ODYSSEYWARE

In this last installment exploring the recent Horizon Report, 2010 K-12 Edition, by the New Media Consortium, we’ll take a look at the biggest that educators face now and will continue to face into the future.

The report identified the following significant challenges as critical:

1. Inadequate digital media literacy training for teachers

Unlike today’s students, the majority of k-12 teachers today were forced to become more digitally literate as their particular school demanded or as they saw as necessary for their own career path. In order to teach effectively in the digital landscape, teachers must be trained to communicate with their students – in their space, by their rules. While the tools are important, it is a different way of thinking that most defines digital media. This seems more difficult to embrace than the actually skill set.

2. Out-of-date learning materials and teaching practices

Though the importance of change continues to be heralded from the rooftops, the speed at which schools are not only willing, but able to adapt is not nearly adequate. Not only must we address the learning tools we use to educate, but we must also question and rework assessments that tend to measure knowledge as opposed to critical thinking, information evaluation, and creative skills.

3. Lack of agreement on how education should evolve despite widespread agreement that change is needed

Because the current model of educating has been in place for decades, it’s difficult to imagine what the next iteration of “schools” will look like and even harder to agree on what it should look like. Until some consensus is reached, progress will remain slow and unfocused.

4. Failure of educational institutions to adapt to information education, online education, and home-based learning

Not only has the model for education been in place for decades, but the definition of classroom seems embedded into the way we define education. Technology and the changing needs of students make a variety of options available through which to deliver information and facilitate learning. To remain relevant to students, the school setting must also adapt.

5. Lack of support or acknowledgement for forms of learning occurring outside the classroom

Because so much emphasis is placed on core subject areas and college and career readiness, learning that takes place outside the classroom and outside traditional disciplines is often discounted and discredited as frivolous. The discoveries that create a love of learning are buried under the acquisition of facts and figures. Students disengage.

At ODYSSEYWARE, we continue to improve our curriculum to make it relevant, with a quick learning curve for digitally-challenged teachers and students with individual style of learning. What are you doing in your school to solve these challenges now and in the future?

Source: 2010 Horizon Report Johnson, Laurence F., Levine, Alan, Smith, Rachel S. and Stone, Sonja. 2010 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2010.