Page 40 - 21st Century Competencies: Foundation Document for Discussion

38 21st Century Competencies
The innovations that make it easier to connect people, information, and digital resources from across the globe also call for new knowledge, skills, and social behaviours to ensure that these powerful tools are used in ways that promote deep learning and transfer of skills and knowledge.
Lemke (2010) describes the growing influence of informal learning oppor- tunities and the resulting impact on formal education systems as follows:
The democratization of knowledge provides the opportunity for lifelong individual and group learning. For students to leverage that opportunity fully requires critical thinking, information literacy, and a measure of self-direction, all of which need to be developed in part by our school systems. The democratization of knowledge also provides tremendous opportunities for educators to begin transforming their schools into physical and virtual places of 21st century learning. . . . Educators are at a crossroads. They can embrace this democratization of knowledge by authentically connecting their students’ formal and informal learning. Or, they can ignore it and run the risk of obsolescence, becoming certification mills for the interactive learning that takes place out of school. (p. 263)