the future of technology in education
TRANSCRIPT
LILT (ICT)Week 2 – The future of Technology in Education
Social Networks
What can teachers learn from social networks?
What does the future hold for technology in education?
The future of education?
Must keep up
Can’t keep up
‘Digital natives,’
‘generation C,’ referring to characteristics such as connected, creative and click
‘internet generation’,
‘generation M’ (media),
‘generation V’ (virtual)
www.marcprensky.com
“Marc Prensky warned at the turn of the century, “our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach”
Emerging research findings suggest that school students’ uses of web 2.0 applications at home and at school tend to involve a ‘low bandwidth exchange’ of information and knowledge. Social networking applications appear to be used by young people to engage with learning content and other learners in a number of bounded ways, rather than supporting full interaction with information and knowledge to realise the ‘learning gains’ often attributed to digital media use. (Selwyn et al 2008)
but…
Digital ADD?
What we know about the future…1. Increased computing power2. Move to ubiquitous computing3. Rich audio-visual communication 4. We will live/work alongside more sophisticated
machines5. Networks will underpin organisational structures6. Breakthroughs in Bio-science7. Ageing population8. Energy, mineral resources and climate change will
remain big issues9. We will have to deal with radical national and global
inequality
Challenges for educators
1. Marked difference between out-of-school informal learning and schooled learning
2. Profound differences between young people’s engagement with technology
3. Certain activities/learning require explicit encouragement and teaching (e.g. mathematical & scientific understanding)
the evidence is that learners do not always use web 2.0 tools in straightforward educational ways, and their uses of web 2.0 technologies remain more limited in scope than the rhetoric sometimes suggests. Web 2.0 tools and practices are not being drawn into education as vigorously as might be expected, despite the many examples of best practice that can be highlighted. (Selwyn et al 2008)
‘The breathless rhetoric of generational change needs to be tempered, then, with an awareness of the difficulty for all generations and age-groups of developingcomplex conceptual and critical skills. (Facer 2011, p.20)
The challenges educators will face, then, are not those of responding to a single overwhelming flood of new generational practice but of deciding how to respond to very visible different experiences of learning outside the school setting. This is a very old problem in a new form. (Facer 2011, p. 20)
BUT…
What does this mean for educators?
• We can shape the future• The future is human• We still need schools, but we need to
reimagine them as places:– For public engagement– To build inter-generational solidarity– To counter inequalities and injustice– To make local decisions
Learning in 2035
• Resource mapping• Teacher-mentors• Inter-generational and community-based
learning
Resource mapping
• Building blocks• Personalised pathways• Personal learning environments• Personal learning networks