What should a 21st century classroom look like?

I went to the Queens Conference on Education last weekend in Kingston and in the opening activity we were asked to write a list of words that described a 21^st century learner and a 21^st century educator.  I found this comforting because the day before in a Tech Ed. leadership class at Brock we were asked the question, what should a 21^st Century classroom look like? In addition, another one of my classes we created a new teacher handbook and I was responsible for the section on tech tools. With others, I am collaborating to provide examples of helpful tools for new teachers, as well as attempting to answer the question, How can tech tools help to support 21^st century learning skills?

We are all asking the same question. What I am finding is there are many answers and many more ways to organize your answer. At the conference we left it at a short list of five words and moved on to individual workshops that attempted to address this and other compelling issues in education. In Ed. tech class we used Google docs to collaborate a list of words to describe the cultural, physical, academic and technical aspects of the 21^st century classroom. From there we found links to support or explain those words and concepts. In the handbook, I tried to sum up what I knew on the topic into only one page.

There are many ways to answer this question but what I find most helpful is seeing and hearing about teacher’s examples that they are using in the classroom. I use sites such as Pinterest, Livebinder and Twitter because they are rich with examples of 21^st century lessons and ideas. Of course, one must discriminate between what will work for them and what will not, but also they must decide what really supports his/her vision of a 21^st century classroom. I have set my own goal which is to work on really contributing to these sharing communities in the coming months. I want to upload my own lessons and make my own collections that I can share.

-Rachel