The learning society

No wonder every aspiring politician wants to be the "education leader," and "knowledge management," "lifelong learning," and "learning organisations" are phrases common enough in business today to be the subjects of Dilbert cartoons.

As we navigate our way along this new and bumpy road into the Knowledge Age, we need to take a closer look at what the future will expect of us what new skills, knowledge and values all learners will need to acquire, and all knowledge workers will need to apply to their work.

The learning formula
So what are the key 21st Century, Knowledge Age skills, the mastering of which will help ensure everyone's success in the future?

The table shows seven C's, along with the basic three R's of reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic, can be considered the new basics, the new formula for success and achievement in our times.

Attaining and applying the product of both the basic 3Rs and the higher level 7C skills will comprise the new, expanded definition of learning achievement, and measuring and testing these skills should be the goal of accountability efforts in education and training.

As we look over the list of skills above, an unsettling set of questions arises: How will we ever get to these new skills when we're still struggling with doing a good job on the three R's? Where are these additional skills being learned in our existing education system? Where are the standards that set the learning of these skills as goals? Where are the tests and assessments that are measuring the learning of the full complement of these skills? Where are the curricula and learning programs that are building these skills from the earliest ages right through to adult education? And where are the technology-enhanced learning programs that are providing personalized curricular programs geared to the strengths and weaknesses of each and every learner so that we truly leave no child behind?

In short, our schools and education system were designed for an age that has just passed. Though highly effective for the previous Industrial age, and still effective for some of the old demands that persist in our times, our world now requires inventing new approaches to preparing our children and workers for a different future.

The top 10 challenges
So how do we continue to invent this future together? The following ten-point "challenge list" is offered to all who want to dig in and lend a hand in shaping a better future for all learners and workers:

1. Personalised and universally designed learning
With the most diverse populations of learners in history, we must go from "one size fits all" to "the right size for each one" using technology to help personalize, differentiate and deliver a more flexible, universally designed curriculum. We must move what we've learned at the margins to the mainstream and treat each learner as "special", giving each student a profile-based version of learning resources that best matches the individual student's sensory and cognitive abilities, learning styles, level of competence, interests and preferences.

2. Online collaborative learning environments
We must make the web a great place for learning with spam-free email; easy Web-page creation and sharing; and rich messaging and collaboration tools for discussion, debate, research and collaborative learning projects for students and teachers across the globe.

3. Encyclo-medias, learning games and simulation Libraries
The time has come to get serious about creating a global online library for learning that would provide universal access to rich assortments of online multimedia encyclopedias for any subject imaginable.

4. A 21st century balanced approach to learning
With all of our new choices in learning technology comes the weighty responsibility of using it appropriately and effectively. This is where we need a new balance in our learning methods a balance of online and hands-on, on-screen and off, virtual and visceral, instruction and construction, teacher-initiated and student-led. We especially need more models of learning programs that effectively combine on-screen activities, projects and simulations, with hands-on construction kits, design challenges, probeware, discovery labs, and real world explorations.

5. The mobile learning and teaching tablet
The time is right to design, from the ground up, a mobile handheld/tablet device that has learning as the number one design objective, and to assemble the integrated online services suite that would fully support all the tasks a student or teacher encounters in the day-to-day learning process: research, messaging, composition, data collection, multimedia publishing, or running learning simulations. Most of the puzzle pieces are there; they now need to be integrated, web-enabled, and made super easy to use.

6. Digital portfolios and embedded assessments
As we move toward doing more and more of the daily business of learning and teaching onscreen and online, it makes great sense to be able to capture snapshots of this digital work in an electronic portfolio, for review, assessment, parent conferences, and for students to see their capacities grow. It also makes sense to embed within the daily onscreen work, electronic diagnostics and assessments that provide the feedback needed to keep learning on track.

7. Leadership development for digital educators
The speed and level of success of the transformations in learning and teaching outlined in this article are totally dependent on the capacity of educators to lead and sustain change. The role of technology in stimulating, supporting and sustaining this transformative change must be included in the training. Here is where successful business leaders could help educators, understanding that the worlds of education and business have some very significant differences.

8. 21st century learning spaces
New learning methods andtechnologies and a new mission for education demand a fresh look at the physical environment necessary to enable and support a new learning and teaching model. The 21st Century schoolhouse will have to provide students personal spaces for their digital equipment as well as their books; group areas for computer-supported teamwork on projects; places to project electronic work on big screens; electronically-supported studios for art, music and media productions; science labs with handheld electronic sensors and probes feeding data into laptops for analysis and display; portable electronic field packs for collecting data, taking digital photos and videos and studying local environments.

9. The integrated learning utility
We've heard a lot about data warehouses and integrated portals for education, and there's been much progress with initiatives like the School

Interoperability Framework. Given the financial woes that have swept across states and countries recently, we may need a fresh strategy to move this integration effort along. It's time to look at creating an integrated, open source, hosted Web services approach to running all the administrative systems of a school district or state, and connecting this, in the same data repository, to a standards-based comprehensive library of learning resources. The efficiencies gained here could free up dollars to invest back into instructional programs too. This may be the holy grail of educational computing, but it's time we get serious about the quest.

10. A global united learning alliance
It is necessary to begin to tackle students' 21st Century learning needs from a global perspective. We need an international alliance of education, business, health and government to take up the challenge of preparing as many learners as possible to join the knowledge workforce of our times. Through distance learning programs, online mentoring, and collaborative learning projects, the opportunity to learn can be extended farther than ever before. This Global Learning Alliance could provide the leadership to attract and manage the resources necessary to coordinate this effort.

Towards a global learning society
We have seen some of the important work that must be done for technology to continue being a powerful partner and catalyst in the transformation of learning and teaching. These are just a few of the needed pieces in a much more complex educational jigsaw puzzle of social, political, economic, infrastructural and human components.

The challenges that our newly arrived age of knowledge brings to learning and education are great, but the promise of a renaissance of learning in a 21st century learning society is even greater. There is important work to be done in helping to make this vision of a global learning society a reality.

Bernie Trilling is a Senior Director, Think.com, one of the Oracle Education Initiatives