A 22- year old starting teaching in 2010 could work until retirement in 2055. The last children / young people that he / she would encounter are likely to live to 80 or more, that is until 2135 and beyond. |
A teacher’ s job is that of preparing the learners and citizens of the future; to get it right tomorrow, today’ s job involves imagining the world that will exist at these points in time. Technology in schools is not simply about replacing tasks, it is about opening new frontiers in terms of enhanced learning, creativity and innovation.
Digital awareness is as important as literacy and numeracy and at the same time enhances pupil outcomes in these and other areas of learning.
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Teachers need to plan carefully to support the growing autonomy ceded to children and young people through technology; this is effectively achieved by placing greater emphasis on the deployment of cognitive knowledge( understanding) and metacognitive skills( i. e. understanding through self-reflection and understanding the‘ how’ of learning).
Jedeskog and Nissen( 2004:37) investigated features of technology practice in Swedish
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schools. Their research examined the growing moves in education, from content to form and the dissolution of educational boundaries in terms of room, time and activity( i. e. learning which uses face-to-face teaching and e-learning, referred to as‘ blended learning’, thus dispensing with the need for a fixed room, time and activity).
Their findings, presented in the paper-“ Is doing more important than knowing?”, suggested that the shift in many Swedish classrooms
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to placing greater emphasis on the development of pupil autonomy carried with it an inherent danger, that pupil understanding would fail to develop. |
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