School in digital era¶
In the modern school, the authority seems to play a lesser role, based on coercion, persuasion or teacher’s authority. Interestingly, the scope and manner of assessing the competence (knowledge and skills) of the teacher are also changing. While the former teacher in the classroom was essentially the only and most important source of knowledge, nowadays, thanks to universal access to the Internet, his words can be immediately verified by the students and often challenged. The teacher’s role of contemporary youth is to build authority on skills other than those closely related and only with knowledge. At present the teacher should also demonstrate openness and competence in using new technologies to acquire and verify knowledge. The widespread access to the Internet has made it not only the teacher’s expertise to build authority, but the flexibility and ability to adapt to students’ current needs and interests, including through joint exploration of themes and issues where they can often inspire teachers. One of the most important tasks of a teacher in digital reality is to show and teach his students how to use this reality; how to ensure the safety and privacy of the Internet, how to verify the information found there, what strategies and tools to use to organize messages encountered on the Internet, and how to supplement the knowledge learned at school with knowledge acquired thanks to digital sources.
Already in the early 1990s, the change in perceiving the role of the teacher described above was identified in Alison King’s article, “From Sage on the Stage to a Guide to the Side” (King 1993). This article was about the style of teaching in American universities, and its purpose was to encourage lecturers to give up the function of giving the knowledge of the ‘sage of the cathedral’ to the ‘side guide’ that accompanies the students in gaining knowledge. Changing the role of a teacher or lecturer seems to perfectly match the contemporary needs of the Y generation, who value highly specific practical skills and the ability to learn what they are interested in right now or what they perceive as needed. teaching, teacher decisions, or predictions about what might be useful in the future. They also like to work in groups or teams and use new technologies that allow them to stay in touch with others outside of school hours.
Since pupils from Generation Y are referred to as digital natives (Prensky, 2001), people who feel online at home and do not know the world where there is no access, are much easier to motivate them to gain knowledge through new technologies. It is also much easier for a teacher (often as a digital immigrant, as Mark Prensky would say) to build his own authority if he is able to appreciate students’ ability to use new technologies on the one hand, and on the other hand to show them how to acquire, verify and organize acquired knowledge with digital sources. In order to do so, he must give up his role as an infallible authority in favor of personal authority, often based on the so-called soft skills.
For memorizing, they are, for example, creating online fiches, creating digital notes (using text editors and online equivalents), co-writing by several or more pupils, etc. To demonstrate understanding of material, a student may conduct a blog with a summary of material from the lesson Also write comments on the statements of the teacher and other students in the forum. The application is manifested in the ability to edit the content of the network, use of computer programs and web, etc. Analyzing it, for example, tagging and categorizing digital content. The assessment is the ability to verify and test knowledge and programs, and creating it is programming, making videos, animations, podcasts, and publishing them on the web. Each of these stages can be assigned specific digital tools that will allow teachers and students to collaborate in the digital environment. However, we must remember that web applications and programs change and go out of use very quickly, so a teacher who wants to support his students in the useful use of new technology must keep his or her hand on the pulse and continue to formally and informally learn in this area.
Generation Y and its needs¶
The youth are so-called Y generation (Generation Y), also known as Millennials. According to Wikipedia, this is a generation of people born in Poland from 1984 to 1997, and in other countries, for example, in the USA, the baby boomers of the 1980s and 1990s. It is also called “the generation of Millennium”, “next generation”, “digital generation” and “generation of flip flops and iPods”. Unlike the previous generation, called the X Generation, they “tamed” technological advances and actively use the media and digital technologies. The Millennials are considered to be a bold generation, open to new challenges, stigmatizing their way of learning the world and learning. Some of the characteristics of the Y generation are:
actively and in all areas of their lives use technology and digital media;
live in a “global village” thanks to Internet access they have knowledge of the world;
characterized by high self-confidence;
are well educated and willing to continue to develop;
According to a study conducted at the University of New Hampshire, they have a high opinion of their skills, belief in their own uniqueness, excessive expectations and strong aversion to criticism.
The change of learning characteristics the new generation in:
technology (new devices have emerged);
pedagogy (learning has become more individual)
content (the content is shorter and the media has changed).
have generated the need to search for new methods and forms of teaching. E-learning, blended learning, m-learning, Flipped Teaching, and the project methodology (including WebQuest) are among the current and effective ways of matching. These are methods based on observation and action, and therefore very effective in understanding and memorizing new messages.
