OCT Standards and 21st Century Teaching and Learning

Today’s generation of students are involved with social media platforms and electronic devices outside of school.  21^st century technologies make it so easy for young students to share images, communicate, and develop content they create.

In education it only makes sense to embrace these same technologies students use at home and find a way to incorporate it into their learning. Within 21^st century learning and teaching we as educators have a challenging task to navigate. Using a combination of the Ethical Standards and Standards of Practice I wonder if we will be able to find the best approach that can help implement 21^st century tools into our classrooms. As a teacher, I feel the ethical standard I would focus on the most on is Respect and consider how impactful that can be within an online classroom learning environment. I feel there is a lot of open content that is shared through social networking platforms. I would want my students to develop respect towards their own content and work that is develop by their peers. I would want my students to learn and better understand social justice opportunities, cultural contexts of individual’s opinions, and consider the fine line between privacy and freedom and speech. These areas alone are challenging for any teacher to tackle and more importantly I wonder how can we do this? I highlighted ‘we’ because I feel this needs to be a community approach to find the best solutions. I know going forward that my students will continue to have regular use social media platforms and I will seek support from my colleagues and administrators either through ongoing professional learning and professional practice.

I think that I am ahead of the curve with my knowledge and use of social media platforms because I use them every day in my personal life. I feel my biggest hurdle will be finding the best practice of how to integrate these tools into the classroom where students can best utilize them with individual and collaborative learning and maximize their potential with content development.

By collaborating with my fellow educators and school administrators, I think together we can find the best practices and approaches to use with social networking tools. So I would like to ask, do you think the ministry and schools should increase their efforts and focus on proper training for 21^st century learning and technology for teachers?