I have been
working as a teacher for over 20 years and my working routine has changed
a lot throughout the years due to
technological advances.
When I
started studying to be a teacher we did not use computers, instead, we used to
write everything:
planning,
assessment, students' absences, and the like… After some
time I started to use
Microsoft Word for writing reports and other documents. That
resulted in a lot of
versions as the coordinators had to
revise the work and it was a
collective work…
A turning point for me
was when I started to use Google Drive to write and keep
my files and documents
(Documents, slides…) Being able to share a document
and work with peer(s) at
the same time enriched a lot my work and the cloud is
a safe place to keep
them. Moreover, where I work, learners do not have diaries
to write messages to families,
we use emails instead, and all the documents are
shared digitally
(reports, project frameworks…). For the planet, that means less
paper, which is a
sustainable attitude!
However, the
downside to all these technological advancements is the fact that
we are, somehow,
always
online. From my point of view, one way to deal with
that is to set some boundaries,
for example, "don't check your professional email
on the weekend". When we think about
literacy, things have changed too.
Learners are also online
and they have access to social medias so
the challenge
is how to prepare them
for this world which they belong to.
Literacy
enables learners to make connections and become part of the society
they live in
and just decoding words and sentences is not enough. Due to the
internet,
people are not only receptive to the information anymore, they are
also
producers. Moreover, how can people reflect on the information they
receive?
They have to be taught to check source, read between the lines,
identify
fake news…
Therefore,
being a teacher requires many more skills than it did a decade
ago! We
cannot be resistant
to changing and learning new things and to
help our learners make
meaningful connections it is high time we lived
in the same world as
theirs!
References:
Gowen, S. 2007. ““I’m no fool”: Reconsidering American Workers
and their Literacies.”Pp. 163-170 in Literacy: An Advanced Resource
Book, edited by B. V. Street and A. Leftstein. London:
Routledge,
pp.163-166.
Knobel, Michele and Colin Lankshear. 2007. “The New Literacies
Sampler.” New York: Peter Lang, pp.2-17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy5ZJ5Qp6e0 accessed on July
20th, 2019.
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