Anthony William (Tony) Bates asks in chapter two the reader to answer the following question: ”Can you justify the role of ‘teacher’ in a digital society where individuals can find all they need on the Internet and from friends or even strangers? How do you think that the role of the teacher might, could or should change as a result of the development of a digital society? Or are there ‘constants’ that will remain?” (Bates, 2019)
My professional experiences stem from upper secondary education. There, students are positioned in between a full day learning environment with caring teachers and lectures with more than a hundred students facing a professor. It really is great and I enjoy teaching very much.
The chapter has briefly introduced epistemological theories and I once again conclude that we need all of them. Mankind is not one of a kind, and people are involved in many different contexts, preoccupied with personal worries, and everyone’s mind is constantly ready to react on whatever stimuli that touches their present. The kids need school partly as a comfort zone where they occasionally can stretch out and take steps towards the unknown.
Digital technology is said to have the prospect of supporting learning. What does this mean, considering the old learning theories? Are we learning differently nowadays? Yes, some say digital technology definitely has changed learning. However, from the classroom point of view, I can report that students continue to learn as they did before. What has changed is my teaching practice, and the tools and resources me and my students use.
Of course, they bring knowledge of other kinds to school today as changes in society always is reflected in the bag of knowledge people carry around. The informal learning is clearly affected by the digital society. My students take part of correct and fake news, true and false explanations and collects information from vendors, learn to play games, and where to find drugs, to give just a few examples. Their reality (and the teachers is changed) but we continue to learn as we did before. We all listen, share, see, reflect, try, and read all day long and try to make sense of what we take part of. In short, the meaning making is a result of behaviouristic, cognitive, and constructivistic learning – and any other learning theory. My point of view is that we contextually adapt our learning to what is to be learned, the object of learning.
Of course I make use of the advantages laid out by technology. When things can be made smoother and more effective, I’m all in. When infrastructure breaks down at school, I get frustrated since my teaching very much depends on the tools ability to function properly. I get frustrated when the students’ laptops break, when laptops have low battery, when laptops are ‘forgotten’ at home, or left in the divorced fathers house and the student stayed overnight at the mother’s place.
I have come to understand that technology is very, very difficult for many of my students to come to terms with. Therefore I struggle to provide opportunities to develop competences that are needed for work, higher education, society and private life.
Compared to when I was at their age, society is changed in innumerable ways. That is how it has always been (blink to Socrates). We still learn as we have always done, in multiple ways. A teacher must therefore design for multiple learning opportunities.
Now, my reading of Bates publication continues.
Bates, A. W. (2019) Teaching in the digital age. Retrieved from https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/front-matter/updates-and-revisions/
