21st Century Learning and Teaching

This booklet highlights some of the many EU initiatives and co-funded research and innovation projects which address societal challenges through digital innovation, such as better healthcare, independent living for the elderly, delivering effective public services, energy saving, smart transport, secure internet, inclusion, preservation of cultural heritage.  

A showcase of policy actions and projects illustrates what role ICT plays in addressing societal challenges and how ICT research and innovation result in very practical applications that help improving quality of life, push productivity and competitiveness and lead to new opportunities for EU citizens and businesses.

Sociology is the scientific study of human society[1] and its origins, development, organizations, and institutions.[2] It is a social science which uses various methods of empirical investigation[3] and critical analysis[4] to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity, structures, and functions.

A goal for many sociologists is to conduct research which may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, while others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes. Subject matter ranges from the micro level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems and thesocial structure.[5]

Buzz used to be an intangible — something you just felt. No longer.

===> Look for online "curators." Experts who collect and share "best of" resources on specific subjects are analogous to museum curators who carefully choose which pieces to display. <===

In social media, curators do a good job of keeping track of people's conversations as they occur in online social spaces and quickly channeling that information, in some cases using tools such as Storify to distill conversations.

For example, the World Economic Forum in Davos uses Storify to put together summaries of its events. Canadian financial cooperative Desjardins wanted to learn about new electronic currencies, so it tracked a UK community dedicated to crowdfunding and sought experts in Africa on mobile-payment practices. The company prefers such information-gathering methods to relying on market-research firms.

===> If you can find the right set of curators to follow, you can reduce your reliance on searches of traditional databases and publications. <===

Sugata Mitra is named the TED Prize winner at TED2013. He shares his wish—for a school in the cloud that encourages self-learning.

Mitra has a history of research to back up this wish. In 1999, he began what he calls his “hole in the wall” experiment. He carved a hole in a wall in a Delhi slum — about three feet high — and placed a computer in it. Kids had gathered around within a matter of hours and asked Mitra questions about what this thing was. He responded “I don’t know,” and walked away.

===> Soon the kids were surfing the internet — and teaching each other how to do it more effectively. <===

Mitra repeated the experiment 300 miles away, where computers even less familiar. He installed a mysterious computer on the side of a road. A few months later, he returned and found kids playing games on it.

Remembers Mitra, “They said, ‘We want a faster processor and a better mouse.’”

Another thing these kids said that was music to his ears:

“You’ve given us a machine that works only in English, so we had to teach ourselves English.”

Mitra says, “It was the first time I heard the words ===> ‘teach ourselves’ <===  said so casually.”

It’s important to get students excited to learn outside the classroom. From AP to at-risk youth, a hands-on approach levels the playing field.

Here are some resources that support The Internet & Social Networking for Enhancing Social-Emotional Learning presentation. Introductory Video Slide Deck Technology Enhanced Social-Emotional Ac...