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Heather A Ochmane-Learning Ecologies MOOC’s Updates
Digital Learning
Would it be possible to teach how to learn in a digital age? It would not be a hard question to answer. Everyone can see in their daily routine that social media plays a significant role in all aspects of our daily life. We can conclude based on our background preference in learning that if we don’t consider the new phase of improvement in using various types of facilities that modern life has been provided for us, such as social media and mobile, we are going to stick to old ages of getting knowledge. It could be even a kind of disrespect to the vast majority of our talented professors who spend their professional time for investigation of the innovative practical ways which could be used for teaching and also better learning in the new decades. In Social Media for Teaching and Learning by Jeff Seaman, Ph.D. and Hester Tinti-Kane it states that “The larger universe of social media will continue to evolve.”
It would be beneficial to combine old fashion ways with technology for getting a better result in teaching and learning which can be a kind of blended learning. By considering the new generation of our learners, such as children at schools, we can see the influential role of the internet, social media, and multimedia content in the process of learning.
Teachers to learn how to teach children and students who are part of this digital world, as Dr. Julie Mueller in her Teach Digital Lab website mentioned: “must address 21st-century learning by harnessing the positive aspects of technology and assisting students to manage the consuming nature of digital technologies and Web 2.0 applications.”
In the process of becoming a language teacher, we’ve learned different approaches of teaching from the past to the present in our university courses and tried to understand the way that learning process gets placed in each of them, then tried to extract the top-notch criteria that matter most and have been experienced and evaluated, furthermore learn about the impact of new technologies and used them in improving the learning process by covering the shortage of those criteria.
It has mostly been experienced in the time of lockdown which we have started to use different social media for those of our classes which used to always be in person and haven’t had any chance to get familiar with these innovative technologies. We started to have virtual classes. And after returning to the normal way of living, we have continued using this multimedia even some of our activities in educational places are working with a combination of them together.
References:
1. Social Media for Teaching and Learning, By Jeff Seaman, Ph.D. and Hester Tinti-Kane 2013 Pearson Learning Solutions and Babson Survey Research Group
2. Dr. Julie Mueller, Teach Digital Lab https://www.teachdigitallab.com/
I am surprised that we are still thinking from the teaching point of view. Personally, I think that teaching is not needed anymore. We need to move towards learning instead of teaching especially when it comes to using the tools. Despite the fact that a few billion people use Facebook now, I can't remember seeing any course that teaches how to use facebook. Our kids are very clever in using smartphones and I can't remember anyone teaching them how to do it. Starting from Generation Z, the use of technology is natural. They don't need to be taught how to use it. At the end of the day, it is a tool like any other tool we use. I think the concentration should be on what we can use the tools for rather than how to use it.
The concept of moving to digital learning in my opinion is misunderstood by most adults. Although we might see an increase in using technology in teaching especially when it comes to the use of tools, we are still teaching curriculums that were not designed for the digital age. For example, we are still teaching 3/4 years degrees, which is too long for the digital age. By the time the student graduates what they learnt in the first 2 years of the degree course have changed. Employers now realise that having a degree does not mean that the job applicant has the required skills. This resulted in all employers needing to carry out assessments (some do a full day assessment centre) to ensure that the candidate they pick has the required skills.
We need to change our methods from teaching to managing the learning and from degrees to short skills courses. This will suit the digital learning age.