Education in the 21st Century rising to the challenge

Abstract

This article describes the work of the British Council and its co-operation with CERD to rise to the challenge of educating young people in an age of instant, multi-media communication

 

 

Introduction

“We must find ways to more fully engage young people in schools and universities worldwide,  and use their natural talents to help them be better and more effective communicators. This is our imperative and it is global in its implications" (New Media Consortium, 2005:10)

                  

The quote above could have easily have been written fifty years ago, perhaps even earlier. In fact, it is taken from a report published some months ago. In April of 2005, a group of academics from around the world met in San Jose, California, to discuss the changing nature of literacy in the 21st century.

The group were brought together by the New Media Consortium and their meeting was given the impressive title of “The 21st Century Literacy Summit”. What brought these people together was recognition of the fact that many of today’s students are literate in new forms of media for communication.  They are born into a world of remote controls, mobile phones, computer games and the internet. They learn to exploit these for their own purposes as easily as generations before played in the street and became adept at skipping games or hide and seek. Many of today’s students can interpret sophisticated visual and auditory messages, especially as so much more advertising is directed at them and their pocket money. Moreover, children today learn to use these new electronic tools to create their own texts using image and sound. This new generation are referred to as “digital natives” or, as Veen (2005: 1) prefers to call them, "homo zappiens".

The summit analysed the complex nature of 21st century literacy and made recommendations for rising to the challenge of extending it to all learners, helping them to thus realise their full potential in the digital era. What is particularly interesting about the results and the group’s recommendations is that many of them are relevant to any project aiming to improve educational standards. We may be working in a technologically sophisticated environment, but we still need to relate to the human nature of communication and learning. In what follows, I want to highlight this point while commenting on the report’s findings and, in the process, review the educational work of the British Council in Lebanon.

21st Century Literacy and the work of the British Council

21st century literacy is characterised by

• interactive communication of much greater immediacy than ever before
• multi-modal communication building on learners’ multiple intelligences
• creative fluency, not just the ability to interpret
• the ability to generate emotional responses

Moreover, it has the potential to transform the way we learn by being engaging as an activity and thus pleasurable (New Media Consortium, 2005:1-4). With the possible exception of the first point, this could have been written well before the digital age. In fact, in his article on the same theme, Veen (2005:6) makes explicit reference to Summerhill school in England which was established in 1921, the revolutionary project of humanist, A.S. Neill. (For more information:http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/).

The British Council in Lebanon recognises the significance of new technology as an aid to learning and as a learning objective in itself. In our teaching centre, classrooms are equipped with electronic whiteboards which allow learners and their teacher to interact with information in many forms, drawn from computer files or the internet, and to use it to create meaningful text. The resulting classroom experience showcases the state of the art in ICT (information communication technology) and ELT.

In another, more far reaching activity, we are training teachers of Maths, Science and English to incorporate ICT into their lesson planning and classroom practice. The use of new technology as both content and medium of instruction is at the heart of the ICT in Education project. Lebanese teachers take part in over 20 hours of workshops and develop an on-line community of practice with teachers in other countries in the region. Antony Griffiths, British Council trainer on the project, comments, “It’s very encouraging to see how far the trainees have come in such a short time,” and indeed, they have responded with enthusiasm to the materials developed by Imagine Education consultants in the UK.

                 

The Regional English Language Teaching project also aims to develop teachers and learners skills in exploiting new technology. Teachers are being trained in how to access web based resources to get new ideas, become part of on-line professional communities, find and download relevant lesson plans and ready made activities. Four websites have been chosen:

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk;

http://www.Go4English.com;

http://www.britishcouncil.org/languageassistant; and

http://www.learnenglish.org.uk .

In Lebanon we are working with CERD trainer Mr. Anwar Kawtharani to develop and deliver a series of eight workshops to teachers from around the country. If the evaluation of the project is positive, we expect to train some of the teachers to become trainers themselves who can then cascade the same workshops to their colleagues.

Developing creativity, not just the ability to interpret text in all its many forms is the aim of the Innovative Approaches to Learning project. Directed at primary school teachers, the workshops and visits to British and Lebanese schools build bridges between children throughout the region and the UK. Teachers learn, and participate in, activities where children invent a “classmate” who communicates with other such “classmates” at the different schools involved in the project. The children develop their intercultural awareness and the skills of communicating with all and any resources available.

In 2004 we began a three year Teacher Development Project, financed by HSBC bank, to train teachers in the Bekaa Valley. The project started in Baalbeck in cooperation with CERD and the Lebanese Organisation for Studies and Training (LOST). This year we are working in Zahle and the project’s final year will be in Rashaya. The objective is to provide practical teacher development in topics that range from phonemics to mixed ability classes. Between forty and seventy teachers attend sessions which employ a methodology that practises what we preach: creative responses to input; collaborative working; critical thinking and providing for different learning styles and preferences. At the same time, a group of eight experienced teachers from the local schools are taking part in “Train the Trainer” sessions. These future trainers learn to recognise the difference between and what to expect from, people whose learning style is “activist”, “reflector”, “theorist” or “pragmatist”. They have to think about catering for trainees who prefer visual, auditory or kinaesthetic modes of input. Over the course of the year they move from being trained to giving training, working in mini teams to apply new knowledge, such as multiple intelligences theory, to create stimulating professional development workshops which are delivered as part of the overall project.

Finally, we are working with the Association of Teachers of English of Lebanon (ATEL) to promote the Teaching Knowledge Test (UCLES, 2005). Teachers who are members of ATEL receive training in preparation for the test and six experienced teachers are trained to become trainers of this material. As with the previous project we aim to show best practice in action, contributing to teachers’ development and enhancing what ATEL has to offer its members.

Conclusion

The 21st Literacy Summit report suggests that their recommendations will make learning pleasurable because students will be engaged in real life activity, genuine and immediate communication involving multi-sensory input and creative output.  In this article I have tried to show how this is also true of current British Council teaching and teacher training. There is, however, one major challenge,  both for the ambitious goal set by the summit, and for us here in Lebanon advocating change in classroom practices. That challenge is to devise ways to assess learners that reflect how we think they should be learning and what skills they need to be developing. Assessment rules the day, for many reasons, and what examinations require students to do has an obvious impact on how teachers teach. To give a familiar example, if learners are not assessed on their ability to communicate orally, but only their ability to write grammatically correct prose, or to complete gap-fill sentences, then teachers will use speaking practice in class as an opportunity to correct every imperfect utterance. At present, time is just not available for creative alternatives such as assessing portfolios built up over a period of weeks or the assessment of collaborative oral tasks. 21st century education goals will not be achieved without a more imaginative approach to testing.

Finally, as with all change processes, teacher development in Lebanon starts with knowing where we are and where we want to go. The British Council is pleased to collaborate with Miss Samia Abou Hamad of CERD in the management of this process. From what I have seen there appears to be a wide variety of experience and ability in public schools. Teacher training initiatives need to respond to that variety. Those schools I have seen, have all been staffed by hardworking professionals keen to hear the latest ideas yet wise enough to ask searching questions about how realistic it is to put them into practice. That is a challenge, but one which the British Council teacher training and project teams are happy to take up.

References

New Media Consortium, 2005. http://www.nmc.net/pdf/Global_Imperative.pdf

Veen,W.2005.http://www.global-learning.de/glearn/downloads/veen_visions2020.pdf

UCLES.2005. http://www.cambridgeesol.org/TKT

Education in the 21st Century rising to the challenge

Abstract

This article describes the work of the British Council and its co-operation with CERD to rise to the challenge of educating young people in an age of instant, multi-media communication

 

 

Introduction

“We must find ways to more fully engage young people in schools and universities worldwide,  and use their natural talents to help them be better and more effective communicators. This is our imperative and it is global in its implications" (New Media Consortium, 2005:10)

                  

The quote above could have easily have been written fifty years ago, perhaps even earlier. In fact, it is taken from a report published some months ago. In April of 2005, a group of academics from around the world met in San Jose, California, to discuss the changing nature of literacy in the 21st century.

The group were brought together by the New Media Consortium and their meeting was given the impressive title of “The 21st Century Literacy Summit”. What brought these people together was recognition of the fact that many of today’s students are literate in new forms of media for communication.  They are born into a world of remote controls, mobile phones, computer games and the internet. They learn to exploit these for their own purposes as easily as generations before played in the street and became adept at skipping games or hide and seek. Many of today’s students can interpret sophisticated visual and auditory messages, especially as so much more advertising is directed at them and their pocket money. Moreover, children today learn to use these new electronic tools to create their own texts using image and sound. This new generation are referred to as “digital natives” or, as Veen (2005: 1) prefers to call them, "homo zappiens".

The summit analysed the complex nature of 21st century literacy and made recommendations for rising to the challenge of extending it to all learners, helping them to thus realise their full potential in the digital era. What is particularly interesting about the results and the group’s recommendations is that many of them are relevant to any project aiming to improve educational standards. We may be working in a technologically sophisticated environment, but we still need to relate to the human nature of communication and learning. In what follows, I want to highlight this point while commenting on the report’s findings and, in the process, review the educational work of the British Council in Lebanon.

21st Century Literacy and the work of the British Council

21st century literacy is characterised by

• interactive communication of much greater immediacy than ever before
• multi-modal communication building on learners’ multiple intelligences
• creative fluency, not just the ability to interpret
• the ability to generate emotional responses

Moreover, it has the potential to transform the way we learn by being engaging as an activity and thus pleasurable (New Media Consortium, 2005:1-4). With the possible exception of the first point, this could have been written well before the digital age. In fact, in his article on the same theme, Veen (2005:6) makes explicit reference to Summerhill school in England which was established in 1921, the revolutionary project of humanist, A.S. Neill. (For more information:http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/).

The British Council in Lebanon recognises the significance of new technology as an aid to learning and as a learning objective in itself. In our teaching centre, classrooms are equipped with electronic whiteboards which allow learners and their teacher to interact with information in many forms, drawn from computer files or the internet, and to use it to create meaningful text. The resulting classroom experience showcases the state of the art in ICT (information communication technology) and ELT.

In another, more far reaching activity, we are training teachers of Maths, Science and English to incorporate ICT into their lesson planning and classroom practice. The use of new technology as both content and medium of instruction is at the heart of the ICT in Education project. Lebanese teachers take part in over 20 hours of workshops and develop an on-line community of practice with teachers in other countries in the region. Antony Griffiths, British Council trainer on the project, comments, “It’s very encouraging to see how far the trainees have come in such a short time,” and indeed, they have responded with enthusiasm to the materials developed by Imagine Education consultants in the UK.

                 

The Regional English Language Teaching project also aims to develop teachers and learners skills in exploiting new technology. Teachers are being trained in how to access web based resources to get new ideas, become part of on-line professional communities, find and download relevant lesson plans and ready made activities. Four websites have been chosen:

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk;

http://www.Go4English.com;

http://www.britishcouncil.org/languageassistant; and

http://www.learnenglish.org.uk .

In Lebanon we are working with CERD trainer Mr. Anwar Kawtharani to develop and deliver a series of eight workshops to teachers from around the country. If the evaluation of the project is positive, we expect to train some of the teachers to become trainers themselves who can then cascade the same workshops to their colleagues.

Developing creativity, not just the ability to interpret text in all its many forms is the aim of the Innovative Approaches to Learning project. Directed at primary school teachers, the workshops and visits to British and Lebanese schools build bridges between children throughout the region and the UK. Teachers learn, and participate in, activities where children invent a “classmate” who communicates with other such “classmates” at the different schools involved in the project. The children develop their intercultural awareness and the skills of communicating with all and any resources available.

In 2004 we began a three year Teacher Development Project, financed by HSBC bank, to train teachers in the Bekaa Valley. The project started in Baalbeck in cooperation with CERD and the Lebanese Organisation for Studies and Training (LOST). This year we are working in Zahle and the project’s final year will be in Rashaya. The objective is to provide practical teacher development in topics that range from phonemics to mixed ability classes. Between forty and seventy teachers attend sessions which employ a methodology that practises what we preach: creative responses to input; collaborative working; critical thinking and providing for different learning styles and preferences. At the same time, a group of eight experienced teachers from the local schools are taking part in “Train the Trainer” sessions. These future trainers learn to recognise the difference between and what to expect from, people whose learning style is “activist”, “reflector”, “theorist” or “pragmatist”. They have to think about catering for trainees who prefer visual, auditory or kinaesthetic modes of input. Over the course of the year they move from being trained to giving training, working in mini teams to apply new knowledge, such as multiple intelligences theory, to create stimulating professional development workshops which are delivered as part of the overall project.

Finally, we are working with the Association of Teachers of English of Lebanon (ATEL) to promote the Teaching Knowledge Test (UCLES, 2005). Teachers who are members of ATEL receive training in preparation for the test and six experienced teachers are trained to become trainers of this material. As with the previous project we aim to show best practice in action, contributing to teachers’ development and enhancing what ATEL has to offer its members.

Conclusion

The 21st Literacy Summit report suggests that their recommendations will make learning pleasurable because students will be engaged in real life activity, genuine and immediate communication involving multi-sensory input and creative output.  In this article I have tried to show how this is also true of current British Council teaching and teacher training. There is, however, one major challenge,  both for the ambitious goal set by the summit, and for us here in Lebanon advocating change in classroom practices. That challenge is to devise ways to assess learners that reflect how we think they should be learning and what skills they need to be developing. Assessment rules the day, for many reasons, and what examinations require students to do has an obvious impact on how teachers teach. To give a familiar example, if learners are not assessed on their ability to communicate orally, but only their ability to write grammatically correct prose, or to complete gap-fill sentences, then teachers will use speaking practice in class as an opportunity to correct every imperfect utterance. At present, time is just not available for creative alternatives such as assessing portfolios built up over a period of weeks or the assessment of collaborative oral tasks. 21st century education goals will not be achieved without a more imaginative approach to testing.

Finally, as with all change processes, teacher development in Lebanon starts with knowing where we are and where we want to go. The British Council is pleased to collaborate with Miss Samia Abou Hamad of CERD in the management of this process. From what I have seen there appears to be a wide variety of experience and ability in public schools. Teacher training initiatives need to respond to that variety. Those schools I have seen, have all been staffed by hardworking professionals keen to hear the latest ideas yet wise enough to ask searching questions about how realistic it is to put them into practice. That is a challenge, but one which the British Council teacher training and project teams are happy to take up.

References

New Media Consortium, 2005. http://www.nmc.net/pdf/Global_Imperative.pdf

Veen,W.2005.http://www.global-learning.de/glearn/downloads/veen_visions2020.pdf

UCLES.2005. http://www.cambridgeesol.org/TKT

Education in the 21st Century rising to the challenge

Abstract

This article describes the work of the British Council and its co-operation with CERD to rise to the challenge of educating young people in an age of instant, multi-media communication

 

 

Introduction

“We must find ways to more fully engage young people in schools and universities worldwide,  and use their natural talents to help them be better and more effective communicators. This is our imperative and it is global in its implications" (New Media Consortium, 2005:10)

                  

The quote above could have easily have been written fifty years ago, perhaps even earlier. In fact, it is taken from a report published some months ago. In April of 2005, a group of academics from around the world met in San Jose, California, to discuss the changing nature of literacy in the 21st century.

The group were brought together by the New Media Consortium and their meeting was given the impressive title of “The 21st Century Literacy Summit”. What brought these people together was recognition of the fact that many of today’s students are literate in new forms of media for communication.  They are born into a world of remote controls, mobile phones, computer games and the internet. They learn to exploit these for their own purposes as easily as generations before played in the street and became adept at skipping games or hide and seek. Many of today’s students can interpret sophisticated visual and auditory messages, especially as so much more advertising is directed at them and their pocket money. Moreover, children today learn to use these new electronic tools to create their own texts using image and sound. This new generation are referred to as “digital natives” or, as Veen (2005: 1) prefers to call them, "homo zappiens".

The summit analysed the complex nature of 21st century literacy and made recommendations for rising to the challenge of extending it to all learners, helping them to thus realise their full potential in the digital era. What is particularly interesting about the results and the group’s recommendations is that many of them are relevant to any project aiming to improve educational standards. We may be working in a technologically sophisticated environment, but we still need to relate to the human nature of communication and learning. In what follows, I want to highlight this point while commenting on the report’s findings and, in the process, review the educational work of the British Council in Lebanon.

21st Century Literacy and the work of the British Council

21st century literacy is characterised by

• interactive communication of much greater immediacy than ever before
• multi-modal communication building on learners’ multiple intelligences
• creative fluency, not just the ability to interpret
• the ability to generate emotional responses

Moreover, it has the potential to transform the way we learn by being engaging as an activity and thus pleasurable (New Media Consortium, 2005:1-4). With the possible exception of the first point, this could have been written well before the digital age. In fact, in his article on the same theme, Veen (2005:6) makes explicit reference to Summerhill school in England which was established in 1921, the revolutionary project of humanist, A.S. Neill. (For more information:http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/).

The British Council in Lebanon recognises the significance of new technology as an aid to learning and as a learning objective in itself. In our teaching centre, classrooms are equipped with electronic whiteboards which allow learners and their teacher to interact with information in many forms, drawn from computer files or the internet, and to use it to create meaningful text. The resulting classroom experience showcases the state of the art in ICT (information communication technology) and ELT.

In another, more far reaching activity, we are training teachers of Maths, Science and English to incorporate ICT into their lesson planning and classroom practice. The use of new technology as both content and medium of instruction is at the heart of the ICT in Education project. Lebanese teachers take part in over 20 hours of workshops and develop an on-line community of practice with teachers in other countries in the region. Antony Griffiths, British Council trainer on the project, comments, “It’s very encouraging to see how far the trainees have come in such a short time,” and indeed, they have responded with enthusiasm to the materials developed by Imagine Education consultants in the UK.

                 

The Regional English Language Teaching project also aims to develop teachers and learners skills in exploiting new technology. Teachers are being trained in how to access web based resources to get new ideas, become part of on-line professional communities, find and download relevant lesson plans and ready made activities. Four websites have been chosen:

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk;

http://www.Go4English.com;

http://www.britishcouncil.org/languageassistant; and

http://www.learnenglish.org.uk .

In Lebanon we are working with CERD trainer Mr. Anwar Kawtharani to develop and deliver a series of eight workshops to teachers from around the country. If the evaluation of the project is positive, we expect to train some of the teachers to become trainers themselves who can then cascade the same workshops to their colleagues.

Developing creativity, not just the ability to interpret text in all its many forms is the aim of the Innovative Approaches to Learning project. Directed at primary school teachers, the workshops and visits to British and Lebanese schools build bridges between children throughout the region and the UK. Teachers learn, and participate in, activities where children invent a “classmate” who communicates with other such “classmates” at the different schools involved in the project. The children develop their intercultural awareness and the skills of communicating with all and any resources available.

In 2004 we began a three year Teacher Development Project, financed by HSBC bank, to train teachers in the Bekaa Valley. The project started in Baalbeck in cooperation with CERD and the Lebanese Organisation for Studies and Training (LOST). This year we are working in Zahle and the project’s final year will be in Rashaya. The objective is to provide practical teacher development in topics that range from phonemics to mixed ability classes. Between forty and seventy teachers attend sessions which employ a methodology that practises what we preach: creative responses to input; collaborative working; critical thinking and providing for different learning styles and preferences. At the same time, a group of eight experienced teachers from the local schools are taking part in “Train the Trainer” sessions. These future trainers learn to recognise the difference between and what to expect from, people whose learning style is “activist”, “reflector”, “theorist” or “pragmatist”. They have to think about catering for trainees who prefer visual, auditory or kinaesthetic modes of input. Over the course of the year they move from being trained to giving training, working in mini teams to apply new knowledge, such as multiple intelligences theory, to create stimulating professional development workshops which are delivered as part of the overall project.

Finally, we are working with the Association of Teachers of English of Lebanon (ATEL) to promote the Teaching Knowledge Test (UCLES, 2005). Teachers who are members of ATEL receive training in preparation for the test and six experienced teachers are trained to become trainers of this material. As with the previous project we aim to show best practice in action, contributing to teachers’ development and enhancing what ATEL has to offer its members.

Conclusion

The 21st Literacy Summit report suggests that their recommendations will make learning pleasurable because students will be engaged in real life activity, genuine and immediate communication involving multi-sensory input and creative output.  In this article I have tried to show how this is also true of current British Council teaching and teacher training. There is, however, one major challenge,  both for the ambitious goal set by the summit, and for us here in Lebanon advocating change in classroom practices. That challenge is to devise ways to assess learners that reflect how we think they should be learning and what skills they need to be developing. Assessment rules the day, for many reasons, and what examinations require students to do has an obvious impact on how teachers teach. To give a familiar example, if learners are not assessed on their ability to communicate orally, but only their ability to write grammatically correct prose, or to complete gap-fill sentences, then teachers will use speaking practice in class as an opportunity to correct every imperfect utterance. At present, time is just not available for creative alternatives such as assessing portfolios built up over a period of weeks or the assessment of collaborative oral tasks. 21st century education goals will not be achieved without a more imaginative approach to testing.

Finally, as with all change processes, teacher development in Lebanon starts with knowing where we are and where we want to go. The British Council is pleased to collaborate with Miss Samia Abou Hamad of CERD in the management of this process. From what I have seen there appears to be a wide variety of experience and ability in public schools. Teacher training initiatives need to respond to that variety. Those schools I have seen, have all been staffed by hardworking professionals keen to hear the latest ideas yet wise enough to ask searching questions about how realistic it is to put them into practice. That is a challenge, but one which the British Council teacher training and project teams are happy to take up.

References

New Media Consortium, 2005. http://www.nmc.net/pdf/Global_Imperative.pdf

Veen,W.2005.http://www.global-learning.de/glearn/downloads/veen_visions2020.pdf

UCLES.2005. http://www.cambridgeesol.org/TKT