Like it or Not, Technology is Evolving Education. You Better Evolve Too!

Like it or not, the world that our students live in has completely changed. Our students now are digital learners, and educators should be asking themselves how digital and interactive are our classrooms. It seems like children today come out of the womb knowing how to swipe left and right on cell phones and tablets. Think about it... have you ever sat your cell phone down for a few minutes only to look back up and your child has it. There is a reason for this behavior. Students today have never lived without a computer and send an average of 50 text messages a day. 53% of students report having a cell phone in their pocket by age 11 (i.e. a personal mobile computer with them daily). 84% of teenagers have their own cell phone. Students now spend up to 85 minutes a day on YouTube and 80 minutes per day on Tik Tok. So now you can see, media is here to stay and we as teachers and adults must learn to leverage it. Also, social media often is used for marketing and advertising like never before. So, why don't teachers and schools use this tool the way that other businesses have learned to leverage social media? The average age when a child begins to consume online media regularly is eight years old. Even though Facebook and other social media sites usually require students to be around 13 years old, about 5 million users under the age of 10 still have a page. The average student (ages 8-18) spends about 10 hours and 45 minutes per day online. 25% of teens log into social media over ten times a day.

Photo Source: digitaltrends.com

However, the term “media” does mean between. We as adults sometimes feel like kids can become so engulfed in media that they forget about the world around them. However, media can also be a means of communication and a way to invade our children’s digital world. Continually, we're told in the education world that technology is overused, and we should go back to the old ways of teaching with the student, teacher, and whiteboard. However, many of the jobs that we are preparing students for today did not exist when we were teenagers. Students that were born in the 2000s are very different than those born in the 1900s. Students born in the 2000s are very technologically savvy, have learned to multitask, and are comfortable with collaboration. Those born in the 1900s have knowledge, experience, and focus. We were always told that the best form of communication is face to face. Yet, technology is proving to trend in the opposite direction. If you think about it, many people hated the cell phone when it became popular. People thought others would never come face to face to engage in conversation, yet language and communication survived. The pandemic has proven that we no longer have to be face to face in order to engage. The use of the Zoom platform has increased 367% since the pandemic and the way we communicated also changed. Even after the pandemic, we learned that we can be in different places and still meet and accomplish the same goals.

Now language has been incorporated into video games and streaming. The creation of YouTube has caused many students to attempt to become viral social celebrities on the internet. As technology continues to evolve, so do our students. Students have begun to crave social media and have somewhat created their own communication with the inception of emojis, memes, and gifs. Since this evolution, a wide variety of social sites are hitting the internet every day. I am not challenging the fact that face to face communication is also essential but rather pointing out the changing world around us and how students view language and communication.

We as humans have always evolved, yet many teachers fail to do so. We fail to realize that old ways don't open new doors. Refusal to grow with the changing world and students around you will almost undoubtedly result in an eventual lack of success and teacher burnout. For some teachers, the use of social media and the internet is entirely alien to them. For teachers who have been teaching for many years, incorporating social media and the internet can be hard. We all exist in multiple realms, meaning almost everyone has an online presence along with our living in the real world. As teachers, we must teach students how to communicate both on and offline in any given environment.

The reality is that advancements in educational technology are not about replacing teachers, or even traditional teaching methods. Instead, many of today’s modern teaching methods are simply an evolution of older techniques.

Who teachers are and who they teach remains the same.

What teachers stand for and what they aim to accomplish hasn’t altered.

Where teachers work and why they do what they do remains steadfast.

It is simply the how teachers teach that has changed – but not as much as you might think.

Source: https://resourced.prometheanworld.com/evolution-modern-teaching-methods/