Out-of-School Settings Create Climate for New Skills

The article brings up the issue of how students need to work on their digital learning and 21^st century skills to keep up with the ever growing technology world. More and more out of school environments, such as learning labs, are popping up across the country. Some of these labs allow students to use educational gaming to reinforce things they learned at school. Other places allow the students to create multimedia projects or even blog about certain issues. The learning programs use fun, interactive ways to teach the kids. In one program they were allowed to use iPads to play a detective game around historic sites. In another they learned about the presidential election by playing a geocaching game. This allows students to do more individual study on things that interest them. Programs like YouMedia and HIVE Learning Networks have led the way in successful after school programs. I think that the after school learning labs are a good idea because it allows students to get extra tutoring and work on improving digital literacy.