Learning in the 21st Century: How to Connect, Collaborate, and Create is a small book of  82 pages that is packed with loads of useful technological information. Learning in the 21st Century was written by Ben Curran and Neil Wetherbee. Both authors currently teach in charter schools, hold workshops, and blog at www.engagingeducators.com. The authors believe education should be fun. Education should also be collaborative. They believe this can be achieved through the many technological advances we have on the World Wide Web. As homeschoolers we have many opportunities to utilize the material recommended in this book. Mr. Curran and Mr. Wetherbee want to transform the face of education through Connecting, Collaborating, and Creating. This book can help novices and veterans of the Internet. Even your savviest techno family can learn something new from Learning in the 21st Century. Currently this book retails for $5.36 as a physical book and $4.99 for the Kindle.

Learning in the 21st Century is broken down into three sections: Connect, Collaborate, and Create. This book is a very easy read written in language that any student or adult could easily understand. In my opinion most students in late elementary grades and up could use this book. The younger sector might need some parental supervision and help navigating the instructions and the Internet.

In the Connect section of the book the reader will find overviews and instructions about setting up accounts and using Blogger, Twitter, etc. to connect with other homeschooling families across the country or world. Great links are provided for learning families to investigate and tips on how to implement all that is recommended. I have been blogging for years and even I learned some interesting information about social bookmarking. This is an informative section that would help many newbie bloggers on how to use Blogger, Google reader, and so much more. Now even I won’t be embarrassed or seem slow on the technological front to ask how to use Twitter, if I decide to go down that road. The authors also include in the back of the book Twitter accounts that a homeschooling family might be interested in following.

Next the reader will find the section for collaborating. This section will teach students how to collaborate with other students using different media platforms across the United States and even globally. You will find tips on how to us Google Drive, Voice thread, Wikispaces, and Edmodo. Other than Google Drive I had never previously heard of the other sources mentioned in this category. Virtually all of the above sources are free with a plethroa of uses for different types of projects that involve sharing, such as: documents, videos, and webpages. Detailed instructions are available in this chapter for each discussed topic of interest.

The longest part of the book belongs to the Create section. Create is actually broken into two parts: Creations Tools and Ready-Made Projects. The tools mentioned and explained are websites all new to me. The Creations Tools all deal with animation, video, movie making, and creating posters with graphics. I won’t give away the website names, you need to purchase the book to find them out. I was quite taken with one recommendation where a student could make a short animated movie by just typing in the words to be spoken and choosing actors and sets. This could be used for reports on all kinds of subjects, especially students that have an aversion to writing. Creation Tools got me so excited that I stopped at each newly recommended tool and had to try it out on my computer. Truly the possibilities are endless. Part two of Create gives the reader specific projects to try and what tools to implement to do them. All the project ideas are well presented and the tools learned in the previous sections as well as some new ones. I liked one of the projects so much I plan on using it in my cooperative class next semester.

The back of this book has a list of recommended websites to visit with your students. I consider myself pretty Internet savvy, but this book was chock full of places to visit I had never seen in the past. I hope to share many with my own child. Learning in the 21st Century is a very inexpensive book and worth so much more than its price. I tried hard to find at least one negative about this book and came up empty handed. I highly recommend this little book, especially to families and students who might like to include more technology in their daily lessons and education.

Product Review by Diane Knecht, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, 2013