Digital Philosphy

My philosophy regarding the application of digital technologies to adult literacy tuition centres around the premise that, while these technologies can be highly effectively employed in this field, primary outcomes derive from the structure, content, context and instructional strategies of the lesson itself. In other words, the digital technologies are the medium, not the message.  However, having said that, there can be a nevertheless a tangible element present also of Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum regarding the development of electronic media as far back as half a century ago (already) , that, yes, in many situations the medium is the message, too. Basically I feel that most effective results will be achieved with these technologies through application of appropriate balance and context within a student-centred framework of what the intended primary learning goals actually are.

According to Bonk and Reynolds (1997), ‘online learning must create challenging activities that enable learners to link new information to old, acquire meaningful knowledge, and use their metacognitive abilities.’ These precepts can hardly be argued with, but equally, in some circumstances the sheer Practice & Usage element of digital technology utilities (with all the implicit literacy and numeracy that is part of that process) will constitute valid and valuable learning in itself. In many cases, then, several learning goals may comfortably co-exist and together constitute all manner of highly effective embedded literacy and numeracy tuition.

 Ring and Mathieux (2002) suggest that online learning should have high authenticity (i.e., students should learn in the context of the workplace), high interactivity, and high collaboration. I do not particularly see why the learning should be in the context of the ‘workplace’, unless it is specifically work-based tuition. I would much prefer that it be in the context of the ‘fun-place’, or the ‘interesting-place’. Having said that, though, the incorporation of digital technologies into everyday life  has become so pervasive in recent times for a significant (and ever growing) sector of the population that any degree of engagement with the digital media at all can lead to many and varied forms of upskilling -both intended and intended - that can potentially build marketable skills in terms of future possible workplace situations.

Web 2.0 technologies, with their emphasis on sharing, networking, user production, and the like, are all very well and good, and may serve all manner of useful personal imperatives. But in terms of identified learning goals, their usefulness can only be measured to the extent these media help achieve those goals. Simply being engaged with (and perhaps even spectacularly proficient with) these technologies may be meaningless – given the stated intentions of specific learning aspirations – if engagement with these technologies is not necessarily advancing fulfilment of the explicit learning priorities.