The COVID-19 pandemic was a forceful reminder that education plays an important role in delivering not just academic learning, but also in supporting physical and emotional well-being. Balancing traditional “book learning” with broader social and personal development means new roles for schools and education more generally.
When the world is changing as rapidly as it is today, education has to mean more than just covering static content. Transformational Teaching in the Information Age explores how teachers can truly engage and inspire students to be independent, imaginative, and responsible learners who are prepared to handle the challenges of tomorrow.
Looking at schools and universities, it is difficult to pinpoint when education, teaching and learning started to haemorrhage purpose, aspiration and function. Libraries and librarians have been starved of funding. Teachers cram their curriculum with 'skill development' and 'generic competencies' because knowledge, creativity and originality are too expensive to provide to unmotivated students and parents obsessed with league tables, not learning. Meanwhile, the internet offers a glut of information on everything-under-the-sun, a mere mouse-click away. Bored surfers fill their cursors and minds with irrelevancies. We lose the capacity to sift, discard and judge. Information is no longer for social good, but for sale. Tara Brabazon argues that this information fetish has been profoundly damaging to our learning institutions and to the ambitions of our students and educators. In The University of Google she projects a defiant and passionate vision of education as a pathway to renewal, where research is based on searching and students are on a journey through knowledge, rather than consumers in the shopping centre of cheap ideas. Angry, humorous and practical in equal measure, The University of Google is based on real teaching experience and on years of engaged and sometimes exasperated reflection on it. It is far from a luddite critique of the information age. Tara Brabazon celebrates the possibilities of digital platforms in education, but deplores the consequences of placing funding on technology and not teachers. In doing so, she opens a new debate on how to make our educational system both productive and provocative in the (post-) information age.
Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age is for all those interested in considering the impact of emerging digital technologies on teaching and learning. It explores the concept of a digital age and perspectives of knowledge, pedagogy and practice within a digital context. By examining teaching with digital technologies through new learning theories cognisant of the digital age, it aims to both advance thinking and offer strategies for teaching technology-savvy students that will enable meaningful learning experiences. Illustrated throughout with case studies from across the subjects and the age range, key issues considered include: how young people create and share knowledge both in and beyond the classroom and how current and new pedagogies can support this level of achievement the use of complexity theory as a framework to explore teaching in the digital age the way learning occurs – one way exchanges, online and face-to-face interactions, learning within a framework of constructivism, and in communities what we mean by critical thinking, why it is important in a digital age, and how this can occur in the context of learning how students can create knowledge through a variety of teaching and learning activities, and how the knowledge being created can be shared, critiqued and evaluated. With an emphasis throughout on what it means for practice, this book aims to improve understanding of how learning theories currently work and can evolve in the future to promote truly effective learning in the digital age. It is essential reading for all teachers, student teachers, school leaders, those engaged in Masters’ Level work, as well as students on Education Studies courses.
Instruction tailored to the individual student, learning and teaching outside the limits of time and space—ideas that were once considered science fiction are now educational reality, with the prospect of an intelligent Web 3.0 not far distant. Alongside these innovations exists an emerging set of critical-thinking challenges, as Internet users create content and learners (and teachers) take increased responsibility in their work. Learning and Instruction in the Digital Age nimbly balances the technological and pedagogical aspects of these rapid changes, gathering papers from noted researchers on a wealth of topics relating to cognitive approaches to learning and teaching, mental models, online learning, communications, and innovative educational technologies, among them: Cognition and student-centered, Web-based learning, The progression of mental models throughout a course of instruction, Experiencing education with 3D virtual worlds, Expanding educational boundaries through multi-school collaboration, Adapting e-learning to different learning styles, The student blog as reflective diary. With its blend of timely ideas and forward thinking, Learning and Instruction in the Digital Age will enrich the work of researchers in educational psychology, educational technology, and cognitive science.
Digital media are increasingly interwoven into how we understand society and ourselves today. From lines of code to evolving forms of online conduct, they have become an ever-present layer of our age. The rethinking of education has now become the subject of intense global policy debates and academic research, paralleled by the invention and promot
In this report, Cathy Davidson and David Theo Goldberg focus on the potential for shared and interactive learning made possible by the Internet. They argue that the single most important characteristic of the Internet is its capacity for world-wide community and the limitless exchange of ideas. The Internet brings about a way of learning that is not new or revolutionary but is now the norm for today's graduating high school and college classes. It is for this reason that Davidson and Goldberg call on us to examine potential new models of digital learning and rethink our virtually enabled and enhanced learning institutions. This report is available in a free digital edition on the MIT Press website at http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262513593. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning
