Earlier this week I had the privilege of listening to a couple of keynotes from Lee Crockett @leecrockett of the 21st Century Fluency Project http://fluency21.com/.
The five fluencies; information fluency, solution fluency, media fluency, collaboration fluency and creativity fluency are the skills that members of the 21st Century digital world need to possess in order to be successful digital citizens.
Listening to Lee wasn't so much of a revelation, but rather a realization that someone, somewhere might just be on my wavelength. More importantly, he might just be saying it better than me. "He reminds me of you a bit", said a colleague during the break between keynotes. And I take that as a compliment. You see, when some guy called Prensky (Mark, I think it was) started talking about "Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants", not only did he get my goat, but he also built up a little hostility and a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy... pretty much everywhere. I just about scrape into the age range of digital natives (maybe), but the colleague who compared me to Lee was firmly of the digital immigrant variety. As she's pulling out her iWhatever, tweeting, taking notes and making sure her teenage son is doing his homework, it's pretty clear that our world is a 'digital' world. I caught a quote from the keynotes about kids not "going online" because they are online, and that is perfect. My colleague was using the technology to create things - a connection with her son, collaboration with colleagues through Twitter, knowledge through notes. Technology was able to facilitate these, but the skills came from elsewhere.
Children might be in the driving seat when it comes to picking up a new device and making it work, but the real skills that need to be taught with technology have nothing to do with the actual device. Showing children the possibilities of using technology to create, communicate and collaborate are absolutely fundamental, as well as appropriate behaviour and potential dangers. Lee Crockett describes the 21st Century Fluencies as being about "headware rather than hardware" and schools already have amazing hardware - internet connected devices. We've just got to start working on the headware!
5 years ago, when I wrote my Masters dissertation, I argued of the importance of creativity and digital constructionism in the use of technology? As technological development continues to gather pace, it is even more important that we understand that I keeping up with technology is not about what is used, but rather how it is used...
Matt
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