Reinventing Learning for the Always on Generation: Strategies and Apps That Work

Cultivate effective 21st century classrooms. Teachers and administrators must respond to the digital bombardment students face to ensure their success in the 21st century world. Explore the differences in students’ neurological processing from previous generations, investigate the nine critical attributes of digital learners, and discover practical strategies for making learning relevant, engaging, and fun through digital activities.

Ian Jukes is the founder and executive director of the InfoSavvy Group, an international educational leadership consulting firm. He has been a teacher, school principal, district and provincial coordinator, writer, international consultant, university instructor, and keynote speaker. He has worked with clients in more than eighty countries and made more than ten thousand presentations. Ian has written or cowritten fifteen books and nine educational series. His most recent books are Teaching the Digital Generation: No More Cookie-Cutter High Schools (with Frank Kelly and Ted McCain, 2009), Living on the Future Edge: Windows on Tomorrow (with Ted McCain and Lee Crockett, 2010), Understanding the Digital Generation: Teaching and Learning in the New Digital Landscape (with Ted McCain and Lee Crockett, 2010), Literacy Is Not Enough: 21st Century Fluencies for the Digital Age (with Lee Crockett and Andrew Churches, 2011), and Learning Without Classrooms (with Frank Kelly and Ted McCain, 2015).

First and foremost, Ian is a passionate educational evangelist. From the beginning of his educational career, his focus has been on the compelling need to restructure our educational institutions so that they become relevant to the current and future needs of the digital generation-and to prepare learners for their future and not just our past.

Ryan L. Schaaf is an assistant professor of educational technology at Notre Dame of Maryland University, and a faculty associate for the Johns Hopkins University School of Education Graduate Program. He has more than fifteen years of experience in the field of education. Before higher education, Ryan was a public school teacher, instructional leader, curriculum designer, and technology integration specialist in Maryland. In 2007, he was nominated as Maryland Teacher of the Year.

Ryan has published several research articles related to the use of digital games as an effective instructional strategy in the classroom in New Horizons for Learning and the Canadian Journal of Action Research. His first book, Making School a Game Worth Playing: Digital Games in the Classroom, which he coauthored with Nicky Mohan, was published in 2014. He is currently working with Nicky on the sequel tentatively titled Game On: Using Digital Games for 21st Century Teaching, Learning, and Assessment. Ryan enjoys presenting sessions and keynotes about the potential for gaming in the classroom, the characteristics of 21st century learning, and emerging technologies and trends in education.

Nicky Mohan has been a classroom teacher, school and university administrator, instructional designer, business sector manager and trainer, and international speaker. At the University of Waikato, New Zealand, she designed and delivered courses and workshops based on research of best practices in teaching and learning. Since the early 2000s, she has made hundreds of presentations in more than a dozen countries.

Born in South Africa, a New Zealander by nationality, a Canadian by domicile, and a world citizen by choice, Nicky worked as the director of curriculum for the 21st Century Fluency Group, where she led a team of international writers in the development of curriculum materials that integrated 21st century skills into just-in-time teaching and learning (JiTTL) experiences that were relevant to both teachers and students. Nicky is currently the managing partner of LearningFutures21, an international educational consulting firm. Together with Ryan Schaaf, she has just published her first book, Making School a Game Worth Playing: Digital Games in the Classroom. She is currently working with Ryan on the sequel tentatively titled Game On: Using Digital Games for 21st Century Teaching, Learning, and Assessment.