Making Learning a Part of Life in the Digital Age

With the advent of digital technologies many of our old ways of learning and working are being replaced. This is happening both in and inside the classroom. It is evident that a new way of learning must be established. But how can this be achieved? It’s not just about creating a digital infrastructure that supports learning but will also need to address the fundamental questions of what education and learning is to be in the future.

This article explores ways to make learning part of everyday life in a digital age, drawing on the contributions from researchers and teachers all over the world. This article is targeted at learners (including parents and students) educators, curriculum designers, technology experts researchers in learning sciences, as well as policymakers.

Although there are a myriad of opinions on what digital-age learning should look like, there is a broad consensus that we need to promote the co-evolution between learning and modern communication technologies. This should include exploring new possibilities for radically different conceptualizations of education and for the creation of new methods that can be supported by modern communication technology.

One of the biggest challenges is that the majority of current applications of new information technologies for learning remain a kind of «gift wrapping» (Fischer, 1998). These technologies are utilized as an addition to existing frameworks like instructionism, memorization, fixed curriculum and decontextualized learning. This is evident in many comparative studies where a face-to-face setting is used as a reference that limits the study of tasks that require functions only accessible in digital settings.

https://lifelongdigital.org/2021/03/22/arrived-this-year-at-last-long-arrived-digital-technologies