Teaching for Digital Culture

Social media, online technologies, mobile devices, and many other recent developments have transformed our social and educational landscape. Laptops and handhelds have replaced pads and pencils. The utility of digital text has surpassed that of the written word. Attention spans have shortened while cognitive plasticity has increased. In the midst of this sea-change, educators have tended to hunker down, freak out, and yearn for the good old days.

And yet, these recent technological developments (along with their social and educational consequences) offer the greatest opportunities for education since the invention of writing itself. This new environment offer educators greater access to learners, improved potential for innovative and immersive learning experiences, enhanced efficiency (which translates, among other things, into reduced marking loads), and many other benefits available with minimal effort. New media, social networking, and online teaching tools offer educators a means of shaping their teaching within digital culture. Here are a few tips and suggestions about how to leverage the digital environment in service of classroom excellence:

Understand Technologies as Cultures

Recognize that the psychological development of anyone born after 1990 is different from those born prior. Technology cultures are foundational to childhood and adolescent development today. The solution is not to avoid technologies but rather to understand them, to participate in them. Be an informed educator (and parent).

Find and Follow the Meme

Technology cultures function by way of memes (and temes); patterns of interest and behavior that spread across the web in unpredictable ways. Follow the memes of technology cultures (such as the Stop Motion T-shirt War and Charlie the Unicorn) and you find the pathways to learner engagement.

Embrace the Geek

Learn and use smart tools, such as the capability of modern websites to distribute your content through the social media environment (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Safeguard your documents using cloud storage (Dropbox, GitHub, etc.). Use browser-based website software (ideally, free and open source software). Drupal, MediaWiki, WordPress, Moveable Type, Meetup, Ning, Delicious, and many other tools offer outstanding possibilities for education. Take the time to experiment, explore, and learn.

Don't Use Word and PowerPoint (gasp!)

Instead, use tools designed for collaboration, interaction, ergonomics, and multiple formats. PowerPoint is evil.

Use Social Media Tools in the Classroom

Contemporary students spend more than 40 hours each week in front of computer and television screens (which leads to a host of associated developmental risks). Contemporary educators compete with an avalanche of information, process, and social activity. Rather than struggle upstream against the momentum of these forces, use them to promote learner engagement. Don't ban social media; find ways that social media can improve the quality of the educational services you provide.

Advocate for Free Access to Online Content

In the online sphere, free is a term with many nuanced meanings. Essentially, learners today have access to information in ways that are fundamentally new and dynamic. Text books are obsolete. Research has become an online (and finely-grained) activity. Blogs are a legitimate form of scholarship. Copyright and information licensing are being transformed. Slowly but irrevocably, we are moving toward an educational system based on the digital. And digital information wants to be free.

Be Creative

Teaching (in its various forms) is one of the most influential roles in society. After parenting, it is perhaps the most crucial, for all ages. And yet, teaching — whether to children or adults — is a profession in which few practitioners have any substantial training. Some instructors have certificates or degrees in teaching, but there’s so much to know about the subject that most good instructors pick up their best skills after training, in the field, thinking on their feet and trying to keep students awake.

Many of the things educators do (learners sitting in chairs for long periods, then writing exams; instructors droning on to massive groups of disinterested students) are precisely the opposite to what is known to work better (learners involved actively, encouraged to make substantive commitments to the process, evaluated by way of collaborative assessment). Most good instructors eventually learn to turn the system around, to craft an environment that is both more holistic and effective. The web provides innumerable means of accomplishing this aim.