Guest Blog: Purposeful Digital Learning

Principal Brad Hutchinson (Abbotsford Virtual School) challenges us to rethink how we approach learning through technology, and celebrates some of the exciting digital learning initiatives underway in our district.
~Kevin Godden

Computers, mobile devices and internet technologies continue to creep into every aspect of our daily lives. This includes our schools. In education, we are challenged with keeping up with our students while the evolution of technology races on. Technology is like a wild beast roaming the open untamed plain and our job as educators is to find a way to domesticate it for student learning. At the Abbotsford Virtual School, this is part of our mandate.

Looking back, we see turning points in the developments of technology. Take for example one corporate illustration; Apple’s technology advances may be marked by some key products/devices with their associated release dates: Apple I (1976), MacIntosh (1984), iMac (1998), iPod (2001), iPhone (2007), iPad (2010), iWatch (2014). Up until 2001, desktops and laptops were the focus. However, the iPod technology has ushered in a new era, one in which the personal device became accessible for everyone; small, affordable, customizable and indispensable. And now, anyone with a smart phone has access to the world’s knowledge at their fingertips and the device can be stored in a pocket.

In 2001, internationally acclaimed educator Marc Prensky coined the terms, digital natives and digital immigrants. Digital natives are the students sitting in classrooms today, having been born after the introduction of digital technologies since the last century and therefore through interacting with digital technology from an early age, having a greater comfort level using it. “They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, video games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age”. According to Prensky, the rest of us are digital immigrants, having entered into the digital age differently than the digital natives, adapting to our new environment while, to some degree, maintaining a foot in the past.

However, my own observations have led me to challenge the native versus immigrant concept. I believe that we digital immigrants may be giving far too much credit to the digital natives for their abilities to use technology. Yes, students demonstrate adept ability at text messaging. There is no contesting that they have a digital social presence e.g. in Facebook or Instagram, and are able to perform simple Google searches so they can cut and paste together school work. They have become consumers of technology. Yet, we also see a great number of social issues that result from students who unwittingly find themselves on the adverse side of technology when they encounter the consequences of negative social media activity. When we scratch below the level of the social interactions, we find that students have limited skills and understanding of what role technology can play in their lives. Our students will graduate into a world of work that is quite different than the one we immigrants stepped into. While these two terms have meaning and relevance, I suggest that the notion of the dominant digital native is more of a myth than reality. It is up to us, educators, to prepare them for the digital world.

At Abbotsford Virtual School, we recognize that the purposeful teaching of digital literacy and citizenship is needed to help establish the skills our students need to live, learn and work in the digital age. To that end, we created an online course called Learning in a Digital World to help educate middle school students on appropriate use of the internet, focusing on digital literacy and citizenship. In this course, topics range from the basics of computers, techniques in word processing, effective Internet search methods, online communication and working in the “cloud”, including online media creation. Importantly, students learn how to be successful online learners while understanding how to act with character as Internet citizens, with a special focus on internet safety and smart social networking. The course aims to target the novice, given that students are beginning to develop an online presence in their middle school years.

During our first year of the pilot project, AVS worked with three schools in teaching this course to 650 students in a co-teaching environment in 2013-2014. The blended model of instruction involved an online teacher working in real time with students who are in computer labs supported by a classroom teacher. This year, we have expanded the program to work with nine schools and over 1,200 students in Abbotsford. We have developed a series of courses targeting grades 6 to 8, with a sequence of topics and tasks to match the grade level and cover more topic areas. Feedback from parents and educators has been extremely positive.

The dilemmas facing parents, principals, and teachers about how children and youth use technology won’t go away. They can, however, be smartly managed and we can purposefully guide them in the 21st century to learn the appropriate ways to interact while online. It is part of our mandate and responsibility as educators to teach our students how to learn in a digital world.

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