- Probably the most important thing
for kids growing up today
is the love of embracing change.
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The catch for preparing students
for the 21st century workforce
is how do you get kids that have curiosity,
and a questing disposition.
We have called in the past the gaming disposition
'cause if you look at the disposition
of hard core gamers, such as World of Warcraft,
massive multiplayer games, the surprising things you find,
contrary to what people think,
is these kids first of all are incredibly
bottom line oriented.
They want to be measured because they want to see
how much they're improving, and in fact,
the most common mantra of a real gamer
is if I ain't learning, it ain't fun.
- I don't think any kid is born digitally native.
I think kids are born consuming media,
but I don't think kids are born producing media,
so almost any kid that you look at
and say oh wow this is a great user of digital media,
you can trace back.
There's a parent, there's a, you know, program,
there's something that inspired them
and developed them.
- You know, part of the opportunity here
is learning the content which is very much
the 20th century idea around education,
but in 21st century, it's learning the tools
and the skills of remaking that content
and becoming the creator and the producer.
- We know that the learning outside of school
matters tremendously for the learning in school,
so a lot of what we're trying to say
about kids in formal learning with new media
is part of an already existing set
of understandings that educators have
of the importance of the home environment,
for the peer environment, for the community,
for learning that happens in schools.
The question is how can we be more active
about linking those two together?
- We just assumed when we opened the school
that digital media would be available at all moments,
and we have a technology philosophy
around bring it out when we need it
and put it away when we don't need it.
We have a wireless building,
the kids use laptops, and the reason we do that
is so that we can put them away
when it's actually not the best tool for them
to be learning with.
- We find when we talk about 21st century skills,
people often reduce them to skills for the workplace
and skills involving technology,
and we really are thinking about skills for creativity,
for civic engagement, for social life,
the full range of experiences that young people
will be involved in in the future.
- I think for teachers and schools and classroom learning,
there's still an incredibly important role to play
which is about giving kids access
across the board to a baseline set of standards,
literacies, expectations about what they need
to participate in contemporary society
to be reflective, and to also take opportunity
of the fact that you really have kids and adults
in a shared space that's safe, that's sanctioned,
that gives kids an opportunity to reflect on things
in their everyday life that's not just about them
being immersed in it all the time,
so I think there are incredibly functions for schools.
What we're saying by evaluating in formal learning
is not that we should abandon formal learning,
but that we should get those working together
in a much more coordinated way.
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