“A 21st Century Education”

As part of our continuing investigation into the approaches that support and extend next-generation-learning, Nokia and the Pearson Foundation launched a film series in 2009 that profiles and share thoughts of leading, innovative educators.

The Mobile Learning Institute's film series “A 21st Century Education” profiles individuals who embrace and defend fresh approaches to learning and who confront the urgent social challenges that are part of a 21st century experience.

The series is meant to start, extend, or nudge the conversation about how to make change happen. The series is comprised of twelve films in three categories:

Technology and 21st Century Learning

An initial set of films present profiles of international education figures Stephen Heppell, Alan November, Elliot Soloway and Cathie Norris, and Yong Zhao.

Each looks specifically at the ways in which the latest technologies—including the mobile and digital technologies that are the heart of the Mobile Learning Institute program—can potentially transform young people’s educational experience.

Student-Centered Learning

A second group of films look specifically at ways in which school leaders and educators are testing and proving project-based models for a new, student-centered model of learning.

This collection—which includes profiles of school innovators David “T.C.” Ellis, Jean Johnson, and Larry Rosenstock, as well as a profile of school architect Randall Fielding—explores collaborative, creative, multi-disciplinary approaches to engaging students.

Social Equity and Justice in Education

A final set of films address student-centered learning with a specific focus on the challenges of effectively supporting young people inside and outside the classroom. The films’ subjects—Steve Barr, James Dierke, Doug McCurry, and George McKenna—have each made it a personal mission to create schools that center on deep, sustained relationships between adults and students. They demonstrate how much is possible when people come together to challenge the conventional, sometimes limiting, wisdom about urban public education.

Since launching the film series, the Mobile Learning Institute has invited many of the educators profiled to speak at “Mobile Learning Institute Leadership Summits” now offered internationally as part of the expanding Mobile Learning Institute program.