Global Trends: Digital Technologies and what this means for our future
“Teaching in the Internet age means we must teach tomorrow’s skills today.” – Jennifer Fleming
The rise of digital technologies has been the biggest, most influential trend to impact on education both nationally and globally, and most importantly on my own teaching practice; in the last 10 years especially.
When I first started teaching, computers and ICT were only just being introduced into primary school classrooms. We were all still learning about the “World Wide Web”, Google search and even what an email was and how to send one. It was pretty big and exciting, way back then for students and teachers!
Now, we are surrounded by technology and are hugely dependant on it in our daily lives. We use it in nearly every aspect of what we do to learn, communicate, collaborate, and to live comfortably. As Karehka Ramey states ” technology and human life cannot be separated; society has a cyclical co-dependence on technology.”
The implications of digital technology in the 21st-century classroom are huge. Firstly we are having to predict what life and careers might look like for our students in the future. For example, the United States Department of Labour has stated that 65% of school-age kids will end up in jobs that haven’t even been invented yet.
So what does this mean for me and my students?
“digital transformation isn’t only about technology, it’s about bringing together the power of technology with a culture that embraces the change that it can lead the organization” (Newman, 2016)
For myself and my colleagues at Corinna School, this means we have had to work really hard to, build our IT knowledge and expertise and get informed about what skills and digital tools our students need and how we can use these innovatively in our classrooms for transformational learning.
At the beginning of our journey, there were so many opinions about what tools were the best, whether we should go with BYOD, ipads , chromebooks , macs or a mixture. And… how we were going to adapt our teaching and learning practices to utilise these tools to accelerate learning and prepare our students for the 21st century.
To be honest, although it was exciting times, it was also very scary mostly because we had to do a lot of forward thinking beforehand to ensure our choices were future proof. We didn’t have the money to make the wrong decisions and our students couldn’t afford to have their valuable learning time wasted on something that wasn’t going to work for them.
For this reason, one of the biggest pitfalls I think this trend has had on education is all the “fads” that have come with it. As a school, I think we’ve done well to navigate our way through these to work out what is just a fad, or a fancy acronym, and what is worthwhile. We have strong pedagogy and values and have stuck true to what we believe as we have introduced new digital technologies and 21st-century teaching practices .
Throughout our journey, we have had lots of advice and PLD, which we have taken and adapted to meet the needs and values of our school community. An important part of this process was establishing Te Mana o Kupe Trust to ensure all our whanau could afford to buy a chromebook for their child on a lease to own basis. This was extremely important to us as we wanted to ensure learning could happen beyond the school gate and that our students can be global citizens not just citizens of Porirua, or even New Zealand.
To ensure we fully prepare our students for an unknown future, we know our journey has not ended. We will always be striving to not only keep up with the global trend of digital technology and changes in education but hopefully be innovative and creative enough to get ahead of it. Big thinking, big challenges, but definitely achievable if we “expect the best” for our students and whanau.
