Our newest generation is demonstrating for us the impact of having developed under the digital wave. These youth have been completely normalized by digital technologies—it is a fully integrated aspect of their lives. Many students in this group are using new media and technologies to create new things in new ways, learn new things in new ways, and communicate in new ways with new people— behaviors that have become hardwired in their ways of thinking and operating in the world.
Technology can have a reciprocal relationship with teaching. The emergence of new technologies pushes educators to understanding and leveraging these technologies for classroom use; at the same time, the on-the-ground implementation of these technologies in the classroom can (and does) directly impact how these technologies continue to take shape.
Undoubtedly, without these recent technologies (i.e. digital games, Web 2.0, etc.) in the classroom, strong lessons can still be achieved, but there’s a sharp disconnect between the way students are taught in school and the way the outside world approaches socialization, meaning-making, and accomplishment. It is critical that education not only seek to mitigate this disconnect in order to make these two “worlds” more seamless, but of course also to leverage the power of these emerging technologies for instructional gain.
Digital gaming, simulations, and social networking simply put these technologies afford us the ability to convey concepts in new ways that would otherwise not be possible, efficient, or effective, with other instructional methods. In other words, these technologies don’t just help us teach the old stuff in new ways – they can also help us teach new stuff in new ways.
Throughout the past few decades, the emergence of new technologies has been paralleled by the evolution of theories on cognition and learning. Where learning and the mind were once viewed as “filling of the bucket,” the “social mind” is now a much more prevalent model. Of course, educators have long been aware that learning is a social activity, where learners construct their understanding not just through interaction with the material, but also through collaboratively constructing new knowledge with their peers.
Reference:
The Instructional Power of digital games, social networking and simulations and How Teachers Can Leverage Them.
The Education Arcade Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Eric Klopfer, Scot Osterweil, Jennifer Groff, Jason Haas
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