Training the Future with New Technology

"Technology has always been at the forefront of human education." - Purdue University

This has always been the case since the beginning of education. Technology gave way for new technology for newer technology. Like the Magic Lantern to the chalkboard, to the overhead projector, to the photocopier, to the smart board. There's even talk of brining Augmented Reality (AR) into the classroom. So while some of the technology may now seem outdated, like the overhead projector from the 1930s, at the time of it's invention it changed the way student's were learning & being taught for the future. Just take a look at this video, posted on YouTube in 2022, showing video instructions on how to use the overhead projector. (Just a warning: it goes for about 10 minutes and then does the whole video again in French!)

This video is an example of teachers needing to stay up to date on the latest technology to teach students, or they'll all fall behind. But it's also not just the technology itself that needs to be learned, but how to use it & interpret it. Media & Culture Literacy helps students understand how the media around them works, how each aspect is different, and how it relates to them & their future. Even I learned about Media Literacy in my undergrad studies and wrote another blog post about it on this very blog! But media culture is so engrained in the lives of students today, but it's so important to get that literacy knowledge out to them for better success outside the classroom. Media literacy can be as simple as knowing a satirical article from a real one, knowing the right post format for Twitter versus Facebook, to more complex concepts of how harmful rhetoric is shared online disgusted as something else.

With each day more media are brought online, which means more and more is being use in the classroom; like teachers using social media within the classroom lesson & outside to answer student questions. This helps not only the students, but also the teachers in their educating by helping reach the students where they are. By teaching students about the digital world around them, we can better prepare them for the physical world they'll enter in adulthood. There's so much about Media Literacy to know, check out the infographic to the right from the EAVI - Media Literacy for Citizenship site.

Resources

1. Goodyear, V. A., Casey, A., & Kirk, D. (2014). Tweet me, message me, like me: using social media to facilitate pedagogical change within an emerging community of practice. Sport, Education & Society, 19(7), 927–943.

2. Purdue Online. (n.d.). The Evolution of Technology in the Classroom. Purdue University Online. Retrieved from The Evolution Of Technology In The Classroom | Purdue Online 

3. Tatarnikova, A., Oleshko, A., Voronovska, L., Shvets, N., Sushkova, O., & Sbitnaia, D. (2022). The Impact of Media Culture on Future Professionals’ Training. Journal of Curriculum and Teaching, 11(1), 117–128.

4. Media Sources: Projector Video - Let's Talk About Media Literacy infographic