The Contempory Learner

 

 The  Contempory  Learner

How will the characteristics of our Gen Z learners depicted in the Meet GenZ video define their engagement in the traditional classroom snippet?

Gen Z learners are always needing engagement as they are constantly engaging themselves through their technology. In the snippet, we can see that they are sitting there making it seem like they are engaged so the teacher is happy, but you can see that they couldn't be more disengaged.  Gen Z learners can be easily motivated to participate, but the teacher needs to be able to do the right things in sequence to get the students to participate. If students know that a teacher will answer questions they ask themselves, then the students will have no reason to answer and they will not answer.

Referring to the ideas presented by Willis and Robinson, is this level of creativity in evidence in the schools I have attended, both as a student, and as a preservice teacher? Furthermore, is this level of creativity in evidence in my University units?

This is definitely true in my experience in schools, which is more disheartening knowing that there are people making videos and books about this stuff all the way back in 2007 and it does not look like much has changed. Still in many schools today, the arts and creative outlets have been pushed down below mathematics and more academic subjects which will get you into university. University is also like this, in that everything at university is academic based with writing and researching being the primary mode of learning in most units, but I can excuse this, as most people attending university choose to and they are expecting and are happy with this mode of learning - those at school did not and do not expect it.

What do I think the implications are of a curriculum that is linear, progressive and aimed at a single learning outcome for the development of both individuals and the society we live in?

The main issue with a linear curriculum that I see is that we are forcing students down a single pipe as to what their future can be, this might be the pipe that some students want to go down, but it is certainly not the pipe that all students want to go down. If you push students to do something they are not interested in, they will lose focus, motivation and can even leave school to chase after what they want which we are not allowing them to do at school. Causing every student to go down the same pipe also pushes the future of society to be single minded and removed diversity which, looking back at history, this is never a good idea as diversity allows us the freedoms that we all have and need.

How can ICTs help me in the development of a professional learning network? How are you feeling about this?

ICT can connect people far more effectively then other methods. Your professional learning network can be created over a matter of days using technology rather than a matter of years using more traditional person to person methods. There is a theory called "Six degrees of separation." - This states that you are linked to anyone else in the world only by 6 or fewer jumps between mutual friends. It is always studied and checked to see whether the theory still holds up as the population grows, but in 2008, it was shown that it is still relatively true.  ICT allows these jumps to occur more frequently which increases our learning network far quicker.