Week 2 - Blog Posting #4 -21st Century Skills & Lifelong Learning

It’s simply amazing that even my grandson “Little Michael Anthony (only one year old)” is into the digital age. Back in April when my daughter brought my grandson to visit us in Florida, I was really excited and looking forward to spending time to just holding him and making a fool out of myself doing silly things grandpa’s do with their grand kids.

Although he was very responsive, I felt a little slated when he was more excited to watch his DVD (Elmo) or listen to Sesame Street and actually, mimic words and count (or at least, make sounds like he was counting). Oh well, it only made me love him even more to know that he will grow up to be a “Super-Thinker”. I did not think about it then, but I think about this now and realize that the digital age has evolve to an unrecognizable level (at least to me it has).

I understand education is not delivered today in the same format it did short while ago (perhaps even within this past 5 years). Education is mobile, flexible, adaptive and intuitive. It’s on TV, RADIO, IPOD’s, TWITTER, FACEBOOK, MYSPCE, your-space, everybody’s space… let’s face it, it’s all over the place and there’s no sign of it slowing down. Our youth will continue to learn despite themselves.

But, is there a danger to self-realization and education? I tend to think not. I’m sure there are those that would criticize the new wave of learning philosophies and strategies - and sometimes, their criticisms are rooted in fear alone.

To make a point, I’ve attached a short clip of a video for your amusement. It’s called Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), a science fiction film based upon the 1966 novel Colossus, by Dennis Feltham Jones, about a massive, eponymous American defense computer becoming sentient and deciding to assume control of the world.



Okay, whats the moral of the story? It’s this – you can put any system in place to address how people communicate and learn, but it still needs people to help the system along so that it will always cater to the needs of the people (of the present) and not the needs of itself.

I’d like to think that we could still make our own decisions on how to learn and spread education. I do think that as teachers, we need to find ways to channel the existing energies that our youth have in learning as appose to having our present day Colossus (referring to an un-regulated web 2.0) make up their minds for them. In this way, we guarantee that life-long learning is about “LIFE” and not artificial experiences.

For a further look into other possible ways to add to the life long experiences of a child, I recommend visiting the following links:
Focus on the Family
Lifelong Learning / Continuing Education