I was born in the 80s and the activities were live instead of screen time. Childhood was all about games outside and playing with other children. Interaction in real life was more important. As a teen, technology arrived with a rumble. My first real contact with technology was when my family got a computer which I used to play Solitaire and Minesweeper.
In comprehensive school we wrote short texts and saved them on discs. When I was 15, I got my first cellphone. The cellphone could only be used for calling and text messaging. The technological development was evident in phones, as cellphones became more and more advanced in a short period time. Phones got new functions like taking pictures and connecting to Internet. It didn’t take long for the Internet to be cheap on phones as well.
I work as a teacher in a vocational college. For the most part, I see the development of technology as positive. Situation has changed a lot in the past 24 years when I was myself in a vocational college. Technology enables learning at anytime and anywhere. It can be used to create a variety of different learning environments, for example hybrid learning environments where some students are in the classroom while others are elsewhere. Due to pandemic, many young students began to feel uncomfortable in social situations. While mostly society can return to the time before the pandemic, the digital tools have given something new to learning and teaching.
Nearly everything is in digital form. This saves money, time and natural resources. A lot of information exists online. People no longer need to store an immense amount of information in their brain. Instead, searching for information has become an extremely important skill for all. GDPR has brought forth some challenges with the material and tools since all the apps and websites must be checked before using them. On the other hand it protects privacy of both students and teachers.
While the children born during the digital era have good skills, some have rather diminished capacity to use different types of digital tools, for example using attachments in an email. For these children, mobile phones are the target of their attention. While they can hear you, activating them to do something else without a phone can be a challenge for teachers.
Self evaluation
I didn’t learn that much new things since technology is a big part of my life and career. Still I have to keep up with the technology all the time so that I don’t fall off the wagon. I must learn more about data protection as it has become increasingly important in my own field of expertise.
Hello Johanna! I work also as a vocational teacher and I find from your writing many things from my own work. I have been working as at this job about 13 years and it’s been a big change during that in technology. When I started 13 years ago, we have this big diary books, where teachers write what they do in every class and who wasn’t at the class. These diary books includes names, reason of absences and other personal things and they were kept somewhere anyone can look them! And now we have Wilma and GDPR 🙂 That’s a good thing. During the pandemic we found many things, that has helpes our work, i.e. teams-meetings with the students parents if they live far away.