4 minutes
The presence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in many facets of our lives has, in a very short time, changed how we understand the world, communicate with others, and also teach and learn in the so-called information society.
The importance of access to information as synonymous with progress, the global nature of our society that encourages rapid information exchange through computers or other internet-connected devices, and the emergence of remote collaborative networks are just some characteristics of this no-longer-so-new society that education must teach both students and the teachers who intend to educate them to understand.
It is a new landscape, changing rapidly alongside technological advances and requiring educational renewal. At best, this does not mean merely replacing paper books with digital ones, or desks with personal computers, but a profound transformation affecting both the classroom learning space and the roles students and teachers have played until now.
Learning inside and outside the classroom.
Since its first implementation in schools through computers during the 1980s, ICT-based learning has expanded beyond the defined space of classrooms, which over time have adapted their spaces to computers, tablets, interactive whiteboards, and other ICT devices.
Thanks to the impact of e-learning and virtual learning on the educational community, learning is now accessible from students' homes, and students can often choose where and when to receive that instruction. However, access to countless facts over the internet and the rapid exchange of information enabled by social networks have gone a step further, relocating knowledge that previously could only be learned in classrooms and creating new models for the spatial distribution of learning.
New teaching and learning models
Mobile Learning
The use of internet-connected mobile devices in the classroom allows knowledge taught in class to be learned anytime, anywhere. It invites students to use Mobile Learning through their own mobile devices.
Collaborative and project-based learning
Learning with an ultimate objective, addressed across several curricular subjects, has blurred the boundaries between class groups previously differentiated by students' age or abilities. Access to ICT, which allows students to easily educate themselves outside school grounds and hours, and the cooperation that can arise from social networks are reflected in educational spaces such as creative classrooms, which are not based on students' age and level of knowledge, the traditional boundaries of classroom space.
Flipped classroom
An educational model in which students learn content outside the classroom through ICT devices, then discuss, debate, and challenge what they have learned at school, which becomes a forum where questions are resolved and students are guided through their learning process.
This implies a new role for students. Everything above results from an even greater change, one that profoundly affects the relationship students until recently had with teachers as a source of wisdom, and with the classroom as a place to receive instruction. There are several reasons:
Students can become "active" learners. Some online learning platforms involve practical application of much of the knowledge that would otherwise be learned only theoretically.
Thanks to social networks, students can share their knowledge and work as a team with a greater degree of coordination than before. In this way, students learn to collaborate with others for a common good: learning a body of knowledge and developing it jointly with other students around the world, gaining firsthand exposure to realities unfamiliar to them.
Internet-connected ICT
Thanks to access to all kinds of information through internet-connected ICT, students have become the center of their own education, able to learn wherever and whenever they want. In addition, some digital educational platforms, such as Matic, allow students to know where they stand in their learning process through Learning Analytics, giving them the opportunity to strengthen their weaknesses independently.
You can also read our article on: Modern Teaching Methodologies
New challenges for teachers
The fact that ICT now allows students to be responsible for their own education challenges the teacher's role as the holder of far more knowledge than their learners. But it also requires teachers to adopt new roles that continue to make them crucial to their students' education, involving new practices and situations such as these:
- Teachers have gone from being the only source of curricular knowledge in the classroom to learning guides whose extensive subject knowledge no longer gives them the last word. One of their tasks is therefore to create the educational contexts needed to stimulate students' learning, since in the information society students can learn as much, or more, outside the classroom as inside it.
- Knowledge and mastery of the ICT used for educational or training purposes inside and outside the classroom. This allows teachers to guide students more easily, without being distracted by the technological aspect of their learning process, and to focus on the educational aspect. Numerous reports can help you become familiar with the latest educational trends related to ICT.
- Digital literacy and netiquette that allow teachers to select and cross-check knowledge scattered across the internet. This will enable them not only to present students with a reasonably solid account, but also to teach them to question the validity of information sources and learn to distinguish quality information within the vast universe of information.
Ultimately, the information society must not forget that a teacher is always the foundation of education.
Source: Aulaplaneta