Do you need Technology to be Contemporary?

I have been thinking about this question lately as I've come across a few people who believe that they are Contemporary Educators simply because their students have access to technology, or complain that they cannot possibly teach in a Contemporary fashion because their students don't have access to technology.

Contemporary Learning is more than just having access to technology. It's about what you do with it - shifting from teacher directed to self-directed, not using it as a replacement for chalk and talk and showing the children that you are a learner too.

Contemporary Learning is about collaboration, articulating purpose and need, problem solving, creativity and understanding. It's about understanding what learning is and how to move from the unknown into knowing and understanding. It's about the joys and frustrations of the whole learning experience.

Contemporary Learning is not about reams of worksheets and pages of notes and equations in books. In the future, if we want to simple arithmetic we will use the calculator in our smart phone. If we want to know a key date in history, once again we will look it up on our smart phone or mobile device. Rote learning is not an indicator of good learning and teaching anymore. Understanding key ideas that underpin historical research and mathematical concepts are what is important.

The result of this is that if you are a parent, you might not see reams of worksheets coming home with ticks and stamps and stickers on them anymore. You might get an email or a learning story describing a learning experience instead. You might not see workbooks full of pages with notes and writing. Instead you might see blogs, digital booklets your child has made, photostories or books full of flowcharts, mindmaps and brainstormed ideas. You won't hear much about sitting in a seat and doing "work", you will hear about group discussions, learning tasks, building, drawing, viewing videos and websites and talking about how to work well with others.

Technology has it's place as a research tool, a collaborative tool, a publishing tool and a communication tool. It's a key part of being contemporary but so is all of the other stuff too, like learning to work with others, asking questions, mapping out thinking and setting goals and future directions. So yes, technology is important at school and at home, but I'm wondering if it's being used in a contemporary collaborative fashion or just as a replacement for a chalkboard and solely teacher directed learning. Having access to technology does not equal Contemporary Learning. Effective use of Technology enables Contempoary Learning to become a reality rather than a pipedream.

The video below explains the advantages of using integrating effective use of Technology into Learning and Teaching. This could serve as a fantastic springboard for discussions in school communities and help to develop shared understandings about what Contemporary Learning is and how to use technology effectively.

 
Contemporary Learning from Danielle Carter on Vimeo.