The Importance Of Digital Learning

Technology of the past 20 years has become a focal point of teaching and learning. As a teacher, it is my job to facilitate the learning for an individual by creating an environment that not only conducive for learning, but also places the child in a position to discover and learn them for themselves. Technology has given teachers to opportunity to take learning beyond the classroom, and has begun to reshape their role in the learning process.

Since children today have become digital natives; they will never truly know a world that is not touched with technology. This means that the educational paradigm has to shift in order to keep up with the needs of our young learners (Jo, 2016). In the last thirty years, technological advances

Cathy N. Davidson suggests an innovative education system, providing an emphasis in today’s digital era, and claiming that the existing education system needs to be renewed according to the new expectations of the digital era. Davidson states that,” In the last half century, many changes have occurred in the technology field, however, classrooms and educational methods have remained fairly steady for the past years as well in consequence students are not being prepared for the future advances of society.” That being said, it is important to improve and to give a change to the current educational methods, adjusting them to the existing demands of the era that we are living and taking advantage of the resources that it provides. “What if we continued to the lesson of internet itself,

Technology has many attributes and applications that improve livelihoods. As a student myself, one of the most obvious advancements is in the field of education. Educational technology has slowly been integrated into classrooms over the last decade. Today, the basis of technology, digital literacy, is a crucial skill for academics. “Students who are digitally literate know how to effectively use technology to collaborate, create original content, and conduct in-depth research for academic purposes” (Dotterer, “Fostering Digital Citizenship In The Classroom”). Some worry that the use of technology will encourage people to “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful” (qtd. In Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”).

For some of us, it is difficult to comprehend why our education systems have not yet made the transition to technology-based forms of teaching especially when we are in the era of technology. To others, the reasoning is clear and they support the original, dated usage of textbooks in a “traditional classroom” setting. The changes in our society are undeniable with the innovation of technology and social media. Although some authors, such as Neil Howe and Jean Twenge, argue that technology is deteriorating the minds of Millennials, technology is also providing Millennials with a way to create connections across communities.

We are currently living in a digital age where our students are notably technologically proficient. This poses a challenge with how some of our students are currently learning (or trying to learn) in our classrooms. Many students have grown tired of reading dense texts for homework assignments and tired of listening to long, boring lectures from teachers at school. The way in which students are currently analyzing and interpreting texts that they read and videos that they watch have not been up to our standards here at North Windsor High School. The thing is, a lot of our teachers are also struggling between teaching with both print text and by digital means. North Windsor High School acknowledges the fact that many seniors graduate not having the digital skills and print text literacy necessary to lead successful lives after high school. We are beginning to implement some changes with our teaching methods and hope to incorporate technology and print text in different and more engaging ways.

Education has traditionally been very slow to react and adjust to changing times. Teaching to the test has become the standard in many classrooms in the USA and Canada due to the ongoing push for government accountability and standardization. Students are much more in tune with technologies than most of their teachers. The teacher’s role is changing in scope the shift is more to the teacher as a facilitator of learning. Educators can fill this role by teaching the skills student need to become master user of technology and the internet. The educational system has to adapt to our clients.

In today’s day and age, it is very easy to locate anyone, from ages 4-24, plugged into technology at any given moment. Although the increased usage of digital media and information had forever positively influenced our society, it is important to remember our foundation and to develop ourselves and the future generation with a different, more traditional perspective of life. Prior to deciding to convert a school’s curriculum to a more blended learning environment, realizing the possible detrimental factors that using technology to facilitate learning could cause is high significant.

In the section titled The Dumbest Generation, “Digital Nation” lays out a haunting narrative describing technology’s negative impact on students today. This section draws from an interview with Mark Bauerlein, a professor and author of book titled “The Dumbest Generation.” Bauerlein claims that reading, writing and math skills of students have all already began to deteriorate. It seems that constant interruption and attempts to multitask are at the heart of this deterioration. I received my first smart phone just before the beginning of this semester, from my own experience I can only agree with the assertion that technology puts a damper on the educational experience. The issue does not come with the technology itself, rather, the desire for constant connection distracts from the learning experience. As the first generation of persons who grew up with technology become parents, I hope they can teach their children the skill of moderation and the importance of education – skills often not taught to kids today by their parents born before the technology boom. These ideas will solve the deterioration of reading, writing, and math that Bauerlein speaks

This concept is Loewy’s “‘interdisciplinary curriculum for the digital age,’” and from this, education should change for the better. By highlighting important aspects of the program, Wong shows opposers and concerned parents the solutions to their worries. Danger on the internet will always be present, and it’s all a matter of understanding of how to interact with the internet. If students don’t know how to properly interact on the internet, of course, parents are going to have their concerns. This leads to the “fearmongering and massive information campaigns” over avoiding such issues, which wouldn’t be an issue if covered in school more in-depth. In addition, according to Wong, Loewy’s concept is not the first either, “University of Pennsylvania English Professor Kenneth Goldsmith launched a course [in 2015] called ‘Wasting Time on the Internet,’” where it teaches students how to use technology appropriately, and use it to their advantage of gaining knowledge, rather than wilting it away with societal norms. Therefore, digital citizenship becomes vital if technology is to be a part of education, which Wong thrives in informing her

Students of Sunnyvale are now expected to learn both in the classroom and independently from the internet, which is yet another way that our school has become more technologically focused. In Mrs. Blue’s class, students listen to lectures in the classroom as well as outside of the classroom to maximize efficiency within their learning process, which is one of many examples that show the trend towards technological literacy within Sunnyvale. This dynamic in the student-teacher relationship has helped the students in many ways, but has also proven to have some detrimental effects. Some teachers now expect the internet to take the place of teaching in the classroom, which has caused many students to struggle academically; however, many teachers

As schools promote 21st-century learning, there has been a push for literacies which encourage students to be 21st-century learners. The two overarching literacies, new and digital, has taken over the three R’s literacy, reading, writing, and arithmetic. New Literacies continuously change due to the new technology emerging providing different ways to get information and communicate with others (Leu et al., 2015). In contrast, digital literacy is the ability to use digital tools to access information for understanding and communication (Jose, 2016). New literacies and digital literacies also differ in aspects of use in the classroom. New literacies are the building blocks for digital literacy; which are the skills students need to understand the internet (Maloy, Verock-O'Loughlin, Edwards, & Woolf, 2017). New literacies can be taught without the use of technology because students are learning to locate, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate information. Teachers can demonstrate these skills using encyclopedias and journal articles to gain a minimalistic comprehension. Once students learn the necessary understanding, teachers can transfer these skills to online which will promote digital literacy; furthermore, digital literacy can only be taught using digital tools. Teachers would teach students how to use computers and the social practices of the new literacies to gain an understanding of the digital literacy (Jose, 2016). Furthermore, digital literacies

It is no secret that technology plays a critical role in our society. In fact, it has become one of the most used items in the world, starting from personal computers and ending in smartphones, thus it was only a matter of time when educational institutions would start to utilize these gadgets in order to improve the overall state of current education. According to a U.S Department of Education (UDE, n.d) report, all 48 states, including the District of Columbia are now offering online education. Additionally, the report states that these schools operate on all kinds of scales, including state scale, district scale and charter scale, thus it would safe to assume that the whole state of current education in the United States is large and the whole approach is clearly technology based. However, despite the

Today’s education differs much from the education fifty years ago. One of the reasons they are so different is because of technology. In the past fifty years the world of technology has grown tremendously, affecting everything, including education. A few things that have been brought into the world of education are computers, video and digital equipment such as DVDs, digital cameras and recording devices. The technology also includes information presentation technologies which includes the Smart Board, and different interactive whiteboards. There are many more that schools did not have fifty years ago.

As we navigate through the 21st century, technology in the classroom is becoming further predominant. iPads are replacing our textbooks, and we can research any desired topic on our smartphones. The impact that technology has had on today’s schools has been utterly momentous. Educators have now seen firsthand the numerous benefits of technology in the classroom. According to a study by IT Trade Association CompTIA, around 75 percent of educators have come to the conclusion that technology has a positive impact on the education process. Educators have also recognized the significance of developing these technological skills in students so they will be prepared to enter the workforce after they graduate (Cox). By incorporating technology in the classroom, teachers are setting our students up for a successful life outside of school. The increase of technology has even changed how teachers teach along with how