections between people with common interests, from helping educators expand their professional learning networks to supporting the growth of democracy. This shift is dwarfed by the 800 million Facebook users who since 2004 have found a new way to connect – and a new conception of what a connected world looks.
So what does this have to do with STEM learning and teaching? As I mentioned back in January, we need to put the (+) in STEM and make the experience more global (ref: HP Catalyst Initiative – Bringing STEM into the 21st Century). But what does this look like? The members of the Catalyst network are exploring the future of STEM education, and the upcoming (free!) webinar is the latest opportunity for you to hear about real innovations in real classrooms…
On Tuesday October 25th at 7am Pacific Time, the New Media Consortium is hosting three Catalyst projects who will share their efforts to transform STEM education:
PEDAGOGY 3.0 – Teaching STEM in the 21st Century
- The “Design Corps” project from the Learning Games Network (Cambridge, MA, USA) is all about project-based, game-based learning – and teaching teachers how to do this effectively
- "Using Technology to Support Teacher and Student Conceptual Learning in Mathematics and Science" is a project at Kenyatta University (Nairobi, Kenya) that is focused on pre-service high school teachers
STEM-preneurs – Making STEM more relevant by including “entrepreneurship”
- "STEM, Social Entrepreneurship and Glocaledge (Global Practices Applied to Local Knowledge)" is a project of the Learning Links Foundation (India) that is showing students how they can use technology to become social entrepreneurs.
This projects are just a sampling of the 50 projects underway within the HP Catalyst network – and all of them make me very optimistic that a 21st century STEM education is not only possible, but the models are already making an impact…
If you’d like to join the discussion live, visit the Catalyst Events page for details. The free webinar will take place at 7am Pacific Time on Tuesday the 25th – and it will be recorded for those of you who cannot attend in person.
