ANNELIES DE GROOT
Please note the titles of the documents link to the PDF.
21st Century Skills
If the purpose of education is to develop responsible,
involved citizens and workers, it must evolve along with
the society students grow into. Technology has grown to
fill the space of knowledge hoarding, making a classroom
focus on memorization and data computing irrelevant.
Instead, the need for more competencies that allow for
effective use of, interaction over, and innovation with
technology. Therefore, the need for the classroom to
specifically enhance critical thinking, creativity,
collaboration, and communication skills alongside
technological and digital literacies is paramount.
It is not enough to ensure students know how to use technology within the specific parameters of a classroom assignment, but they need to know how to use them with the wealth of information available to them without distinct qualifiers of use. This level of critical thinking is necessary for participants of a society to recognize what information is valuable, why it’s valuable, how to use it, and the best ways of making an ethical impact, and the “Critical Thinking Lesson Plan” below elaborates on how this needed mindset can be integrated into the “Why Use Fake News” lesson plan described on this website (Brown, 2023). Creativity as a skill is not only vital for continued technology use and integration, but it is a skill that can be taught, nurtured, and celebrated in the classroom; technology is currently limited in its use, and it is only with creativity that it will be utilized to its highest potential (Runco, 2023). The “Tech-Driven Creative Project Plan” below discusses the importance of creativity in the classroom and explores how it can be supported throughout the focused lesson plan as well.
The term “21st Century Literacies' is functionally needed to effectively enact the competencies of critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration, and it can be said that the opposite relationship is true as well (Thornhill-Miller et al., 2023). The necessary skills students need to function at their highest potential in an ever evolving technological landscape are needed to navigate the constant inflow of information available.Dr. Jana’s embedded video on “Skills Every Child Will Need to Succeed in the 21st Century” explicates on the realities of how these competencies and literacies are inherently necessary in post-secondary school life, and the “21st Century Presentation” below is a Professional Development created for online tutors, designed to explain the need to and provide practical guidance on how to develop these literacies within the online learning space. Information literacy, data literacy, cultural literacy, digital literacy, and artificial intelligence (AI) literacy are all becoming increasingly needed. The alarming rate at which AI is becoming integrated into daily life is particularly of concern, and I’ve touched base on there in more detail below.
I hope you take a few moments to look over how the “Why Use Fake News” lesson plan can support students particularly in critical thinking and creativity and how online educators can better support their students in developing 21st Century Literacies. As educators, we need to keep in mind that “telling” students about the importance of deeper analysis of sources, the value of inclusion, the power of innovation, and the potential ways to use technology is not enough; “learning activities that involve making bridge the digital and physical worlds and facilitate students’ skill development in academic content areas and technology skills.”(Jin, 2021). We need to both model these literacies and skills and ensure active collaboration among students, technology and ourselves as educators to increase engagement, motivation, and meaning-making. The outlined course and professional development are just examples, and hopefully they spark some ideas about how you, too, can further integrate 21st Century Skills in your classroom.
AI in Education - Ethical Challenges & Best Practices
AI, alongside other technology, is not only going to stick
around, it’s going to evolve. It is a tool, and just like any
other tool, its responsible use must be taught, modeled,
integrated, and assessed. AI Literacy is a distinct capacity
among the 21st Century Literacies that integrates several
others, and there is a specific need to delineate AI use
policies in the classroom and educational institution. While
some institutions have a “zero-tolerance” policy on utilizing
artificial intelligence, that does students disservice. Our
responsibilities as educators are towards supporting students
as functioning members of society, which includes the
continual development of technology and AI. Providing them
with guidelines is also our responsibility: “Grasping the
technical aspects of AI - how the technology perceives the world, how it collects and processes data, and how
those data can inform decisions and recommendations - can help temper the oftentimes inaccurate perception that AI is an all-knowing, infallible force.” (Klein, 2023). AI cannot replace the human element of learning and decision making, but providing individuals with the capability and understanding of how to effectively and ethically manipulate it can enable humans to perform beyond their current capacities.
Artificial Intelligence and data literacy are two core competencies that decision makers need in order to
weed out falsehoods, and accurately and effectively implement change (Schüller, 2022). Clarifying the
ethical implications such as plagiarism, misrepresentation, and personal data use at the beginning of a
class helps guide expectations of students’ use of AI, while opening up the exploration of AI as a tool can
help support the 21st Century literacies of creativity and critical thinking. One example is by integrating AI
use into a rubric and requiring students to disclose AI use in assignments (Chen & Chen, 2024). Additionally,
being transparent about your own use of AI as an educator (whether through automating grading
assessments, creation of problem sets, or as examples of “good” or “bad” work) provides the student
insight into model usage and their own expectations of highly ethical use. Furnishing students with
knowledge on how the AI works and its implications on outcome and society helps reinforce the “potential
of AI-generated content to empower students, granting them agency over their learning journey, fostering
higher-order thinking skills, and introducing innovative educational challenges. (Misha, 2023)” We certainly
cannot ignore students’ perspectives and opinions on AI use, particularly in regards to what it communicates
about them. Students are very aware of the need for humanity in their education, and are wary of having AI
share too much information to their teacher, parents, and classmates without their approval (Holstein et al., 2019).
This is a great launching point for discussions on data security, privacy, and algorithms.
AI literacy should not be taught distinctly through the lens of potential misuse, however: “Data and AI literacy as a future skill of the 21st century serves to promote autonomy in a modern world shaped by data and its application as well as new technologies like AI and is therefore important for all people… data and AI literacy therefore encompasses a set of cognitive, meta-cognitive, affective, and socio-emotional competencies, which are grounded in universal moral values and enable individuals to face the challenges of digital life and adapt to its demands'' (Schüller, 2022). Encouraging students to discuss and explore the ethical implications of AI use can also be used to further develop critical thinking and creativity, providing opportunities to make connections between human use vs. AI use of information and art, where AI shows up in their daily lives, consider how it will continue to evolve, and identify where they as individuals are uniquely placed to take advantage of it as productive and moral members of society.