Today I would like to contribute something that is a little bit different. Today I would not like to share anything classroom related, but it is still important to share.
Today I want to tell you about the 8 years that lead up to this moment
Category: Digital Citizenship
Is the lighting right? Do I have the right angle? Do I always look like I’m looking down?
It took me ages to make my first video with my real face in it, and I only did it out of necessity. This was before I discovered how to make my own avatar. I’ve seen countless people doing this on iPads. I wanted in.
Teachers and students are now increasingly turning to their Clouds in order to manage their various documents in order to alleviate the increasingly student bags. “You can never lose a file” sounds like a dream come true for anyone who creates multiple files and photos each day, which is the majority of our student and teaching community.
Increasingly, we are coming to the realisation that not deleting any photos from the last 10 years means that our Clouds are now massive, and finding the right file can take ages!
Our students are transcending beyond the tribal nature of these platforms. Instead, they are becoming the “Digital Divergents”- able to use their skills to communicate and flow between each platform with ease. Tech companies have realised that in order to survive, communities require their platforms to be cross compatible.
This has meant that the focus for educators is now to teach and build upon the skills that are universally applicable to all platforms. Focusing on these skills, rather than the platform, prepares your students for their journey into Further Education. Our role as teachers has always been to enable our students to take what they have learnt with them, to help succeed in their chosen paths.
By the time secondary school students reach 15, 74% of them have an active social media account and 83% of them own a smartphone. By then, their social role models have shifted from their parents to their peers. They become the moderators of their own digital world. Learning how to communicate with each other in that digital world has now become an essential survival skill, one which they must harness before stepping onto the world stage by themselves.
DigiLin Learning 