“Connected learning is realized when a young person is able to pursue a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults, and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement, career success or civic engagement.” Connected Learning, Ito, Gutiérrez, Livingstone, Penuel, Rhodes, Salen, Schor, Sefton-Green, Watkins.
The Sweet Spot
In baseball, there is a term hitters use at the plate, “finding the sweet spot”. That area where you don’t have to do too much and you let the bat do the hard work for you. It’s found about six and half inches from the end of the bat, or the barrel. But what about in learning? Is there a sweet spot? If so, where is it? The learner knows. It’s where interests, relationships, and opportunities intersect allowing learning to flourish.
So what are the trends? As the learner progresses in age, they are less likely to be engaged in their learning. They are even far less likely to be engaged when they have little to no say in what, when or how they learn. Many young learners have no voice in what they learn. They don’t even realize the potential fo their resources, because we have failed to show them. Traditional education has been stagnate. It has been doing an inadequate job of educating today’s learners for tomorrows landscape. “Today’s learner has the world at their fingertips”, Connected Learning. Such a powerful quote from the article, because it is so true. Through digital media and resources connected learning is closing the gap between in school learning and at home learning, generational gaps, and equity gaps. But what are the traditional roles on learners and teachers transitioning to?
Learner
Interest: I Want to Learn This
“I don’t like this. I don’t want to learn this. I wish we could…”
Have you ever thought this? Have you been told this? It’s the statement as a learner and educator we dread. We can flip this to, “I want to learn about this!” Allowing students to take ownership of their learning and drive themselves to understanding is the first step. “Interests foster the drive to gain knowledge and expertise. Research has repeatedly shown that when the topic is personally interesting and relevant, learners achieve much higher-order learning outcomes. Connected learning views interests and passions that are developed in a social context as essential elements.”, About Connected Learning, Hriadmin.
Relationships: Can You Help Me Learn This
“I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know if this is any good.”
Sound familiar? As learners and educators sometimes knowing what to do or what to do next can be very challenging. How do we know if we are getting it? How do we know if we are on track? Connected learning models allow learners and educators to collaborate with a diverse population and receive direct praise and specific feedback on their work. This can help guide and shape their learning and lead to amazing products. “Connected learning thrives in a socially meaningful and knowledge-rich ecology of ongoing participation, self-expression and recognition. In their everyday exchanges with peers and friends, young people fluidly contribute, share and give feedback. Powered with possibilities made available by today’s social media, this peer culture can produce learning that’s engaging and powerful.” About Connected Learning, Hriadmin.
Opportunities: What I’ve Learned Will Help Me With This
“When will I need to know this? How will I use this in the future? Why is this Important for me?”,
More common questions a learner might ask or wonder. I remember sitting in my class wondering when I would need to use anything I learned in calculus or trigonometry. Finding a way to make learning authentic and interest driven while connecting it to their lives will help them realize the value in what they are learning. “Connected learning recognizes the importance of academic success for intellectual growth and as an avenue towards economic and political opportunity. When academic studies and institutions draw from and connect to young people’s peer culture, communities and interest-driven pursuits, learners flourish and realize their true potential.” About Connected Learning, Hriadmin.
From Consumers to Producers: Creating to Learn
“I’m awful at tests. Another quiz? How can I show my learning?”
These statements and questions are some of the few things educators and learners might have running through their minds. Are traditional summative assessments like essays and tests the only ways to prove mastery or learning? They have heavily dominated the assessment aisles and shelves of the teaching conglomerate for decades. In careers are we completing a series of tests and essays? Or are we performing tasks, projects, and assignments? Performance based assessments such as PBL’s make learning authentic and show a different way to display understanding of topics, tasks, and standards. While tests, quizzes, worksheets, and essays can have tremendous value, they should not be the be all end all of assessment. Students are creating to learn, as opposed to learning to create. “Connected learning prizes the learning that comes from actively producing, creating, experimenting and designing because it promotes skills and dispositions for lifelong learning and for making meaningful contributions to today’s rapidly changing work and social conditions.” About Connected Learning, Hriadmin.
We’ve Got a lot In Common: Collaborating to Learn
“Who can help me? Who can I help? Are there other people who share my interests?”
Growing up, your access to collaborators was severely limited due to proximity and resources. The learning environment is not just the office or the classroom anymore. With learning becoming socially embedded across various platforms learners from diverse backgrounds all come together around common goals and interests to learn and create amazing things. “Today’s social media and web-based communities provide unprecedented opportunities for caring adults, teachers, parents, learners and their peers to share interests and contribute to a common purpose. The potential of cross-generational learning and connection unfolds when centered on common goals.” About Connected Learning, Hriadmin.
Open For Business: Learning In Digital Media Environments
“Where can I share my products? Where can I find resources? Is my product useful?”
An often overlooked part of learning and educating is the network. Learners and educators have a massive amount of resources that are readily accessible to enhance their teaching and learning. They also have the platform to showcase their created products and creations to share allowing others to learn form them. Using resources from others to create resources for other learners to use. “Connected learning environments link learning in school, home and community because learners achieve best when their learning is reinforced and supported in multiple settings. Online platforms can make learning resources abundant, accessible and visible across all learner settings.”, About Connected Learning, Hriadmin.
Teacher
“This is a particularly frenetic time for teachers…I am both excited and cautious about the new turns the teaching profession is taking”, Teaching In The Connected Classroom, by Garcia
“It’s my way or the highway!”
“This is the way we’ve always done it!”
“We have too much going on!”
“That sounds nice, but my students couldn’t do that!”
These are just some quotes from teachers who are overwhelmed, uninterested, or simply unaware of the possibilities that digital media and theories such as connected learning potentially possess. As a fourth grade teacher who has taught for 10 years, I can related to a lot of these. I feel overwhelmed and under under-appreciated. Even so, the quote I hear the most that makes me absolutely cringe is, “Let’s not reinvent the wheel”. As if the wheel hasn’t been modified or re-imagined countless times. Imagine driving your car with stone wheels. We are not saying to reinvent the learning culture, but to modify and keep pace with trends and natural progression. What should my role be as a teacher in this learning culture. We encourage. We motivate. We scaffold. We critique. We empathize. We question. We support. We keep the learning environment safe and accommodating. It is my belief that if we relinquish control of certain aspects we will be free to do these things in a much stronger capacity. As educators, we need to shift from the mentality of “my students can’t do” to “what can’t my students do?”
Genius Hour: They Own The Learning
“Students are empowered to be self-directed learners engaging in creativity…they own the learning”, John Spencer.
As an educator I have become very big on personalized learning for my students. I want them to have a voice and a choice in their learning. One thing I have been implementing and experimenting with in my classroom is Genius Hour. Genius hour is a movement that allows students to explore their own passions and encourages creativity in the classroom. It provides students a choice in what they learn during a set period of time during school. Genius Hour is thought to have come from Google. “The search-engine giant, Google, allows it’s engineers to spend 20% of their time to work on any pet project that they want. The idea is very simple. Allow people to work on something that interests them, and productivity will go up. Google’s policy has worked so well that it has been said that 50% of Google’s projects have been created during this creative time period. Ever heard of Gmail or Google News? These projects are creations by passionate developers that blossomed from their their 20-time projects.”
It can only work for adults right? Wrong! Students and learners of varying ages all benefit from this model. In my classroom students get 1 hour per week to work on a passion project through Genius Hour. They find topic that interest them. They come up with a guiding question or a way to make it an authentic learning experience. They research using various resources including digital media. They reflect daily or weekly on the process and collaborate with myself, other teachers, peers, family, friends, and other experts. They end the experience by creating a project of some kind to share with the class, community and even the world.
Is this connected learning?
-Did it start with passion and interest? YES.
-Did it require support? YES.
-Was it academically oriented and provide an opportunity or pathway? YES.
This learning model is one way as a teacher, I see myself help preparing students in this age of education and technology.
Challenges: A Learner Left Behind
Is the juice worth the squeeze? As with many learning models there are hurdles to overcome. The most pressing and obvious one is economic and social inequities. The learning divide is growing. Not every learning community has the access to the technology, training, workforce and other resources that make connected learning so powerful. Opportunity is a huge portion of connected learning, one that cannot be overlooked or taken for granted. Another challenge is from the perspective of how digital media is being used, censored, or valued. Parents, Learners, and Educators all look at digital media through different lenses. There is merited concern over the content that, “may contain more explicit violent, sexual, prejudiced, or harmful content than parents and teachers are equipped to deal with.” Connected Learning. A very valid concern.
Consider this excerpt from the conclusion of the article, Connected Learning, Ito, Gutiérrez, Livingstone, Penuel, Rhodes, Salen, Schor, Sefton-Green, Watkins.
“We have examined learning both inside and outside the classroom. Our argument is that for too many young people—particularly our most vulnerable populations of youth— their formal education is disconnected to the other meaningful social contexts in their everyday life, whether that is peer relations, family life, or their work and career aspirations. The connected learning model posits that by focusing educational attention on the links between different spheres of learning—peer culture, interests and academic subjects—we can better support interest-driven and meaningful learning in ways that take advantage of the democratizing potential of digital networks and online resources. We recognize the grim economic conditions and the challenges that educational institutions face, while at the same time seeking to articulate a positive way forward that mitigates rather than exacerbates today’s educational inequities.”
Connected learning is a process. It is a movement. As such, it is still a work in progress. Educators and learners from all walks of life are its life force. They will modify and enhance the culture of learning model as it progresses.
Resources:
Ito, Mizuko, Kris Gutiérrez, Sonia Livingstone, Bill Penuel, Jean Rhodes, Katie Salen, Juliet Schor, Julian Sefton-Green, S. Craig Watkins. 2013. Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub.
Garcia, Antero, ed., 2014. Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub.
Hriadmin. (2018, October 12). About Connected Learning. Retrieved from https://clalliance.org/why-connected-learning/