Abstract:

Recent educational literature suggests that traditional models of education (and online learning) designed to meet late 20th century aims and purposes are no longer adequate to the challenges, media practices, and opportunities facing 21st century learners – particularly in relation to the transformed domains of communication, work, citizenship, and cultural participation (New London Group, 1996; Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Dede, 2014; Sawyer, 2006; Friesen & Scott, 2013; Jenkins, 2010; Fullan & Langworthy, 2014). There is no shortage of scholarly publications and agenda-setting policy documents advancing the opportunities and potential benefits of collaborative, self-directed learning practices responsive to emerging media ecologies and the technology-rich environments outside of schools (Ito et al., 2012; Jenkins, 2010, Fullan RS), even as student dis-engagement within schools becomes a widespread matter of grave concern.

Common threads linking this literature include descriptions of dramatically-transformed technological, social, and cultural landscapes that require schools to adapt to a proliferation of digital media, and to respond to changing forms of literacy today (i.e., multiliteracies, multimodal literacies, new media literacies, 21st century literacies), as well as respond to the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity characterizing contemporary societies (de Castell & Luke, 1986; New London Group, 1996; Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Jenkins, 2010; Dede, 2014; Ito, et al., 2012). New media, and the complex ecologies in which these media are situated, require us reconsider literacy learning practices, as well as the ways new literacies are embedded and ‘embodied in new social practices—ways of working in new or transformed forms of employment, new ways of participating as a citizen in public spaces, and even perhaps new forms of identity’ (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 5). Chris Dede (2014) and Fullan & Langworthy (2104) stress that 21st century educational transformation is not simply a ‘technology matter’, but a pedagogical one, and that ‘technology used without powerful learning and support strategies (and deep learning tasks) does not get us very far’ (p. 30).

This curriculum development study describes and explains how, and why, a “production pedagogy” (Thumlert et al., 2015) drove the design of an innovative modular online resource for teacher education students that supports inquiry, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing through “critical making” activities in which student-teachers create original digital and/or physical world artifacts (or digital-physical hybrid artefacts) that demonstrate and model understanding and applications of three module themes: Learning Through Game Design; Learning Through Critical DIY Production and Learning Through Digital Storytelling. Conjoining innovative pedagogies with technologies directly links learning with current media tools and informal leaning opportunities transpiring outside of schools, in still-emerging networked spaces. We describe how these ‘media modules’ transformed pedagogical and technology practices, helping teacher education students to effectively address, without any compromise of educational standards, one of the most pressing challenges confronting education in the 21st century: the problem of student disengagement.

Keywords:

Pedagogy and technology, critical making, teacher development, multiliteracies.