Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

For a long time, teaching was teacher-centered: the teacher dispensed information through lecture, handouts, or presentations; the students absorbed the information by listening and taking notes. It was repetitive, could become monotonous, and left little room for student exploration or creativity. It was also detrimental to students who couldn’t keep pace with the teacher’s lessons or students who learned in way different from the teacher’s presentation

As education becomes more accessible with advanced technology, more and more students are opting to enroll in online schools or take some of their traditional college courses online.

But as this trend grows, institutions are finding it necessary to address faculty concerns and ensure online programs are high-quality and rigorous.

In late October, Inside Higher Ed released its 2017 report on faculty attitudes and uses of technology. The report, a collaboration between Inside Higher Ed and Gallup, found that while faculty are warming up to technology, change is slow in the ivory tower and that many faculty continue to express concerns about public institutions partnering too closely with educational technology companies.

Some strange things seem to be happening in the learning technology and T&L debates at the moment. There appears to be a growing presence of an anti-tech resistance, challenging the efficacy of technology (and those who use it). Some of these ‘think pieces’ question the motivations of those using technology in their class (both students and teachers), demean the status of social media as an active and fertile ground for intellectual debate, try and institute blanket bans for the good of the learner and actively argue that we need to ‘get back to chalk’. These have become battle lines in a fake war between protectors and challengers, defenders of the faith versus the barbarians at the gate. The innocent victims in all this posturing and puffery are the engaged teachers and learners (thanks @antonycoombsHE for the input).

These days, it’s hard not to overhear a conversation about a new app on the market or software product development. Some creations are superfluous—do people really need another photo-sharing app? But the burgeoning world of technical tools is solving real, important problems in society, from healthcare to environmental preservation to education. Educational technology, or edtech, is one such industry that is receiving increasing attention and investment, and entrepreneurial individuals are taking note of this. TechCrunch is even touting edtech as “2017’s big, untapped and safe investor opportunity” and forecasts its worth to be $252 billion by 2020.