Learning in Our Digital Era

Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash

 As a student I find the teachers I have and do connect most with are the ones who create personal connections with me. They learn some things about my life or ask questions about my day making me feel valued and important in their classroom! Same thing in my coaching! The girls I find I can coach the best or seem the most receptive are the ones that I've created strong bonds with outside of just athletics! I find that both of these scenarios relate closely to Nel Noddings theory as she believed in the concept of caring as a fundamental aspect of education! I find this to be true in my experience and beliefs. Knowing a teacher cared for me and wanted genuine success for me in education and life made me feel valued! Having a teacher that could use motivational displacement to prioritize my needs and understanding how to best help me as Nel Noddings explained in her theory is a strong reason why I found success in certain classes over others! I think another big influence I found in relational learning from my research this week was the impact that technology has on students and teachers being able to create that relationship I have been describing. So much in school is now online based and individualized and as Mimi Ito explains entertainment media and other forms of technology get a "status that is inherently a space that is hostile to learning and that's the perception that I think we really need to work against." I agree with this perspective as I think learning spaces can be held in technology even if students use it for friendship and social media reasons in general. Teachers and educators can find ways to relate to students through technology and almost "get on their level" in a sense understanding how students communicate. I think that connects a little to Nel Noddings theory as she wanted teachers to understand the individual and their perspectives so they could help the student as best they can. However, I can understand where educators may not want to take the step to implement technology in this digital era because " But education doesn’t exist in isolation — it’s embedded within a broader tech-social-political-cultural matrix." Students, like Mimi Ito explained, use media for friendship driven spaces. How can education be made completely separate from that and should it be? I'm not sure of my answer to this question honestly. As I can see that educators care enough to want to protect their students from the dangers of the online world, but this overstepping could harm the personal relationships built by the student and teacher. It raises a hard to answer question of what is technology's role in education? I believe that it should have one, but I think the personal relationship between student and teacher is more important!