Components of 21st Century Learning as a tanka poem

Now, there it finally is: Four Components of 21st Century Learning (pdf). Done and sent!

Here's the complete study, crystallized in a tanka poem:

Nature of edtech 

has components like seasons: 

technical, social, 

epistemological, 

and cognitive. Use em all!

Here's a longer version, shortened from the Abstract:

As the Learning Solutions team that I work in was to arrange a new course called "Edutech bootcamp" for teacher trainees at the time of finding a research subject for this study, I felt it fitting to apply a pedagogical model and to evaluate how it would help us in planning and analysing the course. 

I ended up using the pedagogical infrastructure framework developed by Minna Lakkala in her dissertation. I decided to study the framework itself: How practical and comprehensive would this model be in planning the course? What is my opinion of Lakkala's model compared to other similar models like TPACK and Learning by Design? 

The pedagogical infrastructure framework is a useful all-around tool that pays attention to all the essential spheres of a socio-constructionist learning process. It is particularly useful in pinpointing the areas in need of improvement, like the cognitive component in this case of Edutech bootcamp. 

All in all, the teacher's experience and didactic competence are more essential factors for a successful course than choosing the right model or framework.

Future of education right here, right now

I'm reading this a forum discussion about the future of education while watching presentations by groups of teacher trainees on a course on special education & multi-cultural issues in the Uni of Helsinki.

E.g. this presenting group played a difficult situation at school but finding the solution was left for the audience (other students) by making them to choose a solution from a matrix of nine approaches. Audience votes were added to Excel and the pie diagramm showed the popularity of solution alternatives immediately. That was completed with further discussion.

And now, the next presentation is an entertaining video juxtaposing Indiana Jones and ordinary teachers that the students have interviewed. (great editing!) Question is, are teachers the heros who have to solve the problems alone? 

A very student-centric way, and a most suitable way to organize a mass course on a topic that requires personal involvement. So, right now I feel that this is the future of higher education happening today. What surprises me most, is that we're studying in this old-fashioned learning environment.

Four Components of 21st Century Learning

Now, I've written and revised it. Phew! Must take a break now and place it far off for a few days before the final round.

Here's a link if you are eager to read it now when your comments might make a change:

Four Components of 21st Century Learning: Applying 'Pedagogical Infrastructure Framework' on a Course on Educational Technology (pdf in my Dropbox via bitly, updated 16th Oct)

It's about the Edutech bootcamp that I wrote about three weeks ago.

What's the recipe for a community of practice?

Last week's Friday afternoon at InnoOmnia, Espoo. Small groups of adult students wandering around the vocational institute. They had gotten keys to access almost any space to watch and observe, to ask and interview, to learn and to get a grip on the community.

These teacher trainees were on Edutech bootcamp, a part of their vocational teachers' pedagogical studies. They had been learning education technology and pedagogy for two days, and this was their concluding task.


The trainees formed groups of three, got a key and an iPad, and started by consulting the course blog about what does "community of practice" mean, how can it be used as a support in learning, and what they are exactly expected to dig out in their own task.

There were two questions the students had to find answers for:

• How do CoP principles show up in InnoOmnia? 
• How does technology support the CoP in InnoOmnia? 

By letting the students do their learning in an authentic context, by letting them decide over their task management themselves we wanted to get them engaged, and to take the ownership of their own learning. By making them to analyze and evaluate InnoOmnia's practices and to create an unconventional learning outcome, we wanted them to use also their higher-level thinking skills (as they are classified in Bloom's taxonomy).

As their just-started studies are mainly carried out as distance learning, by such a procedure we wanted to support the creation of their own common practices, and their own community of practice.

Three groups interviewed students, entrepreneurs and teachers in InnoOmnia on video (above and eg. this and this). One group took pictures and made blog entries, another a Facebook page, and yet another a comic strip.

Further reading on communities of practice in education and on using technology to support them: 

• Barab, S. A., & Duffy, T. (2012). From Practice Fields to Communities of Practice. In D. Jonassen & S. M. Land (Eds.), Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments (2nd ed., pp. 29–65). 
• Hoadley, C. (2012). What is a Community of Practice and How Can We Support It? In Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments, see above (pp. 286–299). 
• Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2011). New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning (3rd ed.). See example pp. 232-245.
• Lloyd, A. (2010). Lessons from the workplace: Understanding information literacy as practice. In Practising Information Literacy: Bringing Theories of Learning, Practice and Information Literacy Together (pp. 29–50). 

Edutech bootcamp: Studying learning, or learning to study

As the teacher trainees start the Edutech Bootcamp tomorrow, they will participate a course that is both thoroughly planned and quite out of the box.

I'm happy and proud of having a major share of designing and carrying out this course on educational technology. It's not only my work but it also doubles as my advanced practice teaching, it triples as a topic for my seminar work, and furthermore, I'll squeeze my subject didactics coursework out of this.

Currently, I'm doing a seminar work at the Uni of Helsinki about applying a model called "pedagogical infrastructure framework" on our bootcamp. This is what my initial research plan looks like now.

The pedagogical infrastructure framework is elaborated in Minna Lakkala’s thesis. Here in Google Docs you can check out how I've thought we'll apply technological, social, epistemological, and cognitive approaches to the course.