Defining and Deciding Curriculum in the 21st Century

Information Doubling -picture credit

At a time when the amount of information in the world is doubling every 13 months (Schilling, 2013), and according to IBM, soon the “internet of things” will lead to the doubling of knowledge every 12 hours, how do we determine the most accurate source of content? Teachers today need to go beyond the textbook to include online sources of information being updated daily. 

Meaning online is derived in great part from visuals, increasing the need to incorporate multimedia into learning. Visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text, 90% of material transmitted to the brain is visual, and adding visual aids increases learning by up to 400% (Visual Teaching Alliance).

The Curriculum Handbook by Glatthorn, Carr, & Harris (2001) proposes eight types of curriculum from which educators select the material they will teach to meet standards. The recommended curriculum, the written curriculum, the supported curriculum, the tested curriculum, the taught curriculum, the learned curriculum, the hidden curriculum, and the excluded curriculum. Some points of view and controversial facts never make it into the taught curriculum, but advances in research allow these hidden and excluded items to appear in daily news. For example, today the Associated Press ran a story entitled, "DNA proves President Harding Fathered Child out of Wedlock." How does the effective teacher integrate new information not known or not included when textbooks were written?

Incomplete textbooks -picture credit

Open Source materials can help teachers infuse current visuals in their teaching to supplement text. Video sources such as YouTube, Teaching Channel, and National Science Foundation multimedia gallery. Students can follow developments as they happen in outer space at NASA's webstream  or around the world at Smithsonian's Giant Panda Cam or the Top Ten Wildlife Web Cams through Audobon. They can learn about news in real time through online news sources, allowing you time to discuss issues as you help students process incoming information.

Teaching students how to search for information on a topic from a variety of sources, evaluate sources, sythesize information, then create their own multimedia product to share their learning with the world, empowers them to add to the world's ever increasing body of knowledge.

Consider how you can incorporate research opportunities into your teaching so students can explore the wide variety of viewpoints and information sources available today, meeting standards of process and product, and then contribute their learning to add to our cumulative knowledge base.

Best wishes on the new school year! What curriculum will you decide on?