WHAT IS A DIGITAL WORLD?

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children, digitalworld, education, environment, evolving, fluency, learning, online, positiveattitude, resources, teachers, technology, twitter, web

As a future Educator I am rather nervous about teaching with technology. You could call it “digital pressure” (Howell, J). When I was in primary school, my teachers taught by using a black or white board, overhead projectors and every classroom activity or assignment was hand written or drawn. I remember story time and reading paperback books. I remember getting my pen license and I now wonder if children have to get their typing license?

It amazes me how nowadays, babies, toddlers and children are fascinated by technology. This generation is referred to as “digital natives” (Howell, J). I can agree with this label for this generation as one of my friends explained to me that her 10 month old son knows how to slide the screen on an IPhone. Wow. I was shocked when she told me this. We really do live in a digital world.

I do appreciate technology and I understand the importance of Educators having a positive attitude toward teaching with technology as it is constantly evolving and is the way of the future in Education. Although I am not technologically savvy, I am willing to learn about new technology by practising and learning from peers and students. Technology has changed how educators teach and how children learn. (Howell, J).

I appreciate how technology provides Educators with endless amounts of resources to teach with and provides students with so much information to learn from. This excites me. I’m excited to provide my future students with a technologically rich learning environment and I’m excited to be on the learning journey with them and to learn from them. I found this great article on introducing technology into the classrooms, providing Educators with tools on how to execute this. If you are technologically challenged like I am, you should definitely read this article. http://ro.uow.edu.au/asdpapers/403/ (Eady,M.J & Lockyer, L.).

DIGITAL FLUENCY

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encourge, environment, excel, lifelonglearners, multimodal, parents, publisher, skills, teachers, videos, word, YouTube

 It is vital to help children build their digital skills to ensure that they become digitally fluent. Teachers and parents want children to develop skills with the assistance of Technology to become “life-long learners” (Howell, J). To be digitally fluent in primary school is to have basic skills such as knowledge on word, excel, publisher and to be able to create videos, podcasts and to know how to browse the web (Howell, J).

Learning these skills requires time and is developed and refined in each year of schooling. As adults, we are always building on our skills and learning every day. It is our responsibility to always be encouraging our students and children to feel comfortable learning new skills, especially if they feel like they cannot. I believe the best way to execute this is to teach using a variety of different sources, to ensure that students who may excel in one area and lack skills in another area are still confident learners.

As a child, I struggled with following steps as I would easily get distracted. It was my own parent’s mission to teach me to develop different learning skills, with the help of teacher aids to ensure that I could concentrate when learning content. I am now a confident learner and I understand that everyone is individual in how they learn, which is why it should be teachers and parents priority to create a multimodal learning environment to meet every child’s needs. One of the reasons why I enjoy learning with technology is that if I am stuck on how to do something using an online source such as Pinterest, I can look it up online and there is always a tutorial on YouTube on how to do it. This is so beneficial for students, who like me, may not be technologically savvy.

PARTICIPATION AND THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

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change, children, digitaldivide, digitalworld, ebooks, education, environment, fair, fluency, internet, resources, whiteboards

Teaching with technology is the way of the future, however what about the families that cannot provide their children with the technology that they will be learning from? Middle and upper class families have different access to technology to what lower socioeconomic families have (Howell, J). I believe it is important for Educators to be able to effectively teach with technology in a fair way to be able to suit all children and their family’s needs. I came across this article “Practical advice for Teaching staff” http://www.lowses.edu.au/files/teachers.htm (Griffiths ,S), in regards to teaching students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and it provides Educators with good tips on how to teach using technology and how using a variety of sources assists with improving learning.

As a future Educator, I will seek information from my future students and their parents on what technology is used at home and what technology they are comfortable with me using to teach. Nowadays, children are so lucky to be able to learn using technology because they have access to so much great information to be able to assist with their learning. However, it is important that teachers educate their students on how to use the internet to source appropriate and correct information (Howell, J).

It amazes me how much classrooms and lesson plans have changed to incorporate technology. While children are still learning by reading paperback books, they also learn by reading EBook’s too. I must admit, most of the books I read now are mostly online, mainly because of the convenience. In classrooms, Educators now use interactive whiteboards and computers to teach their content. They also communicate with their students and student’s families via email, enewsletters and class websites (Howell, J).