Categories
2013 Conference

The Digital Revolution in Education

Presenter: Martha Gabriel, Professor, HSM Educacao
Twitter: @MarthaGabriel

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us” – Marshall McLuhan. This was the opening quote for Martha’s talk, and with good reason. The digital revolution has forced change in most, if not all, aspects of our lives. It is not only important for us to include these digital changes in our lives, but we must also educate ourselves, and others, on how these new technologies work.

We’re currently living in a digital age of exponential growth, and the technology is growing quicker than our minds.

When looking at this growth and these developing trends, it poses an issue in education. The most important resource for students is attention, and unfortunately attention is limited. With all of this hyper-connectivity, the social networks, and information overload, it can be hard to capture the attention of a student. It becomes important to be relevant with what you teach, and how you teach, in order to capture some of the attention of students.

Becoming relevant and capturing the attention of the classroom, will be what separates professor 2.0 from professor’s of the past. They must be capable of making sense of the new technologies and digital trends, and connecting them in the classroom to make the course interesting. No longer is a professor a content provider, because content can now be accessed anywhere.

Towards the end of the presentation we looked at how education is facing a digital revolution, and what this means for students in the future. Informal education allows for focus on interest, by not taking the usual university route, students are able to learn what, and how they want. Digital learning can also be started at home, by anyone, and practically at any age. But more importantly it doesn’t stop at graduation. Those who will succeed in the modern workforce are those that never stop learning and never stop adapting. Education is no longer only found in the classroom, and information is certainly not just found in books.

Photo Credit: x-ray delta one via Compfight cc

Share this: