Innovation Through Technology

Innovation Through Technology 

Innovation is not questioned in today's 21st learning century. It is an essential tool to engage students into a participatory- dynamic learning process. It is a new educational trend that allows knowledge to flow through images, videos, blogs, charts and graphs, games, social networks, etc. All of these technology tools provide and support verbal communication and traditional and learning approach.  Our students are immersed in this interactive world where there is an instant communication and feedback. That's why schools need to incorporate the innovations of visualization, democratization of knowledge and participatory cultures in their learning curriculum expectations.

Visualization is essential to make student have balance knowledge of text and sounds and multimodality (text or sound and visuals together). On the other hand,, to teach students to communicate with visuals, to become critical and creative thinkers and to get information from them as potential visual consumers but most important to understand the information given throughout visuals.

Democratization of Knowledge is allowing learning in formal and informal scenarios the possibility of learning by their own according to their learning necessities. This is possible with technology devices that provide fast net connections to different digital settings at low costs. Some clear examples of these are interactive websites, Google, YouTube, iPod, and video or music files.

Participatory Learning is a key in the learning community because communication in the Web 2.0 flows in all direction and back and forth and it is not linear like long time ago, thanks to the accessibility of the internet. Making learning active and participatory by listening, discussing, viewing and sharing to others; through different technological tools. Students best learning environment will be measured with the way they are able to work in teams, participate in a community and the access and feedback gotten from their network.

These three innovations of the 21st Century learning are issues I live daily with teenagers in a middle school environment. They are probably exposed to different technological tools for 12 hours in a day without even noticing this. My role as educators is to integrate Visualization, Democratization of Knowledge and Participatory Learning is to engage students learning with their needs to motivate critical thinking and creativity to encourage teamwork and multimodal teaching. Also to continue teaching students to interfere and learn from visuals aids, make good judgments on these and to create visuals to pursue learning. Remembering that visualization learning occurs not only on school grounds but mostly outside of it and it is our job as educators to be aware that if we give a good network and internet basis, knowledge will reflect socially, politically and most important economically bringing up nations on learning perspectives.

So far I can't address any change because the students are in the middle of this process as well as teachers. I still would need more time to see the results of my good guidance to be able to advice changes. Just remember that learning flows a classroom and we should be prepared with the correct technological tools to make it happen!

By:perezhilton.com
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Bibliography

Lemke, C. (2008). Multimodal Learning Through Media: What the Research Says, Retrieved from
        Cisco: http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/education/Multimodal-Learning Through -  
        Media.pdf   

Lemke, C. (2010). Innovation Through Technology. In J. Bellanca, & R. Brandt (Eds), 21st Century
       Skills.Rethinking How Students Learn. Bloomington, Indiana: Solution Tree Press.Retrieved from      
       http://files.solutiontree.com/pdfs/Reproducibles_21CS/chap11_innovation_through_technology.pdf