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Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age

Helen Beetham and Rhona Sharpe

Oxon: Routledge. 2007

The authors organized a book that has the objective to explore


different ways to apply the modern digital technology in the
education environment. In this book, learning technologists put their
ideas around in how to accelerate the exploitation of digital
technology, bringing its creative use within the capability of the
individual teaching professional. The aargument
rgument is grounded by analysing the evolution of the
technology used in education. As over the centuries prior to the technology, education was into
a system that used paper technology in a variety of highly sophisticated ways to fulfil its
mission to develop
elop and accredit knowledge and skills. Like every modern enterprise, education
is currently learning and adapting to the opportunities given by information and communication
technologies, even though slowly. The authors point out that learning technologist
technologis are trying to
accelerate the process because the learning cycles of the education system are long, while
those of its immediate environment, youth culture, employment demands, scientific knowledge,
are short, and changing ever more rapidly.

They affirm that


hat we must support education system derived from communities that recognize its
value and realize how well it exploits the potential of technology. The ambitions are challenging
the personalized learning through exigency of higher attainment standards, wider
wi participation
and retention in further and higher education, closer relationships between education and the
workplace, lifelong learning, and highly skilled workforce for our knowledge economy.
Achieving this ambitious, they believe we have enormous va value
lue for the communities served by
education.

The fact pointed out by the authors is the tendency that educators have to use technology to
support traditional modes of teaching. Such as improving the quality of lecture presentations
using interactive whiteboards, making lecture notes readable in PowerPoint and available
online, extending the library by providing access to digital resources and libraries, recreating
face-to-face
face tutorial discussions online. All of them are good, incrementing improvements in
quality and flexibility, but nowhere near being transformational.

They exemplify, how can a young person who has always hated study, who believes further
education is not for them, with few skills and low self eesteem,
steem, be persuaded to achieve their
learning potential? The process of teaching and learning has to engage their attention so that
they enjoy study. The knowledge and skills they need must link to their interests so they are
motivated to study. They need constant personalized support and encouragement at the pace
and level to keep them engaged; the content and process of learning must be compatible with
their social culture; they need to be able to see the long
long-term
term value in the hard work of study.

Among various forms to interactions in the online environment, for example, through
collaborations or discussions over forums, or in wikis, or on blogs, enable knowledge to be
constructed individually but socially mediated. The experiences of social interaction can be
facilitated through interactive activities such as small
small-group
group discussions, simulation games,
project-based
based work, and collaborative problem
problem-solving
solving activities.Thus, it is important for the
learning designer to know about the users’ attitude, knowledge level, communication skills and
socio-cultural background.

Beetham and Sharpe concluded that the designed multimedia package should be able to
deliver an individualised instruction because the actual educational theory and practice is
learner-centred. The authors underline that the learners are active participants in the learning
situations therefore they will experience tasks delivered by digital technologies in various ways
based on their ICT skills, gender, culture, emotional reactions to the technologies, first
language, etc. Positive learning effects are obtained when employing a high level of
multimediality, man-machine interactivity, and congruence of used media, reference models
and sufficient quality of information representation.

© Leonardo Langaro 2010

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