Page 36 - 21st Century Competencies: Foundation Document for Discussion

34 21st Century Competencies
The Role of Technology: In addition to developing students’ technological skills, technology-enabled teaching and learning practices play a significant role in supporting the development of the full range of 21st century competencies.
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21, 2009) draws on a number of research papers to identify the most important ways in which technology can enhance student learning and promote mastery of 21st century competencies. These include:
• increasing student engagement and achievement. Research shows that students are more engaged, intrinsically motivated to learn, and more successful when they can connect what they are learning to situations they care about in their community and in the world. Technology can provide access to real-time data, simulations to situate learning in the real world, and opportunities for students to link learning to their personal interests. Technology also provides for multiple and varied representations of complex concepts. Dede (2014) explains that digital teaching platforms provide “visual representations that students can use to study new concepts and demonstrate their own ideas, and students can manipulate those representations in order to see how other, contrasting ideas play out” (p. 9). In Ontario, virtual manipulatives are among the digital learning resources available through a provincial virtual learning environment that is accessible to all schools. Students are able to use virtual manipulatives, augmented realities, and other digital tools and resources to “master abstract principles and skills through the analysis of real-world situations” (Dede, 2014, p. 2).