This is the Face of the 21st Century Learner

Ann Makosinski

This is Ann. She is the face of the 21st Century Learner. Ann currently attends St. Michaels University School as a grade 12 student. When she was 15, she invented a human-powered flashlight. As a result, she made Time Magazine's 30 Under 30 list, was Google's Science Fair winner, has delivered four TED Talks (click here to watch), and was featured on the Tonight Show. A. Ma. Zing.

Don't get me wrong, I don't feel that all students need to attain celebrity status in order to be successful in today's world. It isn't Ann's success that makes her the poster child for 21st Century Learning. It is her curiosity, her desire to innovate, her strong communication skills, and her global perspective. Ann is the whole package. Not to mention, she's dead cool.

If we, as educators, are trying to figure out how to teach the 21st Century Learner with intention, we need to know what the end product looks like. I recently sat down with Ann to pick her brain as to what she feels has contributed to her success. She spoke of growing up in an environment where she wasn't given everything she wanted and that she had very few toys. She was encouraged to "make" from a very young age. She told me about how she and her father would stop by the University of Victoria's junk pile of scrap electronics, and would pick through bits that she would take home and later take apart.  

Ann's parents both work at UVic and have done so for all of Ann's life. As a young child, because her family never bothered with a babysitter, Ann spent hours inside her parent's offices. They didn't arm her with toys from a store to keep her occupied. Instead, she was left to her own imagination and learned to entertain herself through creative play. 

 As a teenager, Ann continued to join her father at the university and was given access to lab space where she would eventually build her flashlight prototype. She also had a lab space at home, equipped with a microscope her father picked up at a garage sale, some basic electronic tools and large surfaces. This space allowed her to play, experiment, build, innovate. 

Essentially, from a young age, Ann had access to, what would now be considered, a MakerSpace. She had a place to go that allowed her the space and tools necessary for her to be innovative without instruction. 

Remember the film, Field of Dreams? Remember that line, "If you build it, [they] will come"?  Well, I believe, if you create the space that fosters innovation and creativity, they will come. Students will come to that space, they will create and make and collaborate and all those other deliciously raw and natural things we want our kids to do. They'll put down their phones, pick up a drill, and make. 

Making is creativity. Making develops all of the 21st century skills we are working so hard to teach. Perhaps as teachers, we need to give as much thought and emphasis in answering the question where will we teach them as we do to the question, how will we teach them?