Connected learning is an educational framework that connects interests, relationships, and opportunity. This section provides an overview of the concept, including the equity agenda that drives the framework, and introduces ConnectedLib.
After completing Section 1: Introduction, you will be able to...
- Briefly describe connected learning and the “equity agenda” behind the framework.
- Name, describe, and recognize the three spheres that connected learning connects: interests, relationships, and opportunity.
- Navigate the ConnectedLib modules.
“Connected learning is realized when a young person is able to pursue a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults, and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement, career success or civic engagement.”
-- Mimi Ito et al.1
Connected learning is an educational framework—an approach to creating learning experiences. Connected learning is driven by learners’ interests, supported by their relationships, and oriented towards academic, economic, or civic opportunity.1
This video from the DML Research Hub explains how connecting interests, relationships, and opportunities makes learning meaningful and relevant.
At the heart of connected learning is an “equity agenda” to help close the cultural and economic gaps that non-dominant youth face. By connecting teens’ interests and relationships with real-life opportunities, connected learning helps prepare youth for life after high school with 21st century skills and the “new” literacies—digital literacy, media literacy, and others.
In the first decade of the 21st century, many organizations, projects, and researchers contributed to the movement towards more social, participatory, and interest-driven learning that led to connected learning—the MacArthur Foundation, the Digital Youth Network, the DML Research Hub, Howard Gardner, Henry Jenkins, Katie Salen, William Penuel, Nichole Pinkard, Joseph Kahne, and more. The framework itself was developed in the early 2010s by Mimi Ito and her colleagues after extensively researching and working with teens. Connected learning is now at the center of a vibrant community of researchers and practitioners centered around the Connected Learning Alliance.
For more about the history of connected learning, see Connected Libraries: Surveying the Current Landscape and Charting the Path to the Future.
Footnotes
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Ito, Mizuko, Kris Gutiérrez, Sonia Livingstone, Bill Penuel, Jean Rhodes, Katie Salen, Juliet Schor, Julian Sefton-Green, and S. Craig Watkins. Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, 2013. ↩ ↩2