Anne Fox was our Guest speaker for the June topic. The presentation focused on Mentoring and 21st Century Skills. Anne provided us with some quite thought provoking ideas on the new challenges education is facing regarding the demands of the 21st Century Society.

Anne advocates the mentoring as key for lifelong learning and ongoing further development, not only to learn about ICT skills, but actually to learn with and from others in an continuum process of peer mentoring and support.

Another key thought of this session was the idea that the skills 21st Century learners need doesn’t rely so much on acquiring information, but actually making sense of that information. Anne states that “knowing a fact is no longer impressive; rather important is how we add some critical thinking to it.” In this sense how we manage the abundance of information available these days on the we web is crucial. And that implies new skills, like networking and collaborative work.

Another important idea referred to by Anne Fox during her talk is the fact that Learning Technologies should not play a predominant role in the 21st Century learning and mentoring approach as not to overshadow the pedagogical strategy. Technologies should therefore be used to support new learning opportunities and enable different learning contexts. Still the emphasis has to be on the individual and on learning.

You can access the presentation here.

We look forward to your views. Either submit a comment here or give us a hint where you have published your reflections. ;-)