Leading schools in the digital age: A clash of cultures

A cultural gap is widening in English secondary schools: between a twentieth-century ethos of institutional provision and the twenty-first century expectations and digital lifestyles of school students. Perhaps disaffected by traditional teaching methods and the competitive target culture of schools, many students have turned to social networking through the cluster of computer-based applications known as Web 2.0. Here, they can communicate, share and learn informally using knowledge systems their elders can barely understand. Some of their contemporaries have turned away altogether, rejecting school and contributing to record levels of truancy and exclusion. This paper identifies a set of challenges for school leaders in relation to the growing digital/cultural gap. The government agenda for personalised learning is discussed, alongside strategies which schools might adopt to support this through the use of ICT, and both figure in scenario projections which envision how secondary education could change in the future. The paper concludes by recommending three priorities for school leaders

Active ageing – Enhancing digital literacies in elderly citizens

Being digital and information literate is crucial in nowadays society, although not every citizen has the necessary means and resources to achieve these skills, especially the elderly ones. Therefore it is necessary to develop ways to help them to enhance their digital and information competences. In this paper we will present an ongoing project that was designed and implemented with the goal to provide elderly citizens with the necessary skills of a networked society, contributing for an active ageing. The methods used were based on a set of hands on workshops delivered by a team of voluntary students and teacher, with the help of collaborators from a nursing home. The workshops were developed accordingly with the detected needs of a group of elderly citizens, based on the answers of an implemented questionnaire.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Digital Literacy Circulation: Adolescents and Flows of Knowledge about New Media

The aim of this paper is to discuss the output of an empirical research on digital skills in order to develop a typology of skills circulation among young digital users. Relying on research on digital literacy in media studies and on users in STS, in this article we start criticizing the concepts of \u201cdigital divide\u201d, \u201cdigital inequalities\u201d and \u201cdigital competencies\u201d. Then, we present the principal results of a research study involving 50 adolescents in Italy about how they acquired their competences in the use of digital media. This gave us the opportunity to focus on the digital skills of young people and the development of their abilities in using digital media. The research outlines the patterns of circulation in digital competences among young people in relation to family, school and peer group, defining four kinds of \u201cflows\u201d: parental flow (involving fathers and mothers), peer flow (connected to friends and people of the same age), educational flow (referring to formal education) and technological flow (involving technological devices, such as computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc.). The aim is to understand the interactions between digital skills and the social, institutional and technological conditions that influence the youth\u2019s digital literacy for the everyday use of digital media

E-Learning for Teachers and Trainers : Innovative Practices, Skills and Competences

Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.Final Published versio

Pedagogic approaches to using technology for learning: literature review

This literature review is intended to address and support teaching qualifications and CPD through identifying new and emerging pedagogies; "determining what constitutes effective use of technology in teaching and learning; looking at new developments in teacher training qualifications to ensure that they are at the cutting edge of learning theory and classroom practice and making suggestions as to how teachers can continually update their skills." - Page 4

Teacher competence development – a European perspective

This chapter provides an European perspectives on teacher competence development

Community-based mentoring and innovating through Web 2.0

The rise of social software, often termed Web 2.0, has resulted in heightened awareness of the opportunities for creative and innovative approaches to learning that are afforded by network technologies. Social software platforms and social networking technologies have become part of the learning landscape both for those who learn formally within institutions, and for those who learn informally via emergent web-based learning communities. As collaborative online learning becomes a reality, new skills in communication and collaboration are required in order to use new technologies effectively, develop real digital literacy and other 21st century skills

Are digital natives a myth or reality?: Students’ use of technologies for learning

This paper outlines the findings of a study investigating the extent and nature of use of digital technologies by undergraduate students in Social Work and Engineering, in two British universities. The study involved a questionnaire survey of students (n=160) followed by in-depth interviews with students (n=8) and lecturers and support staff (n=8) in both institutions. Firstly, the findings suggest that students use a limited range of technologies for both learning and socialisation. For learning, mainly established ICTs are used- institutional VLE, Google and Wikipedia and mobile phones. Students make limited, recreational use of social technologies such as media sharing tools and social networking sites. Secondly, the findings point to a low level of use of and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies. Thirdly, the study did not find evidence to support the claims regarding students adopting radically different patterns of knowledge creation and sharing suggested by some previous studies. The study shows that students’ attitudes to learning appear to be influenced by the approaches adopted by their lecturers. Far from demanding lecturers change their practice, students appear to conform to fairly traditional pedagogies, albeit with minor uses of technology tools that deliver content. Despite both groups clearly using a rather limited range of technologies for learning, the results point to some age differences, with younger, engineering students making somewhat more active, albeit limited, use of tools than the older ones. The outcomes suggest that although the calls for radical transformations in educational approaches may be legitimate it would be misleading to ground the arguments for such change solely in students’ shifting expectations and patterns of learning and technology use

Learning cultures on the move: where are we heading?

The paper analyzes the globally recognized cultural move towards a more learner-centred education and discusses the implications for the adoption of mobile technologies and design for learning. Current expectations vis-à-vis learner attributes, skills and competences are explored. The pervasiveness of mobile technologies is precipitating these developments, whilst also generating a distinct mobile culture where learners take mobility and context-awareness as starting points and become more visible as innovators, creators and producers. Language learning, one of the most popular application areas of mobile learning, provides fertile ground for the growth of this phenomenon. The paper reviews several innovative language learning applications and concludes by indicating the directions in which we are heading