ICTs and Pedagogy

As an educator, I value the opportunities presented by MindRising 2016 for children and young people to mark the 1916 centenary in ways that promote their historical understanding, help them to connect the past and the present and support them in imagining the future. Whether they are drawing on the evidence to reconstruct past events and localities, investigating change over time or building on the present to imagine possible futures, MindRising offers rich opportunities for child-led and enquiry-based learning and, most importantly, gives voice to that learning though digital storytelling.

Sometimes I wish technology was more integrated with learning at my school, but then I realize why it’s deliberately separated. There’s something great about getting a new book, cracking the spine, and flipping through the pages. With technology, everything is fleeting. You can read a book on your iPad while listening to Spotify, making a call, and checking Twitter. There’s a value in slowing down and being with the material you’re reading, free from the distractions of the outside world

In no education system around the world where I have worked has the introduction of new technologies made teachers less vital or central to the teaching and learning process. On the contrary: As dust settles after new equipment arrives in schools (and eventually begins to work, more or less), and the initial hype around the potential for quick 'transformational change' subsides, the role of the teacher is almost always more central, indeed fundamental, than it was before the introduction of technology.

New technologies can, and no doubt eventually will, replace many of the routine administrative tasks typically handled by teachers, like taking attendance, entering marks into a grading book, etc

Machines (perhaps even "teaching machines") may also handle some of the routine, low-end cognitive tasks (e.g. posing multiple-choice questions and grading tests) that teachers currently perform

This is hard to do—it requires both pedagogical and math concept knowledge, but it can be learned

Droujkova says one of the biggest challenges has been the mindsets of the grown-ups. Parents are tempted to replay their "bad old days" of math instruction with their kids, she says.

Unfortunately a lot of what little children are offered is simple but hard—primitive ideas that are hard for humans to implement,” because they readily tax the limits of working memory, attention, precision and other cognitive functions

Our Space is a set of curricular materials designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments. Through role-playing activities and reflective exercises, students are asked to consider the ethical responsibilities of other people, and whether and how they behave ethically themselves online. These issues are raised in relation to five core themes that are highly relevant online: identity, privacy, authorship and ownership, credibility, and participation.

what is important in digital literacy is that we understand and teach “how to use technology, or relate to it, in ways that are productive and meaningful” (p. 144). As she says, if we ignore technology altogether, like Samuel’s limiters, or provide students with access to technology without guidance, as do enablers, we prevent them from developing a critical understanding of the role that technology plays in our culture, ultimately leaving them with no position from which to understand emerging technology other than fear or blind acceptance

Samuel reports that she has found some telling correlations in her data between these parenting approaches and children’s online behaviors, noting that “mentors are more likely than limiters to talk with their kids about how to use technology or the Internet responsibly,” while “among school-aged kids,” it is the “children of limiters who are most likely to engage in problematic behavior: they’re twice as likely as the children of mentors to access porn, or to post rude or hostile comments online; they’re also three times as likely to go online and impersonate a classmate, peer, or adult.”

Research also shows that students often juggle homework and entertainment.

At Woodside, as elsewhere, students’ use of technology is not uniform. Mr. Reilly, the principal, says their choices tend to reflect their personalities.

The technology has created on campuses a new set of social types — not the thespian and the jock but the texter and gamer, Facebook addict and YouTube potato. “The technology amplifies whoever you are,” Mr. Reilly says.